Give up lie-ins and buy an eye mask: how to get better sleep
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · 3 days ago - 06:00
From simple lifestyle changes to choosing the right bedding and gadgets that can help
Dr Nicola Cann, a sleep consultant and psychologist, says sleeping is a natural process “that our bodies are primed for”, so there is a lot you can do to improve it without spending anything.
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Sleeping more flushes junk out of the brain
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · 5 days ago - 11:22
Enlarge (credit: OsakaWayne Studios )
As if we didn’t have enough reasons to get at least eight hours of sleep , there is now one more. Neurons are still active during sleep. We may not realize it, but the brain takes advantage of this recharging period to get rid of junk that was accumulating during waking hours.
Sleep is something like a soft reboot. We knew that slow brainwaves had something to do with restful sleep; researchers at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have now found out why. When we are awake, our neurons require energy to fuel complex tasks such as problem-solving and committing things to memory. The problem is that debris gets left behind after they consume these nutrients. As we sleep, neurons use these rhythmic waves to help move cerebrospinal fluid through brain tissue, carrying out metabolic waste in the process.
In other words, neurons need to take out the trash so it doesn’t accumulate and potentially contribute to neurodegenerative diseases. “Neurons serve as master organizers for brain clearance,” the WUSTL research team said in a study recently published in Nature .
Two nights of broken sleep can make people feel years older, finds study
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 27 March - 00:01
Beyond simply feeling decrepit, perception of being older can affect health by encouraging unhealthy eating and reducing exercise
Two nights of broken sleep are enough to make people feel years older, according to researchers, who said consistent, restful slumber was a key factor in helping to stave off feeling one’s true age.
Psychologists in Sweden found that, on average, volunteers felt more than four years older when they were restricted to only four hours of sleep for two consecutive nights, with some claiming the sleepiness made them feel decades older.
Continue reading...You be the judge: should my girlfriend stop napping while ‘working’ from home?
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Friday, 15 March - 08:00
Tobias wants his girlfriend to stop sleeping on the job – but Tara loves napping and then working late. You decide who should dream on
Find out how to get a disagreement settled or become a juror
I want us to unwind together but Tara always has to work late because she naps all day
I get a second wind after a nap, and my creative flow is better. That’s why I like to work at night
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The science behind why people hate Daylight Saving Time so much
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 13 March - 14:56 · 1 minute
Enlarge (credit: Olga Eremeeva via Getty )
In the summer of 2017, when communication professor Jeffery Gentry moved from Oklahoma to accept a position at Eastern New Mexico University, he was pleasantly surprised to find it easier to get up in the morning. The difference, he realized, was early morning light. On September mornings in Portales, New Mexico, Gentry rose with the sun at around 6:30 am, but at that time of day in Oklahoma, it was still dark.
As the Earth rotates, the sun reaches the eastern edge of a time zone first, with sunrise and sunset occurring progressively later as you move west. Gentry’s move had taken him from the western side of Central Time in Oklahoma to the eastern edge of Mountain Time. Following his curiosity into the scientific literature, he discovered the field of chronobiology, the study of biological rhythms, such as how cycles of daylight and dark affect living things. “I really just stumbled upon it from being a guinea pig in my own experiment,” he said.
In 2022, Gentry and an interdisciplinary team of colleagues added to that body of research, publishing a study in the journal Time & Society that showed the rate of fatal motor-vehicle accidents was highest for people living in the far west of a time zone, where the sun rises and sets at least an hour later than on the eastern side. Chronobiology research shows that longer evening light can keep people up later and that, as Gentry found, morning darkness can make it harder to get going for work or school. Western-edge folks may suffer more deadly car wrecks, the team theorized, because they are commuting in the dark while sleep deprived and not fully alert.
Weekend podcast: Does murder count if you’re asleep? Marina Hyde on Christian Horner’s F1 drama; and how inanity ruined the red carpet
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Saturday, 9 March - 05:00
It’s the Christian Horner paradox, according to Marina Hyde: F1 is now hideously dull, but it’s never been more dramatic (1m53s); if you kill someone in your sleep, is it murder? (9m33s); and ‘What a ridiculous question!’ How fawning, and inanity ruined the red carpet (23m02s)
Continue reading...I’ve wasted 7,300 hours lazing in bed in the morning. Why can’t I just get up?
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Thursday, 22 February - 11:00
For 40 years, I’ve spent half an hour lying around doing nothing each day after waking up. It’s scandalous behaviour that must be stopped
I thought I would get up early to write this, like I think I’ll get up early to do something every morning. I set the alarm, full of sincere intentions, but when it goes off I just lie there for about half an hour. It has been this way every morning for 40 years. I’m not resting, I’m not rising, I’m not doing anything worthwhile, unless you consider doomscrolling while listening to the radio worthwhile.
What an appalling waste of time. Forty years multiplied by 365 days multiplied by 30 minutes comes to 438,000 minutes, which is 7,300 hours, or 304 days. Scandalous. Nigh-on a year of my life thrown away neither sleeping nor doing anything useful.
Continue reading...Is going to bed at 9pm the secret to happiness? My week of sleeping like a gen Zer
news.movim.eu / TheGuardian · Wednesday, 21 February - 05:00 · 1 minute
Young people are increasingly heading to bed early and getting almost 10 hours of sleep. But how do they nod off – and are they missing out on anything?
Over a lifetime, you find yourself doing many different things at 9pm: watching TV; reading a book; sitting in a pub; leaving a restaurant to go to a cinema, or the other way round. When you have young children, nine o’clock generally marks the start of the precious time you call your own – a tiny window into which you must cram all your fun. As I’ve aged, I’ve come to associate the 21st hour of the day with coming home rather than going out. But there is one thing I’ve never contemplated doing at 9pm: going to bed.
And yet, according to the Wall Street Journal, 9pm is the hot new bedtime – not for middle-aged tired people, but for twentysomethings. The young people of today, it seems, are taking control over their sleep routines and prioritising shuteye over fun. A 2022 analysis found that Americans in their 20s were getting, on average, nine hours and 28 minutes of sleep a night, up from eight hours and 47 minutes in 2010. The WSJ quoted one 19-year old as saying: “For me, nothing good happens after 9pm.”
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A look into the REM dreams of the animal kingdom
news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Saturday, 2 September, 2023 - 11:47
Enlarge / A cuttlefish swims in an aquarium at the Scientific Center of Kuwait on March 20, 2016, in Kuwait City. (credit: YASSER AL-ZAYYAT/AFP via Getty Images )
Young jumping spiders dangle by a thread through the night, in a box, in a lab. Every so often, their legs curl and their spinnerets twitch—and the retinas of their eyes, visible through their translucent exoskeletons, shift back and forth.
“What these spiders are doing seems to be resembling—very closely—REM sleep,” says Daniela Rössler, a behavioral ecologist at the University of Konstanz in Germany. During REM (which stands for rapid eye movement), a sleeping animal’s eyes dart about unpredictably, among other features.
In people, REM is when most dreaming happens, particularly the most vivid dreams. Which leads to an intriguing question. If spiders have REM sleep, might dreams also unfold in their poppy-seed-size brains?
