Researchers say just two nights of no sleep can make you feel years older. It is said that continuous and restful sleep is an important factor in not feeling your true age.
Swedish psychologists found that volunteers who were restricted to four hours of sleep two nights in a row felt on average more than four years older, with some claiming that the sleepiness made them feel decades older. .
The opposite was seen when people were allowed to stay in bed for 9 hours, but the effect was more modest, with study participants averaging 3 months older than their chronological age after sufficient rest. He claimed to feel younger.
Dr Leonie Balter, a psychoneuroimmunologist at the Karolinska Institute in Stockholm and lead author of the study, said: “Sleep has a big impact on how old you feel, but it’s only your long-term sleep patterns that affect how old you feel.” It is not.” “Even if he sleeps less for just two nights, it has a big impact on his mood.”
Rather than just feeling older, the perception of being older by many years can affect people by encouraging unhealthy eating, reducing physical activity, and reducing people’s desire to socialize and experience new things. Balter said it could affect the health of people.
The researchers conducted two studies. In the first study, 429 people between the ages of 18 and 70 answered questions about how old they felt and how many nights in the past month they had had a bad night’s sleep. Their sleepiness was also assessed according to standard scales used in psychological research.
The researchers found that for each day of sleep deprivation, volunteers felt on average three months older, while those who reported having trouble sleeping in the previous month felt on average nearly six years younger than their actual age. But she wasn’t sure whether bad sleep made her feel older or vice versa.
In the second study, researchers looked at 186 volunteers between the ages of 18 and 46 and found that after two nights of plenty of sleep, in which they stayed in bed for nine hours a night, and two nights in which they slept for only four hours, they asked about how old they felt. . After two nights of restricted sleep, participants felt on average 4.44 years older than when they had gotten enough sleep. Not surprisingly, feeling older was associated with feeling sleepier.
“If you want to feel young, the most important thing is to protect your sleep,” says Balter.
Writing in progress Proceedings of the Royal Society BPsychologists explain how people react differently to sleep deprivation depending on whether they’re a morning person, who wakes up early and goes to bed early, or a night owl, who wakes up late and leaves work late. Night owls typically feel older than they really are even after getting enough sleep, while morning owls feel older even more when their sleep is disrupted.
Balter said the findings of this study, if confirmed, could be put to good use. “It’s important to recognize how malleable subjective age is,” she says. “If we can make people feel younger, they may have associated benefits, such as being more open to new experiences, more socially active, and more physically active.”
Dr Serena Sabatini, a psychologist at the University of Surrey who was not involved in the study, said the results were “promising”, but future research would need to investigate whether older adults could maintain the results. should be a priority.
“Another important thing to consider in future studies is to investigate these mechanisms over time,” she added. “This study shows that a night of sleep deprivation can affect your mood the next day, but what is the cumulative effect of sleep deprivation over months or years? Is not it?”
Dr Juliana Hartescu, senior lecturer in psychology at Loughborough University, who was not involved in the study, also said that lack of or poor quality sleep is a lifestyle behavior that ultimately impacts long-term health. stated that it is important for
“Sleep is one of the modifiable behaviors that has an immediate and noticeable impact on health,” she said. “The effects of a poor diet and low physical activity take time to notice. The effects of a poor night’s sleep are immediate and affect all other 24-hour lifestyle behaviors.”
In another study, a 10-year study of more than 4,000 Europeans found that people who exercised consistently two to three times a week were more likely to suffer from insomnia than those who were inactive. It was found that they were significantly lower and were able to complete the recommended 6 to 9 hours of exercise time better. I sleep every night.
An international team of researchers analyzed questionnaires from people enrolled in the European Community Respiratory Health Study on exercise habits, sleep quality and duration, and daily sleepiness levels. Volunteers were followed for 10 years at 21 sites in nine countries.
People who exercised at least an hour a week, at least twice a week, were 42% less likely to have trouble falling asleep than people who were inactive, and were less likely to be “normal sleepers” with sleep problems. The study found that 55% higher. Get a healthy amount of sleep each night.
“This study, with a long follow-up period of 10 years, strongly suggests that consistency in physical activity may be an important factor in optimizing sleep duration and reducing symptoms of insomnia.” the authors state. Write to BMJ Open.
