This sleep habit is more important than sleeping eight hours | The truth

A recent new study has discovered that there is a habit more important than the hours you sleep. More important, in fact, than sleeping eight hours, which is to date the most repeated advice throughout the world. The research was carried out by a team of experts from Monash University in Australia, Manchester University in the United Kingdom, and Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, in the United States. And its main conclusion is that sleep regularity is the cornerstone of keeping us healthy. Being regular means “going to bed and getting up at the same time or almost, with a small variability,” says Manuel de Entrambasaguas, member of the Insomnia working group of the Spanish Sleep Society.

If we manage to maintain this habit, researchers say that we can “reduce the risk of premature death from any cause by between 20 and 48%.” At least, that is what they have managed to demonstrate by studying the sleep records of 502,000 people aged between 40 and 69 that the United Kingdom Biobank had collected between 2006 and 2010. Deaths were counted up to seven years later.

Lack of sleep hygiene can make us sick and is related to a higher risk of suffering from cancer, cardiometabolic diseases and dying prematurely. For this reason, De Entrambasaguas maintains, it is necessary to be aware that it is not something we can do without, nor a period that we can cut short to do other things. “It is part of our physical and mental health,” says this neurophysiologist expert in sleep medicine at the Valencia Clinical Hospital.

The advice, therefore, is that we try to go to bed and get up at a similar time “every day.” At first it will be difficult for us and we will still need to set the alarm clock, but as we maintain the habit, our body will come to a time when it will “wake up a few minutes before the alarm goes off” and better yet: “We will get sleepy at approximately same hour”.

But is it possible to put this recommendation into practice? The first problem we encounter and perhaps the most insurmountable is work: almost four million people work shifts in our country, that is, two out of every ten employees, reports the National Institute of Statistics (INE). And these shifts also include the night shift, in which 2.3 million people are employed.

– In these cases, what can be done to take care of our health? Because not everyone can quit work.

– What is most destructive is the variability: one day I do the morning shift; two days later, in the afternoon; then three days at night… The ideal is an orderly schedule so that my body gets used to it. And there is already beginning to be legislation on this matter.

However, we are not aware of something else as harmful as working shifts: jet lag on free days or weekends. «Our brain does not distinguish if it is festive or not. We have invented that. For our body, every day is the same. So doing those excesses of going out, going to bed late, getting up late “is also not recommended.”

It is best to respect our “circadian rhythms”, which are not a myth, but a “biological phenomenon”. Living beings on Earth have always been active during daylight hours and have rested during darkness. “We have a group of specialized neurons in the brain, which is the suprachiasmatic nucleus, which are our central clock, which regulates our functions and our rhythms,” details De Entrambasaguas.

Listen to the body

Two other things that are also important when adjusting sleep are homeostasis – “our biology needs us to sleep a balanced number of hours so as not to get sick” – and social requirements, in which, as we have already said, sometimes We can do more than we think. We can control some of the enemies of sleep. This is the case of mobile phones, Netflix or television. “It is important not to get hooked on watching the next episode when we begin to notice the first signs that we are sleepy,” recommends the Valencian doctor.

And in fact, all experts advise that from a certain hour onwards we try to create a restful climate at home by turning off the lights and regulating the temperature of the heaters or air conditioners: neither too hot nor too cold. And finally, De Entrambasaguas also advises not to become obsessed with sleeping eight hours because “recommendations depend on age: children need more time than older adults.”