ROMA (ITALPRESS) – Sleeping does not just detach the plug: sleep is an essential biological process, during which the body performs fundamental functions for physical and mental health; while we sleep the brain consolidates information and memories, the body regulates numerous metabolic and hormonal processes and important recovery mechanisms are activated. Not only is the number of hours spent in bed: the quality of sleep is equally important. Adding with relative ease, not having frequent awakenings and feeling rested in the morning are indicators of an effective sleep. Needs also change with age: for an adult in general are recommended about 7-9 hours of sleep per night, even if there are individual differences. “A third of our lives we pass by sleeping: sleep is essential for our memory processes and brain development and plasticity mechanisms, i.e. the way neurons connect to each other and manage to work at best; overnight there are changes at the level of neuronal organization that act on all memory processes during the age of development, such as learning, or reducing neurodegenerative processes. There is a system called a glympatic system, which does a bit of a toothbrush: it throws out toxic substances and works mainly in deep sleep. During the night we have this effect of cleaning on memory and degenerative processes: the glympathic system has a very positive impact on the control of our emotions.” Lino Nobili, head of the Department of Infant Neuropsychiatry at the hospital Gaslini in Genoa, interviewed for Top Medicine, TV format of the news agency Italpress.
When you do not sleep enough, Nobili explains, “they come into play various levels. You may not sleep enough in acute: it jumps one night and the next day you will immediately notice that there is a certain effort to concentrate or stay careful; there may also be the famous sleeping shot. The problem is that if you have a constant chronic sleep deprivation, this is manifested with much more important effects on the level of memory and attention: in addition it alters mood tone, reduces our stress response capabilities, increases cardiovascular risk. If we are deprived of sleep our heart is more submissive to high levels of stimulant substances, then increase blood pressure and heart rate: there are also long-term effects on all metabolism, for example blood sugar.”
The next reflection is dedicated to the sleep management of children and adults: the first, emphasizes the neuropsychiatrist, “they love more: one of the fundamental roles of sleep is the action on the mechanism of neuronal plasticity, facilitating the organization of a growing brain and those mechanisms that serve the child during the day to be attentive, for his learning and to facilitate the control of emotions. As soon as the child is deprived of sleep becomes, for example, more difficult to console when he cries or struggles to be attentive to school: often sleep disorder is a first signal of something that does not go to behavioral level in the child and to see the trajectory of development in him”.
Adolescence is a crucial moment in sleep management, as “there are phenomena that we technically call Pruning: in this case the brain synapses remodel, making a kind of cleansing. Adolescents represent that part of the population that goes more towards deprivation, also because they want to stay awake until night to talk to friends: in addition, with the fact that social media are increasingly present, the use of the mobile phone and the chatting at night are an extremely widespread thing. In the end, the teenager tends to become much more deprived of sleep, also because it moves its pace a little further on going to sleep later: this has very negative effects on the control of emotions.”.
As for the duration of sleep, Nobili concludes, “there are standard indications depending on the slice of age: for the adult one is said 7-8 hours, then clearly there is a large variability from subject to subject. If you are in a condition of chronic deprivation, for example under 6 hours, or you sleep too much, you enter that condition in which the risk of different pathologies increases, both of the mental sphere and of the most organic aspect: not only counts the quantity, but also quality. There are forms of epilepsy that manifest only in sleep, because in it there are very particular neuronal synchronization mechanisms: it can increase the synchronization of some circuits, in addition for those suffering from epilepsy being deprived of sleep is a condition that can surely accentuate the risk of an epileptic crisis; it can happen to have one and not notice it, perhaps waking up in the morning with a vague memory or feeling softened”.
– photos taken from video Medicine Top –
(ITALPRESS)
