Healthy Sleep
Sleaping – one of the most important physiological processes in the human body. During sleep the brain processes the information received during the day, while performing many functions to restore the efficiency of the organism. Sleep allows us to correct damage caused by the body during the day, including at the cellular level, and adjusts the body’s immune system to further active work. It is during sleep retreat disease, resting the nervous system, and the body is stored energy for a new day.
A study by American scientists, found that people sleeping less than seven hours a day, more frequently suffer from colds – the risk of catching colds, they have three times higher than those who sleep eight hours a day or more. It is believed that lack of sleep weakens the immune system and ability to fight viruses that cause influenza and ARI. It also emerged that the important role played and the quality of sleep. Participants of the experiment, which plagued insomnia, colds in the five and a half times more likely than those who did not have sleep problems. The study is published in the journal Archives of Internal Medicine. Previously, scientists have found that people sleeping seven to eight hours a day, less prone to heart disease, although no direct correlation between quantity and quality of sleep and state of the immune system then has not been established.
The beneficial for a person during sleep is determined by the presence and level of a number of hormones. Conversely, sleep disturbances, in turn, may adversely affect hormone production. Thus, the lack of sleep duration affects the balance of hormones, signaling hunger and saturation. As a result, people often feel the need to eat and with great difficulty can be satisfied. What is confirmed by statistical observation that few people sleeping are more likely to be overweight.
Hormones – a substance produced by the organism direct specific action. This means that they carry out their task, even if the body at the moment it is not necessary.
The most important of the hormones that affect sleep – is melatonin, produced by the pineal gland. He begins to stand out, when the eyes signal the brain that occurred at night. In daylight it is not produced, and, accordingly, weakness and drowsiness disappear. For making melatonin organism must first two components: the amino acid tryptophan and sugar. Sleep problems can be caused by a lack of tryptophan in the body.