The Impact of Sleep on Mental Health: Research, Findings, and Recommendations

2023-12-25 19:02:08

Sleep contributes to maintaining the health of our body. For an adult, it is on average recommended to sleep between 7 and 9 hours per night so that it is restorative. Because as a reminder, during sleep, our body regenerates. For example, during our sleep, our cells regenerate 3 times faster than the day. So, the skin heals more quickly at night. Another example, while we sleep, our body produces hormones allowing us to strengthen our immune defenses. Sleeping well therefore allows you to be less vulnerable to viruses.

Depression: the duration of our sleep has an influence

It has been proven through various research that impaired sleep quality can have deleterious effects on health. In the short term, mood can be impacted in the same way as attention and vigilance. In the medium term, we speak of irritability or even depressive disorder. This has just been confirmed by a recently published study carried out by researchers at the University College of London.

To reach its conclusions, the team used genetic and health data from 7,146 people UK. After analyzing the data, the researchers noted that individuals with a stronger genetic predisposition to short sleep (less than five hours in a given night) were more likely to develop depressive symptoms over a period of 4 to 12 years.

Sleep and depression: a proven link

The world’s population is aging, which over time increases the number of people with sleep disorders as well as the risk of suffering from a depressive disorder. In this sense, Professor Andrew Steptoe, Head of Behavioral and Health Sciences, UCL Institute of Epidemiology and Healthcare, said: “ Suboptimal sleep and depression increase with ageand with the global phenomenon of population aging, there is a growing need to better understand the mechanism linking depression and lack of sleep. This study lays an important foundation for future investigations into the intersection of genetics, sleep, and depressive symptoms. »

It should be noted that our quality of sleep depends on our heredity. Previous studies of twins have suggested that depression is about 35% heritable and that genetic differences account for 40% of the variance in sleep duration.

1703533505
#Sleeping #hours #night #promotes #mental #disorder

Leave a Comment

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.