Making up for the lack of sleep could help reduce fatigue-induced clumsiness, especially in the way you walk, and thus prevent falls.
- The action of walking goes through cognitive processes involving the brain.
- It is possible to compensate for the lack of sleep with naps or longer nights on weekends.
Sleeping well is an essential pillar for good health. Lack of sleep modifies our behavior and impacts our social relationships before having deeper effects that can lead to disorders in the body. And, bad news, researchers have recently shown that coffee fails to fill the sleep deficit. In new research, published October 26 in the journal Scientific ReportsAmerican scientists from MIT and the University of São Paulo have reported that a bad night influences the way we walk and increases the risk of imbalances and falls.
Walking, a cognitive action
The researchers found, after conducting a series of experiments on college students, that the less they slept, the less control they had when walking during a treadmill test. “Scientifically, it was not known whether almost automatic activities like walking were influenced by lack of sleep.says Hermano Krebs, senior researcher in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT. We also find that sleep compensation is possible. For example, for those who are chronically sleep deprived, such as shift workers, clinicians, and some military personnel, if they incorporate regular sleep compensation, they might have better control over their gait..”
Walking has long been thought to be a fully automatic process, involving very little conscious cognitive control. This action was thought to be primarily controlled by reflective spinal activity, rather than more cognitive processes involving the brain. But several scientific studies have recently revealed that the act of walking is slightly more complex than imagined.
The gait adjusts unconsciously
For ten years, Hermano Krebs and his team of researchers have studied in depth the control of gait and its mechanisms. His goal is to develop assistive robotics and strategies for patients who have suffered strokes and other movement-limiting conditions. In previous experiments, he has shown, for example, that healthy subjects can adjust their gait to match subtle changes in visual stimuli, without realizing it. These results suggest that walking involves a subtle and conscious influence, in addition to more automatic processes.
In this new study, the researchers wanted to examine the influence of sleep deprivation on gait control. For this, they recruited students from the University of São Paulo. The students were each given a watch to track their activity over 14 days to track their sleep. On average, each student slept around six hours a day, although some students compensated, catching up on sleep over the two weekends during the 14-day period. On the eve of the 14th day, a group of students stayed up all night in the team’s sleep lab. The next morning, all the students went to the lab to perform a walking test on a treadmill.
It is possible to compensate for the lack of sleep
The various experiments carried out on the treadmill revealed greater desynchronization in those who slept less the night before. By comparing students by how long they slept over 14 days, researchers found that those who slept a little more on weekends performed better, even when they took the test at the end of the day. the week. “This is paradoxicalbelieves Arturo Forner-Cordero, who participated in the study. Even at the height of when most people were tired, this compensation group did better, which we didn’t expect.”
“Findings show that walking is not an automatic process and can be affected by sleep deprivationconcluded Hermano Krebs. They also encourage the implementation of strategies to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation. Ideally, everyone should get eight hours of sleep per night. But if we can’t, we should compensate as much and as regularly as possible..”
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