The psychological and physical impact of lack of sleep becomes worrying after three insufficient nights.
- According to Soomi Lee, you need to sleep at least six hours every night of the week to be in good shape.
- 41% of French people suffer from sleep disorders, a figure that has increased over the past twenty years.
According to a new study published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, it only takes three nights of disturbed sleep to wreck body and mind.
A deterioration in the state of health from the first bad night
To reach this conclusion, the researchers analyzed the sleep of more than 2,000 healthy American adults. The participants noted in a diary the evolution of their physical and psychological state for eight days, during which they slept less than 6 hours per night.
Conclusion: from the first day, too short nights had a negative impact on the cohort. The number of mental and physical problems then continued to worsen, reaching a truly worrying level from the third day of the experiment. After six sleepless nights, those tested were at their worst.
Stomach aches, body aches, anger, nervousness…
Participants reported an accumulation of feelings of anger, nervousness, loneliness, irritability and frustration as a result of their lack of sleep. They also felt more physical problems, such as breathing problems, body aches or stomach aches.
“A lot of us think we can catch up on our sleep debt on the weekends,” says study director Soomi Lee. “But the results of this study show that having even a single night without sleep can significantly impair our daily functioning,” concludes the scientist.
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