#sleep

#sleep

Why Do Humans Sleep Less than Other Primates?Adult humans average about seven hours of sleep per day. By contrast, chimpanzee, one of our closest relatives, sleep 9.5 hours a day, and other primates sleep even longer. Why is that? Common sense might tell you that it's because of television, the internet, stress, artificial schedules, and lights. But studies show that non-industrial communities, even those without electricity, sleep about the same amount. There's something about being human that causes us to get less sleep than other primates. Some new studies give us a hypothesis and some caveats. It's possible that we evolved to operate on less sleep when we stopped living in trees. Animals that sleep on the ground are at a higher risk from predators, so our ancestors began sleeping in groups with someone keeping watch in shifts. That would also explain why humans have more flexible sleep patterns than other primates. The caveat is that we might not know as much about animal sleep patterns as we think we do. Some studies show that creatures who live in zoos and laboratories sleep more than those in the wild, although studies of how long wild animals sleep in their own environment are rather scarce. Read a lot more about the research into why humans sleep less than other primates at Smithsonian.(Image credit: Daniel Ramirez)#sleep #primate #evolution #naturalselection

What Happens When People Get to Choose their Own Sleep SchedulesOur lives were disrupted in many ways during the coronavirus pandemic. At the same time, these disruptions created some interesting opportunities for research. A vast number of office workers went home to work remotely during lockdown, which made their work schedules more flexible in many cases. How did their sleep patterns change? Social jet lag (SJL) is the term sleep scientists to use for the gap between our natural sleep patterns and the the social schedules -mainly work and school- that we must adhere to in normal circumstances. Night owls suffer the biggest SJL when they have to be at work in the morning, while early birds suffer less because their natural sleep pattern conforms to social obligations. Nearly 15,000 from 14 countries participated in a study of sleep patterns to determine the pandemic's effect on SJL. They found that when people determine their own work hours, 46% of participants reduced their SJL. Most did this by sleeping later in the morning, starting work later, and staying up later at night. Another 20% increased their SJJL, and the rest observed no change.The research showed that nearly half of the population follows a schedule that betrays their natural, later chronotype. What’s surprising, however, is that the people who reduced their SJL experienced more insomnia and stress during the pandemic than those who maintained a consistent SJL. This is probably because spending too long in bed reduces sleep efficiency, making it harder to sleep throughout the night.That's makes sense, as sleep scientists have long advised insomniacs to not lay in bed unless they intend to sleep, so that they become conditioned to associating the bed with sleep. Read more about Social Jet Lag and pandemic sleep patterns at Science Focus. -via Damn Interesting#sleep #sleeppattern #socialjetlag #sleepschedule #pandemic

The Optimum Bedtime to Save Your HeartWhat time do you normally go to bed? A consistent bedtime has long been considered a strategy for getting enough sleep, but now science has determined that there's one bedtime hour that is the best for your heart health: 10 PM to 11 PM. A study of 88,000 adults kept track of their activities by an accelerometer they wore, so the exact time they went to bed was recorded. The average age of the participants was 61, and in the following six years, 3,172 of them had cardiovascular events, such as heart attack, stroke, or heart failure. When researchers crunched the numbers, it turns out people who went to bed between 10 and 11 were the least likely to experience such an event. There was a 12% greater risk for those whose bedtime was between 11 and midnight, and a 25% higher risk for those who stayed up past midnight. Those who fell asleep earlier in the evening had a 24% increase in risk. Curiously, women were more affected by a bedtime later than 11, and men were more affected by going to bed before 10 PM. The effect was seen even when controlling for other lifestyle factors.Read more about this study at NBC.  -via Fark #sleep #bedtime #heart #heartdisease

Why Warm Milk Makes You SleepyFeeding a baby milk is one of the best ways to get them to sleep. For adults, it's conventional wisdom that a warm cup of milk will help you get to sleep. The "warm" part may just make you feel comfortable inside, physically and emotionally. But scientists have been picking apart milk to see what's in it that promotes sleep. It was once though that the critical ingredient was tryptophan, but that's not all of it. Milk contains a variety of peptides. Scientists isolated many of these peptides and fed them to mice. One that seems particularly good for promoting sleep is α-casozepine (α-CZP). However, combination of α-CZP and other peptides is even better. Treating the milk protein casein with the digestive enzyme trypsin produces a combination peptide called casein tryptic hydrolysate (CTH) that appears to promote sleep even better than its component parts. Research into isolating the sleep-enhancing chemicals in milk may lead to more natural medications to promote sleep. Or you could just make a cup of hot cocoa, if you are lactose tolerant. Read about this research at the American Chemical Society. -via Real Clear Science#milk #sleep #peptide #chemistry

Walrus Will Sleep Anywhere, Including on a Russian SubmarineWhen you gotta sleep, you gotta sleep.Proving once again that walruses are the world's champ in unusual sleeping locations, here's a pic of a walrus sleeping on top of a docked Russian submarine K-186 Omsk.Other instances of walrus sleeping in weird places include one that slept on an iceberg and woke up in Ireland!Image: timyan-omsk#walrus #submarine #sleep