Sleep deprivation tends to make people confused, which should be the intuitive feeling of most people. A new study published by the University of Leeds in the United Kingdom further points out that lack of sleep can affect a person’s mental health and memory.
To further analyze the relationship between insomnia and mental health, researchers at the University of Leeds worked with a company to conduct a large survey involving more than 1,000 British adults, ranging in age from 18 to 80. The researchers asked the volunteers to fill out a questionnaire about their sleep habits, memory, mental status and quality of life, and then analyzed the results based on these.
The researchers said that from the survey data, sleep deprivation was associated with a greater decline in mental health and poorer daily memory, especially for those who often slept less than five hours at night. For example, they forget to perform tasks, can’t remember where things happened, or forget to do things they planned to do.
Anna Verhall, a scholar at the University of Leeds who participated in the study, said it was clear that those who do not get enough sleep may have a greater impact on their quality of life.
Currently, the British public health system recommends that adults sleep seven to eight hours a night. The team said that sleep should be considered a priority health behavior in public health, just like maintaining proper weight, eating healthy and exercising more.
In addition, the results of a recent Japanese study showed that people who sleep poorly have double the risk of heart disease than others.
Hiroshima University researchers recently attended the European Society of Cardiology Congress reported that this is the conclusion they reached after studying nearly 13,000 people. Statistics show that, compared with people who sleep normally, people who wake up at night are 99% more likely to suffer from ischemic heart disease; people who sleep for more than 30 minutes have a 52% higher risk of heart attack and 48% higher risk of stroke; people who sleep less than 6 hours have a 24% higher risk of heart attack.
Dr. Nobuo Sasaki, who participated in the study, said that although the study only focused on statistics and did not start an in-depth study on the causal relationship between poor sleep and heart disease, it at least showed that tossing and turning should be considered an early sign of serious health problems in the future.
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