Care For Your Sleep

Fragmented sleep is something well familiar to most of modern people. Waking up at night, sometimes waking up repeatedly and being not able to fall asleep again, is becoming something very common for many people around the world. However, fragmented or interrupted sleep can be very dangerous and cause a number of unwanted effects which can seriously damage our health. In particular, according to the findings of the specialists from Stanford University, chronic fragmentary sleep is strictly linked to developing such problems as Alzheimer’s disease, because  in contrast to continuous sleep, fragmentary sleep affects normal function of our brain. In particular, it causes inability to build memories, this way causing troubles for us with remembering some important or familiar things.

Specialists came to these conclusions after working with the groups of lab mice. The control group which had chronic interrupted sleep has demonstrated problems with recognizing things and object well familiar to them. At that, the scientists underline that as a result of using optogenetic techniques which help to disrupt sleep without actual waking up, the sleep of the control group members was only fragmented, but not insufficient or too short. Therefore, interrupted sleep turns out to be very dangerous and possible even more harmful than a lack of sleep.

Specialists are sure that we accumulate and process our memories exactly during our sleep, that is why continuous sleep is very important for normal processes of memorization. The conclusions of American sleep experts were recently published in one of scientific magazines and widely discussed. “Sleep continuity is one of the main factors affected in various pathological conditions that impact memory, including Alzheimer’s and other age-related cognitive deficits,” Dr Luis de Lecea, one of the leading specialists of the group, wrote in the publication. The experts concluded that: “Regardless of the total amount of sleep or sleep intensity, a minimal unit of uninterrupted sleep is crucial for memory consolidation.”

Moreover, during the research it was found out that interrupted sleep has obvious negative effects on those people who have alcohol dependence, as well as on those who suffer from a condition known as obstructive sleep apnea, linked to narrowing of the throat during sleep, causing a lack of oxygen and interrupted sleep. Therefore, in order to avoid developing serious sleep disorders, memory loss and related diseases, as well as other serious consequences and health conditions, it is essential to be sure that our night sleep is continuous and not interrupted.