Disturbed sleep makes you sick and ugly

Disturbed sleep makes you sick and ugly

13/01/2011

Restful sleep is a prerequisite for health and performance. When night and shift work or leisure stress disturbs or shortens sleep, serious health consequences are imminent. Sleep problems can be effectively helped by a combination of valerian and hops extract, as scientific studies show.

Contrary to popular belief, the organism is by no means on the back burner during the night. Sleep requires as much energy as the waking state, reported in Munich Prof. Dr. med. Jürgen Zulley from the Sleep Medicine Center of the University of Regensburg. During sleep, the growth hormone is produced, which is used to regenerate skin and hair („beauty sleep“) and for bone growth is needed. Lack of sleep accelerates aging and slows wound healing.

Restful sleep also makes you smarter: During the night, the brain arranges the experiences of the day and works on problem solutions. Lack of sleep, on the other hand, leads to memory gaps, reduces the daily workload by 25 percent and makes the immune system more susceptible to disease. Night and shift work increases the risk of heart disease, depression and impaired driving. Prof. Zulley: „Through 24 hours of sleep deprivation, the reactivity is disturbed as much as by one per mille blood alcohol.

Most people suffer from falling asleep. If you want to fall asleep well, you should therefore prefer light, protein-rich foods for dinner. Carbohydrates are used worse in the evening than during the day, even salad is difficult to digest. Although alcohol makes you tired and his liver tolerates better in the evening than in the morning, he is not a useful sleep aid.

Effective and without unwanted side effects, falling asleep is facilitated by herbal medicines. Especially the combination of valerian and hops extract has been shown to be effective in studies. For example, in a clinical, placebo-controlled study of 30 patients treated with either the valerian-hop combination for four weeks, or valerian alone or placebo. The patients treated with the combination not only slept significantly faster than patients from the other two groups, they also had a greater proportion of deep sleep periods (Phytother Res 2007, 21 (9): 847-51). (KFN 01/2011 - 13.01.11)