The secret to sleeping well on ... Mars

An experiment to find ways to help astronauts adapt to life on Mars can help people with sleep disorders on the earth.

NASA Space Agency has asked the laboratory of Dr. Charles Czeisler (program director of Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School in Boston) to find ways to help astronauts adapt to life on Mars - place a day long about 24 hours 39 minutes, corresponding to 24.65 hours.

That nearly 25 hours a day is enough to make most of the Earth's citizens feel tired, affecting their ability to learn, memorize things, respond quickly and sleep.

Dr. Charles Czeisler
(Photo: brighamandwomens)

Czeisler's team examined 12 healthy volunteers aged 22 to 33 - who maintained regular sleeps of 8 hours a day and 16 continuous hours at home for at least 3 weeks. They found that the biological length of the group was distributed from 23.47 hours to 24.48 hours, which was an hour difference.

The team took samples of these volunteers' blood every hour and found that those with shorter circadian clocks released a sleep-inducing melatonin hormone 4 to 5 hours before their normal bedtime. . In contrast, people with unusually long biological days do not release melatonin until 1 hour before going to bed.

Other studies have also shown that using a computer at night, working late at the office or other forms of exposure to strong light can disrupt someone's biological clock, making it difficult for him to sleep more.

Thus, Czeisler's team examined volunteers in the same way, using twice as much light exposure, each lasting 45 minutes, for 30 days. As a result, volunteers have adapted to the length of Mars, Czeisler said.

It also means that light therapy can help people with insomnia, caused by having a biological clock longer or shorter than usual.

T. An