Why is it more difficult to sleep?

Sleep helps us handle memories, learn new skills and stabilize our mood. However, as we get older, good sleep becomes increasingly scarce.

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For years, scientists have been trying to understand what makes us older, the harder it is to sleep. They eventually discovered many factors that changed the way as well as when we sleep, from changes in brain activity to the loss of specialized brain cells that help the body recognize when it's time. Rest point. And not getting enough sleep time, no matter what your age, also leads to extremely dangerous reverse effects.

Here are the latest discoveries of human sleep experts as they age:

Losing deep sleep

As we age, we tend to sleep less and the quality of sleep is also worse with more waking at night. Our brains also spend less time on deep sleep - a valuable time when the chaos of brain activity subsides, shifting to slow energy consumption. In deep sleep or slow wave sleep, our brain waves will expand and be less hysterical.

The older we are, the harder it is to sleep.(Artwork: CCTV)

A 25-year-old has a total of several hours of deep sleep, sustained throughout the night-long sleep cycles. In contrast, a 70-year-old person has only a few minutes at the deepest rest period and takes more time on shallow sleep or completely awake at night. The transition between sleep and wake also becomes more sudden when we get older.

Unfortunately, changing forms of sleep also cause some negative effects on our health and cognitive functions. First of all, not getting enough deep sleep will cause memory disorders. This is because, when in the deepest state of sleep, decelerating brain waves help us to transfer short-term memories stored in the hippocampus of the brain to the prefrontal cortex, where they are recorded Long-term memory. However, according to a recent study, when not getting enough deep sleep, our latest memories may be stuck in hippocampus, where they will soon be overwritten by new memories.

Encourage napping in the afternoon and afternoon

In the 1990s, scientists identified a small area of ​​the brain that acts as a sleep switch on / off in mice. Earlier this year, the same team discovered that people also have areas of sleep in their brains and that, as we get older, we lose specialized brain cells there.

After this initial discovery, experts looked at the data of a long-term sleep study for more than 1,000 people, who began studying at 65 and agreed to receive follow-up until they died. The researchers found that people who lost the number of specialized brain cells were more likely to have interrupted sleep patterns - they woke up more and slept shorter.

Naps can help compensate for decreased alertness and increased stress, stemming from too little sleep at night.(Photo: BI)

The relationship between cells and amazingly accurate forms of sleep: the more people possess less specialized brain cells, the more sleepy they sleep and the poorer their memory.

According to experts, the solution to the intermittent sleep cycle is to take a nap . Usually, naps, such as at noon / afternoon, do not allow us to approach deep sleep, but help compensate for a decline in alertness and increased stress, stemming from too little sleep. night.

Poor sleep is not always due to age

In older adults, difficulty sleeping can also be a side effect of other problems, such as muscle spasms, weakness, anxiety and respiratory disorders (such as sleep apnea), capital is becoming more and more popular as we get older.

These are usually treatable conditions, but may not be diagnosed when people consider them simply the result of old age. Other chronic diseases, such as arthritis, can ruin sleep, so it is important to make sure that these problems are not ignored when we face sleeplessness or trouble sleeping. .

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