![]() Neil Stanley, a sleep expert at Sleep Station, an online provider of cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, says it is "puzzling" that we wouldn't need more deep sleep during the winter. Why we can dream in more than one language.The forgotten medieval habit of 'two sleeps'.It is also worth noting that the study was performed on patients suffering from sleep-disturbances such as insomnia, so it will need to be repeated in a healthy population to confirm these effects are seen more widely. "We still have no idea what it means functionally." ![]() Kunz says more research is needed to understand why we need less deep sleep in autumn than in winter. the longer you are awake, the more deep sleep you need to restore your energy." " deep sleep is not driven by the circadian timing system it is a homeostatic process. The seasonality of deep sleep "was something we did not expect," says Kunz. The slow wave sleep of the study participants was 30 minutes shorter in September than in February. It is when the body repairs and regrows tissues, builds muscle and strengthens the immune system and is important for the consolidation of long-term memory and processing newly acquired information. Slow wave sleep occurs during the final stage of non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. "We found specific changes in REM sleep and deep sleep, the two major stages in sleep, over the year. REM sleep is regulated by the circadian clock, "so the fact that it goes in parallel with seasonality makes sense", says Kunz.īut Kunz's team was surprised to find that there were also seasonal changes when it came to slow wave sleep (SWS), also known as deep sleep. ![]() Their rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the most active stage of sleep when we dream and our heart rate increases, was 30 minutes longer in the winter than during the summer. In fact, the participants slept an hour longer in December than in June. Previous studies have found that exposure to artificial light before bedtime can suppress the secretion of melatonin, the hormone produced by the pineal gland that regulates our circadian clock, the natural sleep-wake cycle that repeats every 24 hours, and makes us feel sleepy.īut the German study, which used detailed sleep recordings of 188 patients who lived in urban settings and suffered from disturbed sleeping patterns, found that even when exposed primarily to artificial lights, the participants experienced seasonal variations in REM sleep, which is directly linked to our circadian rhythm. ![]() "I would expect the seasonal variations to be much higher, living outside and were only exposed to natural light," he adds. "Our study shows that even while living in an urban environment, with just artificial light, humans seasonal sleep," says Dieter Kunz, one of the study's lead authors and head of the clinic of sleep and chronomedicine at St Hedwig Hospital in Berlin, Germany. This need seems to even occur in people living in cities, where artificial lights would be expected to interfere with the natural influence of daylight on our sleeping patterns. New research suggests that humans may need more sleep during the dark winter months than they do during the summer. And scientists say this isn't surprising. Many of us are familiar with the struggle to muster the energy to leave bed in the morning during the winter, choosing instead to hit the snooze button. The Sun stays up for longer, the days grow warmer, the first flowers begin to bloom, and in many countries the clocks tick forward into daylight savings time to lengthen our evenings.īut there is one change that is likely to be less appreciated as we move steadily towards the summer – you start to get less sleep. The arrival of spring often heralds a welcome change after the long, hard winter months. ![]()
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