How harmful is poor sleep? Here are the remedies

There is a saying on the Internet that people with poor sleep quality have a higher risk of kidney stones, and poor sleep may damage the kidneys... Is this true? How harmful is poor sleep? How can we reduce the health risks caused by poor sleep? How can we maintain overall health by improving sleep?

1. If you don’t sleep well for a long time, your body will experience these changes

First of all, there is no direct relationship between poor sleep and kidney stones. The cause of kidney stones does not include poor sleep. If you have kidney stones, it will affect your sleep. For example, kidney stones will often cause abdominal pain, which will affect your sleep, causing difficulty falling asleep or repeated awakening during sleep.

However, poor sleep can have a serious impact on the kidneys. The kidneys have endocrine functions as well as urination functions. Poor sleep can cause endocrine disorders in the kidneys, making high blood pressure, abnormal urine output, and increased nocturia more likely to occur.

If you don’t get enough sleep or your sleep quality is not high for a long time, your body will also experience the following changes:

(1) Disrupting endocrine system

Many important hormones are secreted during sleep, such as thyroid hormones, sex hormones, and melatonin. In addition, insufficient sleep can cause a stress response in the body, causing the body's sympathetic nerves to become overexcited and secrete more cortisol hormones, which can easily cause blood sugar regulation disorders, increased blood sugar, and increase the risk of diabetes.

(2) Damage to the brain

High levels of stress-induced cortisol release are associated with reduced hippocampal volume. Insufficient sleep can lead to impaired cognitive function, and sleep disorders can cause forgetfulness, trance, and difficulty concentrating.

(3) Cardiovascular and cerebrovascular injuries

Studies have shown that the "appropriate sleep range" is 6 to 9 hours. If the sleep duration is not within this range, after excluding risk factors, insufficient sleep or too much sleep will increase the risk of heart disease.

(4) Reduced immunity

Wounds usually heal during sleep, and redness, swelling, and inflammation also subside during sleep, rarely during the day. Lack of sleep reduces the phagocytic ability of white blood cells, and the immune system cannot work. The body cannot resist bacteria, viruses, cancer cells, etc., which allows diseases to take advantage of the opportunity.

(5) Hindering the body’s metabolism

When sleeping, macrophages will actively engulf necrotic tissue, carry out metabolism, and excrete necrotic tissue, toxins, and metabolic products from the body, allowing the joints and muscles that are sore during the day to rest.

(6) Inducing mental illness

Sleeping too little or too long can easily lead to anxiety, depression, etc., and in the long run may induce mental illness, and excessive stress can cause hair loss (alopecia areata). If you have the following symptoms, it means your body is reminding you that you need to sleep well: always feeling hungry, gaining weight, being impulsive, memory loss, poor work ability, decreased motor skills, frequent illness, blurred vision, poor skin, and napping during the day.

2. Poor sleep and exercise can offset some of the harm

Lack of sleep and insufficient exercise are important factors that threaten cardiovascular health and human metabolism, and will greatly increase the risk of cancer.

A study published in the British Medical Journal's subsidiary journal Sports Medicine proposed a new remedy: exercise offset - those who have poor sleep quality can offset some of the adverse effects of bad sleep if they can maintain a certain amount of exercise.

The results showed that compared with people with high exercise levels and high sleep quality, people who did not exercise and had poor sleep had a 57% increased risk of all-cause mortality, a 67% increased risk of death from cardiovascular disease, and a 45% increased risk of death from cancer (including a 91% increased risk of death from lung cancer).

However, people who had poor sleep quality but maintained high levels of physical activity had almost no increased risk of dying from cancer due to poor sleep.

3. Two types of exercise are good for helping you sleep

Appropriate exercise can help people sleep better, especially competitive sports and aerobic exercise.

These exercises can make people feel tired and cause the nerve excitation and inhibition processes to alternate, thus helping sleep.

Research published in the journal Clinical Sleep Medicine also showed that doing more aerobic exercise can help alleviate insomnia problems, and it is recommended to improve sleep through exercise for 16 weeks.

Aerobic exercise: low-intensity exercise that can be performed for a long time, such as brisk walking, jogging, long-distance slow swimming, slow cycling, aerobics, etc.

Competitive sports: Tennis, basketball, football and other ball games are mostly competitive sports. You can choose the sports that suits you according to your interests:

(1) Young and middle-aged people can choose competitive ball games that require a lot of physical energy, such as football, basketball, and volleyball; moderate-intensity sports include swimming and ballroom dancing; high-intensity sports include running, weight-bearing hiking, aerobics, and fast cycling.

(2) The elderly can practice Tai Chi, do radio gymnastics, etc.; medium to high intensity exercises include walking, dancing, swimming, cycling, golf, etc.

(3) Moderate-intensity exercise for children includes roller skating and cycling; high-intensity exercise includes rope skipping, various ball games, swimming, martial arts, etc. Children can participate in swimming and mountain climbing more often. These exercises can focus people's attention, accelerate neural conversion, and make it easier to fall asleep after exercise. There are different ways to measure exercise intensity. For endurance exercises such as brisk walking and running, the target heart rate is generally used as the standard for measuring intensity: based on the maximum heart rate (220 minus age), the target heart rate range for medium and high-intensity aerobic exercise is 60%-80% of the maximum heart rate. When enhancing cardiopulmonary endurance, high-intensity exercise should last at least 20 minutes and be performed 3 to 5 days a week. Do not do activities of excessive intensity before going to bed to avoid excessive excitement and affecting sleep.

4. How can you improve your sleep besides exercise?

Difficulty falling asleep at night, waking up early in the morning, waking up easily in the middle of the night, poor sleep quality... To deal with common poor sleep, in addition to exercising more, you can also try the following methods to improve it.

(1) It is difficult to fall asleep at night, and you still feel awake half an hour after lying down. Recommendation: Schedule dinner time between 18:00 and 19:00, and don’t eat too much, so that the stomach can complete the digestion task as soon as possible and the sympathetic nerves can relax. Do not play computer games or mobile phones one hour before going to bed, and do not bring mobile phones to bed. Sticking to the same time for going to bed and getting out of bed every day will help cultivate a sleep rhythm. Insomniacs can go to bed around 23:00 and get out of bed around 6:00 in the morning. After two weeks of improvement in insomnia, gradually extend the time in bed. Generally, extend it by 15 minutes per week. If this does not work, you can slightly postpone the bedtime and go to bed when you really feel tired, but not later than 12:00. (2) It is easy to wake up in the middle of the night and fall asleep, but it is difficult to maintain sleep. There are more than two cases of waking up for more than 5 minutes. Recommendation: Do not drink too much water before going to bed and reduce getting up at night; avoid taking substances that affect sleep, such as alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco; if the problem only occurs occasionally, you may get out of bed and do some relaxing activities, such as reading and meditation, but do not play computer games.

(3) Wake up early in the morning and fall asleep normally at night, but wake up at three or four in the morning, and sleep less than 6 hours. Suggestions: Develop good work and rest habits, don't think about things before going to bed, don't put overly fragrant flowers and plants in the bedroom; close the doors and windows, draw the curtains, and create a quiet and dark sleeping environment; take a hot bath or soak your feet in hot water before going to bed; the pillow is of appropriate height, softness and hardness, and the quilt is of appropriate thickness; get more sun exposure, which helps stimulate the secretion of melatonin and improve the quality of sleep at night. 4. Poor sleep quality

The sleep is relatively shallow and the patient is always groggy during the day, which affects daytime behavior or work.

Recommendation: Keep the room temperature at a slightly lower level, such as 16℃-24℃. For people who snore, it is best to sleep on your side or put two or three pillows behind your back.

Note: If the above methods are ineffective, you should go to the psychosomatic medicine department, sleep center or neurology department for treatment.