dream

If you fall asleep during the day, it may be due to low levels of vitamin D, according to the findings of a study published in the 'Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine'. For the study, the scientists worked with 81 patients in sleep clinics who complained of sleep problems and nonspecific pain. Most were diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea.

There is no Thanksgiving dinner worth its salt that does not serve turkey. Studies by Simon Young, a research psychologist at McGill University in Montreal, have shown that although tryptophan can induce sleep, the amount of this amino acid that the body is able to process from eating turkey at dinner is less than is necessary to cause remarkable effects.

A study by the University of Bordeaux and the French CNRS reveals that driving at night is often accompanied by problems of drowsiness, which drivers sometimes try to counteract by drinking coffee. However, there is a more effective method: expose the driver to monochromatic blue light.

According to a study published in the journal SLEEP, increasing sleep hours could lead to reduced food intake, although the hormonal process differs between men and women. Specifically, short sleep generates an increase in appetite in men, while in women it reduces the feeling of satiety.

Researchers at the Sleep Laboratory of the University of Rochester (New York, USA) showed not long ago that on sunny days we sleep better - that is, longer and deeper - than on rainy days. In fact, his experiments for 105 consecutive days, contrasted with meteorological data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), revealed that when "pointers fall" we wake up more lethargic.

One in five Spaniards falls under the grip of insomnia each night. Among the culprits that our eyes go wide when trying to rest, the lack of exposure to natural daylight in schools and workplaces stands out, which delays the secretion of the hormone melatonin. The growing number of insomniacs can also be attributed to sedentary habits. In fact, practicing 20 to 40 minutes of aerobic exercise four times a week can make sleep problems a thing of the past, as Phyllis Zee and her colleagues at Northwestern University have recently shown.

Much research has shown the importance of respecting sleep hours to maintain good health. Now, scientists at the University of Pittsburgh (USA) have gone one step further and show that lack of rest can modify the effect of vaccines and even make them useless.

While we are asleep, our brain takes the opportunity to 'assimilate' all the information received during the day. Although this is something that has been known for a long time, scientists are now beginning to understand how all this happens in our brains. A team of researchers from the Hospital Clínico de Barcelona has studied the synchrony between neurons during sleep, a process that is essential to consolidate memory, and presents its results at the congress of the European Federation of Neuroscientific Societies (FENS), which celebrate these days in Barcelona.