Are you getting enough sleep?

At OISE Oxford, many of our hard-working students have high-powered or pressured jobs which may take their toll on their sleep patterns. We therefore thought some of you may be interested to read about an experiment recently undertaken at the University of Surrey’s Sleep Centre to investigate the effects of having just one more hour’s sleep.

According to the Sleep Council, the average Briton gets around 6.5 hours sleep per night and in order to find out whether this was enough, researchers asked one group of volunteers to sleep for 6.5 hours per night for a week while a second group was asked to sleep for 7.5 hours. After a week the researchers took blood tests and asked the participants to switch sleep patterns to see what effects this would have.

Extraordinarily, computer tests revealed that cutting down on sleep by just one hour had marked effects on the participants’ mental agility. Furthermore the blood tests showed that over 500 genes, including genes associated with processes such as inflammation, immune response and response to stress, became more active. The team also saw increases in the activity of genes linked to diabetes and risk of cancer. The reverse happened when the volunteers added an hour of sleep.

Their conclusion therefore was that there are clear health benefits to having that extra hour in bed. A great excuse for a lie in if ever I heard one.

Click here to take the BBC’s sleep profiling test 

Source: www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine