2023-12-26 04:20:00
If fruit flies had to get up every morning when the alarm clock rings to go to work, in winter the same thing would happen to them as many humans do: the sheets would stick to them (in this exercise of imagination they also sleep covered up in a bed). ). But, because they are not tied to the tyranny of an alarm, when it is cold and dark, they simply wake up later.
In the dark and cold months, with the alarm clock set at the same time as in summer, it is easy to wonder when it rings if we shouldn’t do like the sun, fruit flies and other animals that also sleep more in winter and turn the time back. of that alarm. Is this drowsiness due to the fact that we need more hours of sleep in this season?
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A study published at the beginning of the year in the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience, in which the sleep of the participants was objectively measured (with polysomnographies)—all with different sleep disorders, in an urban environment, without setting an alarm clock—over the course of the year. year concluded that, although people slept more in winter, it was not a very significant extra time. What was noticeable was a change in the architecture of sleep, the distribution of the time we spend sleeping into phases: in winter, more time is spent in the REM phase. If these results were also obtained when studying people without sleep disorders, the study indicates, it would be “first evidence on the need to adjust sleep habits to the seasons.”
However, sleeping more or finding it harder to get out of bed does not necessarily mean that we need more hours. “We always have the same need to sleep the same hours in winter as in summer, it’s just that in winter we have more opportunity,” says María José Martínez Madrid, coordinator of the Chronobiology working group of the Spanish Sleep Society (SES) and member of the chronobiology research group at the University of Murcia. That is to say, the environment, with more hours of darkness, favors sleep, something that, the expert indicates, we should take advantage of and perhaps, if we can, go to bed earlier. “In general, we Spaniards have a sleep deficit. We are below six and a half hours, while we should sleep between seven and nine hours,” she points out. It is, in fact, in summer when we sleep even less and we should try to sleep more. As for spending more time in the REM phase, the expert indicates that it is logical: in the successive sleep cycles that we have throughout the night, the REM phase is increasingly longer. If we sleep more, it is normal to spend more time there.
This environment that promotes sleep is mainly influenced by light, one of the synchronizers of the circadian cycle. “When there is no sun, what is promoted is the increase in melatonin, the sleep hormone in humans,” says Martínez Madrid. If the alarm clock rings before dawn or the room is completely dark, waking up is more complicated.
Vitamin D also influences, which in winter we usually have at lower levels, adds Noelia Ruiz Herrera, professor of the Degree in Psychology at the International University of La Rioja (UNIR) who is currently on a stay as a researcher in the Division of Disorders. of Sleep and Circadian Rhythm at Brigham and Women’s Hospital at Harvard Medical School. “Lower levels of vitamin D, which are associated with less exposure to light, can also affect the production of serotonin, which is a hormone that influences our sleep and wake cycle, and our state of mind. Cheer up,” he explains. Seasonal affective disorder, feeling melancholic and even depressed in these months, can also make it difficult to get out of bed. “When is it worrying? When it influences our daily lives,” says Ruiz.
Changes in habits can also influence. If, for example, we do less physical exercise in winter, we will sleep worse, the expert warns, which will make it more difficult for us to get out of bed when the alarm goes off.
The importance of temperature
Another way to wake someone up, beyond making noise, is to suddenly turn on the light. The fruit flies with which we began this text also wake up if this is done to them, but, if it is cold for them (18ºC), they go back to sleep. This was one of the checks carried out by those responsible for A study published in 2020 in the journal Current Biology, which detected a sensory system in flies that detects cold in the antennae and communicates it to the neural network that regulates sleep. Not only the light matters, but also the temperature.
Does the cold of winter mornings also influence humans? The answer is somewhat more complicated, concedes Marco Gallio, associate professor of Neurobiology at Northwestern University and one of those responsible for the study. Humans, following all, wear clothes, sleep indoors and cover ourselves with blankets, so the effects of winter are somewhat more diffused. For this reason, he explains by email, light is considered the primary synchronizer of sleep in humans. “Still, the idea that fluctuations in external temperature can function as a synchronizer in mammals has been tested directly and has gained some experimental support,” he notes.
In the case of humans, a team made up of researchers from South Africa and the United States wanted to see if artificial light and modern life had ruined our sleep. To do this, they studied how three more or less isolated tribes sleep (the Hadza of Tanzania, the San of Namibia and the Tsimane of Bolivia), whose way of life is similar to that of our ancestors. One of the most surprising results of study, published in Current Biology in 2015, was the importance that temperature seemed to gain over light: the time to go to sleep was not marked by the sunset, but by the drop in temperature. They went to sleep not when it was dark, but regarding three hours later, when the temperature drop was noticeable. And, yes, they slept an extra half hour in winter.
Anyone who has spent sleepless summer nights because of the heat knows that temperature matters. “To sleep we need to cool our brain, we need the temperature to drop and for that we need the environment to be cooler than our interior. This is also favored in winter,” says María José Martínez Madrid. In the morning, however, the effect of temperature possibly has more to do with not wanting to leave a warm place if just by sticking out a finger we feel like we are freezing.
For Martínez Madrid, the conclusion is clear: we need the same hours of sleep, but in winter it is easier. “I always repeat that winter time is not bad, we should take advantage of it!” She insists. Of course, he knows that the current rhythms of life and schedules make it difficult to go to bed earlier or wake up when we have had enough sleep. He gives as an example the case of teenagers, who need to wake up later. “Teenagers naturally tend to delay their time of going to sleep and getting up. However, in high school, instead of entering at 9:00, the poor enter at 8:00 in many places, which means we go backwards from their clock. If we adapted to them coming in at 10 in the morning, we would follow a little the rhythm that their body asks of them,” she points out.
Tips to wake up better in winter
- In the morning, expose ourselves to light as soon as possible. This early reception of light, in addition to activating us, will help – thanks to the contrast between day and night, between light and darkness, key for the circadian rhythm – to secrete more melatonin at night and sleep better, which will wake us up. more rested, indicates María José Martínez Madrid. If we have to get up while it is still night, the expert recommends light therapy lamps, which imitate daylight.
- Make the transition to the outside of the sheets less difficult. Noelia Ruiz suggests scheduling the heating to turn on 15 minutes before getting up, in addition to having “some warm slippers or socks near the bed so as not to step on the cold floor.”
- Don’t linger. Although snoozing the alarm several times is not necessarily a bad thing, it does nothing more than delay the hard time of getting out of bed. Noelia Ruiz recommends “making the alarm permanent” and, to force ourselves to get out from under the duvet, “put the alarm clock on the other side of the room.”
- Activate ourselves physically. Once out of bed, this would be ideal, “both to warm up and to activate ourselves and to set the clock,” says Martínez Madrid. He recommends, for example, walking to work if you can, which will also help if it is already daytime to receive light.
- Promote night sleep. The better we have slept, the easier the morning will be. To do this, in addition to taking advantage of the darkness and trying, if possible, to go to bed earlier, it is also key to prepare the bedroom. “It is very tempting to turn on the heating in the bedroom at night when it is very cold, but let us remember that hot air and dry air can have undesirable effects on the quality of our sleep, because it causes the mucosa of the nostrils to dry out. nasal. This causes us to snore more, which can be the beginning of a bad dream. We need to be in a relatively cool, dark room that allows the temperature to flow,” explains Noelia Ruiz. In addition, exercising, maintaining regular schedules (going to bed and getting up, meals, sports, social life), hydrating ourselves well and trying not to have dinner too close to the time of going to bed will also help with better sleep and a better quality of life. easier tomorrow.
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