Good sleep: as healthy as winning the lottery
Christiane Fux studied journalism and psychology in Hamburg. The experienced medical editor has been writing magazine articles, news and factual texts on all conceivable health topics since 2001. In addition to her work for, Christiane Fux is also active in prose. Her first crime novel was published in 2012, and she also writes, designs and publishes her own crime plays.
More posts by Christiane Fux All content is checked by medical journalists.Not only those with sleep disorders benefit from improved sleep quality. Even if you sleep well on average, you can still get a lot out of it and significantly improve your mental and physical constitution.
Nicole Tang and her colleagues from Warwick University have investigated the positive effects of improved sleep quality - and not only on those who sleep badly, but also on people who sleep well. The calculations were based on data from more than 30,000 British people collected over a period of four years.
Sleep better, feel better
Participants who slept longer and better during the course of the study or who used less sleeping pills than before later achieved higher scores in the General Health Questionaire. This questionnaire is used by medical professionals to sound out the mental well-being of their patients.
Better sleep brought two points more on the feel-good scale - that was comparable to the effect of a two-month mindfulness training to increase psychological well-being. The researchers found a similarly positive influence in people who had won the lottery from around 1000 to 120,000 British pounds (230,000 euros) during the course of the study.
Another test looked at the respondents' physical and emotional health and ability to participate in everyday activities. Here, too, those who had optimized their sleep performed better than at the beginning of the study.
Sleep quality more important than duration
The most influential factor turned out to be the quality of sleep, followed by the reduction in sleeping pills. The number of hours slept was the least meaningful. Conversely, a deteriorated quality of sleep had a correspondingly negative effect on the body and mind.
"It is refreshing to observe the healing potential of sleep outside of a clinical setting in normal life," says Tang. Apparently, improved sleep quality not only benefits those people who slept extremely poorly, but also those who sleep normally.
However, the investigation does not provide any proof that sleep actually strengthens mental and physical health - because, conversely, a better state of health can of course also increase the quality of sleep.
Sleep tips for everyone
There are many tips for improved sleep. This includes:
- Regular getting up and going to bed
- Avoid caffeine but also alcohol before going to bed
- Evening sleep rituals
- Refrain from using computers and smartphones before going to bed
- Learning a relaxation technique
- Sufficient exercise - if not too shortly before going to bed
- Light meals in the evening
A people of sleep disturbed people
Tired, irritable, unable to concentrate - if you sleep too little or restlessly one night, you will receive your receipt the next day. It becomes dangerous when sleepless nights become the norm - in the long run, body and mind are shattered. It increases the risk of cardiovascular diseases, diabetes and obesity - but also of depression.
Against this background, the latest survey results by the polling institute Forsa on the sleep of Germans appear questionable: 80 percent of employees said they had sleep problems, almost half are tired during the day. As a result, every tenth employee suffers from particularly severe sleep disorders with difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep, poor sleep quality, daytime tiredness and exhaustion.
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