An insufficient sleep at night can have a number of unwanted consequences. The U.S Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), for instance, has said that lack of sleep can result in reduced productivity and even cause potentially fatal vehicular and industrial accidents.
Individuals who are often deprived of sleep are also at increased risks of developing chronic diseases such as diabetes, obesity, depression and high blood pressure. Although insufficient sleep can be unavoidable at times with the National Health Interview Survey showing that almost three in 10 adults sleeping only six hours or less at night on average, findings of a new study suggest of a way to reverse the effects of poor sleep.
Researchers of the new study published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism say that brief day time naps may help protect individuals against the damaging effects of poor sleep as napping appears to restore normal levels of proteins and hormones that are linked with stress and immune system.
For their study, Brice Faraut, from the Universite Paris Descartes-Sorbonne Paris Cite, France, and colleagues restricted the sleep of 11 healthy men who were between 25 and 32 years old to only two hours for a night.
The next day, the participants were found to have lower levels of a virus fighting protein known as interleukin-6. The levels of the stress hormone norepinephrine, which increases blood pressure, blood sugar and heart rate, have likewise increased by more than double.
The participants again had two hours of sleep on another night but this time, they had two 30 minute naps the day after. The researchers found that after napping, the norepinephrine and interleukin-6 levels of the participants were back to normal. Faraut said that the result of their study suggests that a 30 minute nap may be able to reverse the hormonal effects of poor sleep at night.
"This is the first study that found napping could restore biomarkers of neuroendocrine and immune health to normal levels," Faraut said.
The researcher likewise said that their findings could support the development of strategies that could help individuals who often lack sleep.
"Napping may offer a way to counter the damaging effects of sleep restriction by helping the immune and neuroendocrine systems to recover," Faraut said. "The findings support the development of practical strategies for addressing chronically sleep-deprived populations, such as night and shift workers."
