How can sleep deprivation shorten life span

There are always some young people who always think that they are young and in good health. They often have no sleep at night. After years of accumulation, they can only bring you diseases all day long. The impact of severe sleep deficiency on the immune system is no different from the impact caused by stress.

Lack of sleep also increases the risk of stroke - even if you are relatively young and healthy. The latest study, presented last month at the 2012 Sleep Association meeting (sleep 2012), shows that people who sleep less than six hours are 4.5 percent more likely to have a stroke than those who sleep between seven and eight hours. Although the exact mechanism is not clear to the researchers, it has been shown that chronic sleep deprivation can lead to inflammation, increased blood pressure and heart rate, and affect blood sugar levels, leading to a significantly higher risk of stroke in people with sleep deprivation.

But the most worrying thing is that more than 5000 respondents are healthy middle-aged people with a body mass index in the normal range, rather than the people who are generally believed to have a high incidence of stroke. And their lack of sleep is not as extreme as in the previous immune studies; these people report sleeping less than six hours a night - 30% of the population in the United States.

Stress can also damage the immune system:

It's not new. Research after research shows that stress increases the risk of cancer, heart disease, allergies, and cold and flu. What's new is that researchers at Carnegie Mellon University think they've discovered the principle. The key, they say, is cortisol, the stress hormone released by the body whenever we feel fear, worry or anxiety. The original purpose of cortisol is to provide us with instant energy, so that we can react to lions and other dangers and quickly escape. But once the body is immersed in cortisol for a long time, the body will lose the ability to regulate inflammation.

Here's how it works: cortisol can help control the activation of the immune system and produce inflammation. However, due to long-term exposure to pressure and the resulting cortisol environment, in the long run, the sensitivity of human tissue to cortisol will decrease, and the release of anti-inflammatory substances will correspondingly decrease. (a similar process occurs in diabetics: long-term high levels of insulin lead to insulin tolerance.)

The Carnegie Mellon University team, led by Sheldon Cohen, conducted two experiments to test the theory. First, they exposed healthy adults to the cold virus, then isolated and monitored it for five days. Recently exposed participants showed an increase in cortisol antibodies. In a second set of experiments, the researchers found that these participants had higher levels of inflammatory cytokines.

So what does all this mean? You get sick when you're stressed out, you don't sleep anymore, or you don't sleep well. It doesn't seem very worrisome, considering that we've all experienced the flu after staying up all night. But this year's convincing research shows that the immune response of the human body is the key to protecting us from serious diseases such as cancer, and that inflammation is an important precursor to heart attack, stroke, diabetes and other life-threatening diseases.

In fact, the existing research is recording the relationship between stress and sleep deprivation and life span shortening. Due to the increase of social pressure, sleep deprivation and even insomnia are caused. It is often reported that there is a remote one hundred year old village in Baise, Guangxi, where the old people in their 100s are sparse and common. There is a close relationship with the local lifestyle. Some of the old people in the village have never left that small mountain village in their whole lives. They are aloof from the rest of the world, peaceful in mind, regular in life, healthy in physical and mental aspects, so they can live a long life!