Sleep on a winter night, or How to overcome insomnia

The Russians began to sleep worse. This conclusion was made by the researchers based on a study of data on purchases of sleeping pills and sedatives, as well as the number of calls to specialists who treat sleep disorders – somnologists.

It turned out that in November, sales of sleeping pills increased by 43% compared to the summer period, sedatives – by 50%, and the number of visits to somnologists increased by 22%. These are the results of a study of the Sber EAPTEKA service, conducted jointly with SberHealth.

We talked about sleep disorders, problems associated with insomnia, or, more simply, insomnia, about the features of falling asleep in different conditions and other issues related to sleep and falling asleep, we talked with a psychokinetic, inventor, researcher of sleep and dreams, author of a unique sleep correction by Denis Banchenko.

– Denis Yuryevich, recently American scientists published data from a study, according to which it turned out that daylight affects the quality and duration of sleep. How do you feel about such conclusions?

— I absolutely agree with them. Recent scientific evidence suggests that the quality of sleep at night is directly related to daylight natural light and the duration of exposure to this light, even in cloudy weather. The fact is that there are special areas on the retina that respond to the near infrared and near ultraviolet spectrum and, as signal sources, are involved in the synthesis of serotonin and melatonin. Roughly speaking, the longer you are in natural light during the day, especially in the autumn-winter period, the more serotonin you produce, which, after sunset, is synthesized into endogenous melatonin at the signal of the red and infrared spectrum. Melatonin, in turn, is extremely important for a quality night’s sleep.

What if you can’t go out for a walk?

— My colleagues and I have been dealing with sleep quality issues for several years. We use red lamps in our work and research. The fact is that of the entire range of available artificial light sources, only incandescent lamps with a tungsten filament have a smooth spectrum, relatively close to solar radiation. LED lamps and others – mercury ones, for example – cause great harm in terms of melatonin synthesis, and in general they distort the normal operation of sleep cycles and the generation of necessary substances in the body. For this reason, it is effective to get the missing sunny day with lamps that imitate solar radiation. For example, those that are used to test solar panels on spacecraft. I managed to notice this during my work at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

But you need to understand that red lamps will not be effective if you have not been in natural light conditions for a long time. Therefore, in the autumn-winter period, I would recommend staying outside for as long as possible during daylight hours.

What other factors affect sleep at night?

There are so many of them, it’s impossible to list them all. But I can name a few main ones, in addition to natural daylight. For example, this is the Schumann resonance, or rather, electromagnetic pollution in urban conditions, which introduces distortion into natural radio emission. According to it, our brain is synchronized with signals about illumination and its type, temperature changes and gravitational deviations, determines whether it is day or night and gives the appropriate commands. Also, the quality of sleep depends on internal biochemical rhythms and cycles, the type of food and meal times, where and how the bed is located, the quality of the mattress, pillow, bed linen, and so on.

By the way, if we talk about rhythms: not so long ago, our team at the international conference SPCN 2022, held in St. Petersburg, presented a report on the rhythms of the human body and early diagnosis of diseases. It says that tracking and correcting the rhythms of the human body allows not only to improve sleep, but also to predict the occurrence of many diseases and even avoid them. A new branch of medicine has already appeared that deals with this issue – donosology.

— This is very interesting, and I hope next time we will talk about donosology in more detail. In the meantime, I would like to return to the problems of sleep. Tell me, given that daylight is important for good sleep, how does this affect the “owls” and “larks”?

– It all depends on the individual rhythms of each person, which, by the way, can change with age, and very strongly. And not only with age, but also with moving to another climatic zone or a country with a different climate and cycles of day and night lighting: somewhere warm, but cloudy, somewhere – on the contrary. Genetics and individual rhythms are superimposed on all this. So everything is very individual. But objective data show that the earlier a person falls asleep, the better.

– Why do people need different conditions to fall asleep: someone needs complete silence and darkness, someone needs a night light, someone better falls asleep under the muttering of the TV, and someone doesn’t care about bright light with loud music?

– This again depends on the individual parameters of the nervous system, on the level of its excitability, on nutrition, daily routine. Someone is very sensitive to any changes and fluctuations in these parameters, someone is not.

– In what cases do you think a person should seek help from a somnologist?

– First of all, with sleep disorders, if it becomes a chronic problem, you should consult a therapist. After all, the problem may lie in the state of human health. Perhaps the doctor will identify diseases that interfere with quality sleep. But if there are no obvious reasons for sleep disturbances, then, I believe that, first of all, somnologists should be contacted by people whose work is associated with increased responsibility. There are many such professions. For example, if a crane operator starts sleeping at work or a bus driver loses his attention, this can lead to tragedy. As for everyone else, here we can say this: you should contact a somnologist if you could not independently debug normal sleep cycles based on existing knowledge.

The interview was conducted by Alena Bodrienko.

Photo lifestylememory / Freepik