Feeling sleepy can make you feel older than you really are, and feeling like you are not just a matter of perception, but is associated with objective health outcomes. Studies have shown that feeling younger than your age is associated with living longer and healthier, and there’s even evidence to suggest that subjective age can predict your actual brain age. Yes, people who feel young are thought to have young brains.
A study recently published in the journal Proceedings of found that people who frequently recall the energy and vitality they had when they were younger and wish they could turn back the clock can feel younger than they really are by getting enough sleep. It is said that there is a possibility that it can be done. Researchers at Stockholm University published a Royal Society B study that found that feeling sleepy can make you feel 10 years older.
“Given that sleep is essential for brain function and overall health, we wanted to test whether sleep is the secret to maintaining a youthful appearance,” said Leonie Balter, a researcher at Stockholm University’s Department of Psychology. I decided to do it,” he says.
The first study asked 429 participants, aged 16 to 80, how old they felt they were, how many days in the past month they had not gotten enough sleep, and They were asked how sleepy they felt. Researchers found that for each night of poor sleep over the past month, participants felt, on average, 0.23 years older than they were.
The second study conducted a sleep restriction study on 186 participants between the ages of 18 and 46, in which they limited their sleep to 4 hours a night for two nights and two nights, and found that lack of sleep made the participants look older. We investigated whether or not it makes people feel that they are doing so. 9 hours at night. The researchers found that after sleep restriction, participants felt on average 4.4 years older than when they got enough sleep, and the effect of sleep on subjective age was related to the level of sleepiness. It was shown that On the other hand, being well-rested and feeling extremely alert was associated with feeling four years younger than one’s actual age, and extreme sleepiness was associated with feeling six years older than one’s actual age. .
Leonie Balter says, “This means that the change from being awake to being sleepy makes you feel like you’re an astonishing 10 years older,” and the impact on our daily lives is clear. Says.
“Getting enough sleep is critical to maintaining a youthful feeling. This can encourage a more active lifestyle and promote health-promoting behaviors. Because… Because both feeling youthful and being alert are important to our motivation to be active.”
