{"id":14581,"date":"2019-12-17T01:25:44","date_gmt":"2019-12-17T01:25:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/squad\/?p=14581"},"modified":"2019-12-17T01:25:44","modified_gmt":"2019-12-17T01:25:44","slug":"research-lack-of-sleep-significantly-decreases-cognitive-function","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/sleep\/research-lack-of-sleep-significantly-decreases-cognitive-function\/","title":{"rendered":"Research: Lack of Sleep Significantly Decreases Cognitive Function"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">If you\u2019re not getting enough sleep, it may be significantly affecting your cognitive function. In fact, new research shows that sleep deprivation creates significant lapses in attention and placekeeping errors. Placekeeping errors are mistakes following complex procedures.<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>How bad is sleep deprivation?<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">A team of scientists from Michigan State University\u2019s Sleep and Learning Lab wanted to learn how a lack of sleep can affect attention and higher order cognitive function.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">They recruited 128 men and women who all took two tests. The first test was to measure reaction time. The second test measured their placekeeping abilities by having them follow directions to complete a task despite repeated interruptions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Then the researchers split the volunteers into two groups:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Group 1 stayed in the lab all night and got no sleep.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Group 2 went home and slept.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">The next morning, all the volunteers were asked to repeat the tasks to compare their performance to the previous day\u2019s results. As you can guess, those who were sleep deprived has significant difficulties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">\u201cOur research showed that sleep deprivation doubles the odds of making placekeeping errors and triples the number of lapses in attention, which is startling,\u201d says Kimberly Fenn, the study\u2019s co-author. \u201cSleep deprived individuals need to exercise caution in absolutely everything that they do and simply can\u2019t trust that they won\u2019t make costly errors. Oftentimes\u2014like when behind the wheel of a car\u2014these errors can have tragic consequences.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<h3><b>Tips for better sleep<\/b><\/h3>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400\">Both sleep quality and quantity matter, so if you\u2019re having trouble getting a good night\u2019s sleep, consider these tips:<\/span><\/p>\n<ol>\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Get a new mattress. A good quality mattress typically lasts for 9 to 10 years. If yours is older, or a lower quality brand, it may be time to upgrade.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"2\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Skip the alcohol before bed. Although alcohol is a sedative that may help you fall asleep, it actually increases your chances of waking up at night. It can also make sleep apnea and snoring worse.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<ol start=\"3\">\n<li><span style=\"font-weight: 400\"> Avoid using technology before you go to sleep.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you\u2019re not getting enough sleep, it may be significantly affecting your cognitive function. In fact, new research shows that sleep deprivation creates significant lapses in attention and placekeeping errors. Placekeeping errors are mistakes following complex procedures.\u00a0 How bad is sleep deprivation? A team of scientists from Michigan State University\u2019s Sleep and Learning Lab wanted [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14595,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[692],"tags":[693],"class_list":["post-14581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sleep","tag-sleep"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.healthymale.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}