The Guardian’s Science Weekly Podcast has an interesting episode called “The science of sleep and circadian rhythms”.
They cover
- the development of the research into the Circadian rhythm
- what genes and parts of the brain are involved
- how light sets the master clock in your body and and influences your sleep.
- influence on hormones such as testosterone and estrogen
- how im portant sleep is to coming up with solutions to tasks
- why the body clock doesn’t adapt to night shifts
- how sleep will enhance our ability to come up with novel solutions to complex tasks
- influence of sleep deprivation on health
They talk about one particular study that monitored the impact of sleep deprivation on the metabolism.
One group got to sleep only 4 hours a night, while the other was allowed 10+ hours of sleep.
After just 7 days they found that:
