Good sleep is essential! But what happens to our body when we sleep a few days less well? Sleep researcher Ingo Fietze reveals it.
Sure – good sleep is extremely important in order to stay healthy. We actually all know that. But do we have to panic right away if we sometimes don't sleep well or just don't sleep enough? The senior physician for internal medicine and sleep researcher at the Interdisciplinary Center of the Berlin Charité, Ingo Fietze, knows the answers to these and other questions. Among other things, he gives sleep seminars for managers – and at the end of 2019 will publish a book on the subject of lack of sleep. Now he has given the WirtschaftsWoche an interview.
Six hours of sleep? Bye bye, focus!
Most people sleep seven to eight hours a night – enough time for them to be fit and productive during the day. If you don't come to this time, it can quickly become noticeable: Anyone who sleeps less than six hours in just one night scores worse in concentration tests. Fietze emphasizes that good sleep is therefore even more important for jobs where mental performance counts than for physically demanding jobs.
There are also people who are so-called "short sleepers" and feel rested after five to six hours, but they are an exception. The same goes for "late risers" – the affected people need nine to nine and a half hours of sleep every night. Either way: We can tell whether we have slept enough by the fact that we feel rested, get going quickly and do not suffer from recurring tiredness during the day.
What does bad sleep do to my health?
In addition to the concentration disorders that can occur after a night with little sleep, the risks for possible illnesses become higher over time, according to Fietze. You may "only" notice that you sleep worse for two months when you are more irritable than usual and generally suffer more from fatigue during the day. But if you sleep poorly for years, this can increase the likelihood of the following diseases:
- Cardiovascular diseases such as high blood pressure or diabetes (here's what it means to be diabetic)
- Cancers
Live according to your internal clock
Managers also have a responsibility here: Employees should be able to follow their individual sleep needs in order to do the best possible work. The so-called larks, who go to bed early and get up early,perform differently than the so-called owls, whose biorhythm keeps them awake for a long time and who sleep accordingly longer should be able to. Flexitime can help here.
And how is my sleep now restful?
Ingo Fietze advises not to panic if you haven't slept so well for two or three nights. This just puts the body under stress and acts like a self-fulfilling prophecy: I go to bed with the thought that I will definitely not be able to sleep well again – and then exactly that happens. In addition, the sleep researcher believes that rituals such as relaxation techniques or breathing exercises are useful.
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