"Why did you stay up late? ”
When it comes to this question, there are always countless reasons for staying up late - overtime, exams, chasing dramas, and ...... zero-point second killAs the saying goes, "life is short, the more you sleep, the later you sleep", those late-night champions in the circle of friends, is there any cure for "late sleep obsessive-compulsive disorder"?
According to the "2021 Chinese Contemporary People Staying Up Late Report" released by 36Kr, the rate of people staying up late in first-tier and new first-tier cities has been as high as 7377%, the average sleep time is far less than 7 hours, among which Guangzhou and Shenzhen people are at the forefront of the national people, ranking in the top two of the list of staying up late. In addition, more than 300 million people have sleep disorders, and the incidence of insomnia in adults is as high as 382%, 7 days a week, the public stays up an average of 36 days, and this number is still rising year by year.
What's even more shocking,"Staying up late makes people stupid" has always been used as a joke warningOne said, already in 2years by the internationalThe top academic journal "Science".Proven to be trueLaura Lewis, assistant professor of biomedical engineering at Boston University in the United States, found that when we fall asleep and the neurons are quiet, blood flows out of the brain, while cerebrospinal fluid flows in to rhythmically "clean" our brains to remove toxins such as amyloid, which causes Alzheimer's disease, and such cleansing can only be done after falling asleep. When you are not asleep, the cerebrospinal fluid does not have a sufficient opportunity to "take advantage of the weakness".
"Becoming stupid" may still be dismissive, thinking that this is a normal physiological phenomenon that occurs as we get older. And every once in a while, you can hear it, and even what is really happening around youStaying up all night and dying suddenlyThe incident is what really frightens the party who stayed up late.
Despite this, it still does not prevent "staying up late" from becoming the standard configuration for most people in modern times, at most from "staying up with peace of mind" to "staying up while being afraid of death".
Scientists have been studying it for decadesSleep deprivation。It has been shown that sleep deprivation can lead to many serious physical or psychological illnesses such as heart disease, type 2 diabetes, obesity, depression, etc. However, there is one core problem that has not been solved:Why don't you sleep and die early? As for the method of "staying up late without hurting your body" that many people dream of, it is even more out of reach.
In recent years, there has finally been a breakthrough in this issue.
In 2020, the team of Professor Dragana Rogulja at Harvard Medical School published an article in the journal Cell**, in which researchers found an unexpected causal relationship between sleep deprivation and premature death: it turned outThe problem is not in the brain, nor in the heart, the intestines are the key to early death! To be precise, it is the accumulation of reactive oxygen species (ROS) molecules in the gut that causes premature death. Using this finding, the researchers eliminated ROS from the intestines through technologies such as NAD+ (a key molecule in the body to maintain energy metabolism), allowing the experimental animals to survive normally without sleeping until the "end of life", and their lifespan was almost no different from that of the control group with normal work and rest!
In the words of the researchers:"Not only are they alive, they look like they're alive! ”
In addition, the Icahn School of Medicine at Mount Sinai in the United States in 2023 also has new results. The study found that sleep deprivation affects the formation and development of the innate immune system, leading to an increased risk of inflammation and heart disease, and the state of increased inflammation in experimental animals was not completely reversed even after sleep recovery. Inflammation shortens lifespans and accelerates the development of age-related diseasesRecognized by the academic communityOne of the factors.
Commenting on these significant advances, Professor Dragana Rogulja said: "We have now identified a central question, which is the biological mechanism by which sleep deprivation impairs longevity. And, this discovery, at least for experimental animals, has made it possible to live without sleeping. And it will also help us find new ways to counteract the human toll of sleep deprivation one day in the future. ”
In fact, this biological mechanism has a corresponding solution as early as 2018.
In 2018, the NAD+ technology used to remove ROS in the experiment was transformed from technology to product for the first time through Harvard's aging inhibitor Revigorator. In 2022, Revition was upgraded to the fourth generation by Harvard and the Mayo Clinic, the world's first medical center, and added the emerging technology in the field of aging inhibition, Senolytics (targeted removal of senescent cells, which extended the lifespan of animals by 36% in experiments), providing new possibilities for this research.
In this regard, netizens also expressed great expectations: "People spend one-third of their lives sleeping, if they can live healthy to old age without sleeping, wouldn't it be equivalent to extending one-third of their life?" ”
Although Revition has provided a relatively convenient and secure path, Yosef Kaplan Dor, a co-author of this article, still says: "Why does lack of sleep lead to the accumulation of ROS in the intestines? Why is ROS accumulation so deadly? At present, these key issues remain unclarified. "Ordinary people can benefit from technological development, but for scientists, the challenges are just beginning.