睡眠不足會引發疾病。

馬修?沃克是加州大學伯克利分校人類睡眠科學中心的主任，他在接受《衛報》采訪時解釋了背后的原因。

沃克通過研究發現，與那些每晚睡眠足夠的人相比，睡眠不足的人往往健康狀況不佳，活力較差。他分析了20個互不相關的獨立研究結果，發現人們的睡眠時間與長壽程度存在強烈正相關的關系。簡而言之，睡眠越少，壽命越短。

聽起來有點不對，因為我們很多人都把睡覺與懶惰聯系起來。沃克對《衛報》說:“我們想讓自己看上去很忙的樣子，所以常常對別人說自己睡眠很少，就像睡眠不夠是一種榮譽勛章。”沃克說，不少聽眾等到他演講結束后悄悄告訴他，他們每晚需要8-9個小時的睡眠，那樣子就像是在承認干了什么錯事兒。這么做不但沒錯兒，而且是選擇了更健康的生活方式。

以其中一項研究結果為例，45歲及以上年齡的人群如果每晚睡眠少于6小時，與每晚睡眠7-8小時的人群相比，前者在一生中心臟病發作或者中風的幾率是后者的2倍。在其它研究中，睡眠過少導致肥胖風險升高，老年癡呆癥加重，而且身體機能失調的舊病容易復發。此外，缺乏睡眠會導致人體免疫力降低。

“我并不是說肥胖完全是因為缺覺造成的。加工食品以及長期伏案、缺乏運動的生活方式并不能完全解釋為何肥胖案例數量呈上升趨勢，一定有什么因素被我們忽略了。現在弄明白了，睡眠是造成肥胖的第三個原因，”沃克說。

沃克建議人們盡量避免熬夜。清醒19小時后，人類的認知功能受損，和醉酒的相當。他還建議人們把睡眠當成一種任務，就像去健身房那樣，要保證讓自己按時上床睡覺。

“人們會設置起床鬧鐘，其實也可以設一個睡覺鬧鐘，告訴自己還有半小時就要去睡覺了，要安靜入眠了。”沃克對《衛報》說。?（財富中文網）?

譯者：珠珠

Too little sleep is making us sick.

In an interview with The Guardian, Matthew Walker, Director of the Center for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, explains how.

Through his work, he’s determined that people who don’t get enough sleep tend to be less healthy and have lower energy levels than those who get the recommended amount of shut eye per night. After analyzing the results of 20 separate studies, he’s found a strong correlation between how much people sleep and how long they live. In summary: The less you sleep, the shorter your life will be.

This is a problem, particularly because many of us are conditioned to equate sleep with laziness. “We want to seem busy, and one way we express that is by proclaiming how little sleep we’re getting,” he told The Guardian. “It’s a badge of honor.” When he gives talks, he says people will wait until afterwards to whisper to them that they need eight or nine hours of sleep at night, similar to how someone might confess a crime. But they shouldn’t — they’re the ones making the healthier choice.

In one study, for instance, adults age 45 and older that slept less than 6 hours each night were 200% more likely to have a heart attack or stroke during their lifetime compared to participants who got seven or eight hours. In other studies, sleeping less has been associated with an increased risk of weight gain, developing Alzheimers, and relapses in addition disorders. On a basic level, lack of sleep also lowered participants’ immune systems.

“I’m not going to say that the obesity crisis is caused by the sleep-loss epidemic alone,” says Walker. “It’s not. However, processed food and sedentary lifestyles do not adequately explain its rise. Something is missing. It’s now clear that sleep is that third ingredient.”

Walker’s suggestion for people: Avoid pulling all-nighters. After you’ve been awake for 19 hours you’re essentially as cognitively impaired as a drunk person. Also, think of sleep like a job. Just like going to the gym, you need to make sure you go to bed.

“People use alarms to wake up,” Walker told The Guardian. “So why don’t we have a bedtime alarm to tell us we’ve got half an hour, that we should start cycling down?”