Getting to sleep is not easy for everyone. But there are strategies that can help us slip into that state of unconsciousness that is essential to our body’s well-being. New approaches are even being tested to help the elderly increase their deep slow-wave sleep, one of the most beneficial, the duration of which shortens with age.
Experts agree to recommend avoiding exposure to blue light emitted in particular by computers and cell phones before going to bed. “It is preferable to set our electronic devices to night mode so that they emit orange light rather than blue,” advises Nadia Gosselin, scientific director of the Center for Advanced Studies in Sleep Medicine.
“Blue light has many benefits for telling our body when it needs to be awake. Once it has entered through our eyes, the light reaches the suprachiasmatic nuclei of the hypothalamus, where our biological clock is located, which is very sensitive to blue light. Exposing yourself to this light in the middle of the day is a good thing, because you have to give your body a strong signal that it is daytime. Going outside around dinnertime to get some sunlight, which includes lots of blue light, can help you sleep better at night,” says the sleep specialist.
Towards restful sleep
To sleep well, you must also accumulate a need for sleep. During the day, it is therefore necessary to be active and indulge in physical activities, in particular, and exclude naps. If you are insomniac, it is not recommended to go to bed earlier than usual in the hope of recovering. It is advisable to always keep the same times for getting up and going to bed, and to respect this routine.
Probably the most effective treatment for solving a recurring problem of insomnia is cognitive-behavioral therapy, which takes an average of eight meetings with a health professional specializing in sleep. As a result of such therapy, “people feel they have better control over their sleep. They better understand what is going on and they feel a little less helpless when consecutive nights of insomnia occur,” says Ms.me Gosselin.
According to a study, people who were treated for insomnia with this therapy experienced a decrease in their level of inflammation, which was initially higher than normal due to their chronic lack of sleep, adds Andrée-Ann Baril, postdoctoral fellow in neurology and epidemiology of sleep, at the Douglas Institute and at McGill University.
It appears increasingly clear that the reduction in the duration of deep slow-wave sleep phases, which is accentuated during old age, contributes to cognitive decline, and more particularly to memory. Researchers are trying to develop strategies to increase this sleep, which is considered the most restorative and the most important for memory consolidation.
Search for treatments
Several protocols are experimented in research to try to increase the slow waves of the brain which characterize the stage of deep slow sleep. These protocols aim to verify whether the memory of the elderly can be improved by increasing their slow-wave sleep.
Some so-called acoustic protocols consist in emitting a sound of a particular frequency during sleep when slow waves occur. “These protocols use algorithms to match sounds and slow waves detected on the electroencephalogram (EEG). Some studies have shown impacts on memory, while others have not obtained this result”, emphasizes Andrée-Ann Baril, while emphasizing the fact that “the field is still emerging”.
Other protocols instead use transcranial magnetic stimulation and transcranial alternating current electrical stimulation. The operation is essentially the same as for acoustic stimulation: a small magnetic or electrical stimulation is applied to the person’s skull, through a band fitted around his head, at the moment when slow waves appear on the EEG. Some studies experimenting with such a protocol have given good results in terms of memory. “The variability of the results from one study to another could be due to the variations between the protocols, in particular in the intensity and the duration of the acoustic, electric or magnetic stimulations. It therefore remains to determine the optimal parameters to obtain the desired results,” explains Ms.me Barrel.