Are you always tired now? OK then!

2010

autumn fatigue

What to do when the sun disappears early on the horizon, can hardly suppress the yawning in the afternoon, you are always tired? Off to bed and eyes! For whoever believes that they should waste time in their sleep should rethink - as current research proves.

It's that time again: the days are getting shorter, the autumn wind blows hard in our faces - and already in the early afternoon the sentence is heard from somewhere that everybody thinks: "I want to go to bed, just sleep." Is understandable, but sounds undynamic. For the most part, the always tired person immediately draws a guilty face.

"Completely wrong, " says therapist Annette Charpentier. "Fatigue is not a condition that needs to be avoided, it is not annoying and unnecessary, but a very important sign." For the body and mind want to find peace.

Allan Rechtschaffen, one of the pioneers of sleep research, stated more than 30 years ago: "If sleep does not have an absolutely vital function, then it is the biggest mistake the evolutionary process has ever made." At that time, it was not clear what day-to-day slumber really does to us. But at the latest since sleep research has come of age, we know that whoever is tired and gives in to his tiredness does not sink into passive unconsciousness. On the contrary! Our brain does its very hard work in sleep by processing the daytime experience.

Researchers have shown in tests that when we float in the dreamland, important events are stored in the long-term memory and important things are deleted from the short-term memory. Even movements that we have practiced, for example during sports, become more precise overnight. Quite as if we had continued to train secretly in these hours. Incidentally, whoever is tired and sleeps a lot gets fewer wrinkles - and lives longer, as a US long-term study proves.

If these are not reasons to give in to the often so insulted, increased need for sleep in autumn and winter! Since daylight only lasts for a few hours during these months, the concentration of the sleep hormone melatonin in the blood also increases during the day. We are always tired - a wonderful opportunity to spur the mind and body to peak performance by cuddling up on the pillows.