Does pressing the “morning snooze” button really save your life?!

Most of us love the luxury of resetting our alarm and enjoying an extra 5-minute snooze in a warm bed, especially on a cold December morning.

But scientists at Nanjing Medical University of China found that those vital minutes could also help save your life.

Scientists discovered that people who were sleep-deprived during a typical hard work week, but were able to get an extra two hours of sleep on the weekend, were 63% less likely to have a heart attack or stroke.

In contrast, the Sleep Cycle Study, which tracked 3,400 people, found that workers who got less than six hours a night during the workweek and did not nap on weekends were at greater risk of cardiovascular disease.

The research team said: “Sleeping on the weekend is also associated with a lower risk of angina, stroke and heart disease, especially in those who have short periods of sleep during the week. Research has shown that sleep is not only for physiological rest but also has profound effects on health.” heart and blood vessels".

Decades of previous research has indicated that hitting the "snooze button" can have negative effects, both on sleep and the brain's ability to wake up, and doctors recommend deep, uninterrupted sleep instead.

The new study, published in the journal Sleep Research, found that there were no negative effects of napping on the release of the stress hormone cortisol, mood, or sleep quality throughout the night.

Other studies have found that napping for an extra hour or two can prevent obesity and depression.

Doctor: Microbiome disruption is a major risk factor for cancer development

Dr. Alexander Myasnikov considers disruption of the gut microbiome to be the strongest risk factor for cancer, cardiovascular disease, and other serious diseases.

Myasnikov points out that the gut microbiome is a diverse group of bacteria that live in our bodies, especially in the intestines. The microbiome affects our eating habits, our health, and the development of diseases - such as obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, strokes and cancer.

According to him, excessive use and misuse of antibiotics leads to serious disorders in the microbiome.

He says: “Antibiotic kills bacteria. That is, it kills the microbiome, which contains good bacteria and bad bacteria. Antibiotics kill both types of bacteria and cause an imbalance in the intestine, just like chemotherapy, which eliminates all types of bacteria, without sorting them out,” indicating that "The bacteria then fight each other and that's where the serious problems start."

Myasnikov points out that in the late fifties and sixties, a boom in the spread of cancer, cardiovascular disease, heart attacks, and strokes began. That is, after overcoming pneumonia and other infections, we gave the green light to other serious diseases. It is no longer a secret to experts that microbiome imbalance poses a more serious threat to health than smoking.

“And this is what happened: we started using antibiotics - we turned the microbiome against ourselves, and the consequences are known,” he says. “We violated the ecological balance by infiltrating this place, we destroyed it - and now we are surprised.”