On Europe 1, Doctor Jimmy Mohamed answered the question of a listener multiplying sleepless nights to watch series.

For our health specialist, it is important to maintain a regular sleep rhythm, and he reminds us of the consequences of these sleepless nights on our health.  

With the advent of video streaming platforms and the frenetic consumption of series, the famous "binge watching", the temptation is always greater for fans of this kind of programs to chain episodes after school or work, even if it means spending a good part of the night in front of his screen.

This is the case with Alexandre, a listener from Europe 1, who often has sleepless nights, but finds that he now needs more time to recover the following days.

In "Without an appointment", he asked for advice on how to recover better, but Doctor Jimmy Mohamed preferred to remind him of the importance of maintaining a regular sleep rhythm. 

Alexander's question 

I often have sleepless nights.

But after the last one, it took me three days to get over it.

Do you have any advice to better recover after these sleepless nights? 

Jimmy Mohamed's response 

"You have to realize that sleep is not a passive phenomenon. You have the impression that when you sleep, you close your eyes, nothing is happening and that it is something natural. But it is not. is only natural when we respect this sleep. 

>> Find all of Sans rendez-vous every day from 3 p.m. to 4 p.m. on Europe 1 as well as in replay and podcast here

During the day, we are made to be awake.

At night, we are supposed to sleep, and we have a biological clock in our brain that tells us that when it's hot, we have to be awake and that at night, when the temperature will drop, we have to sleep. 

Influence on metabolism

Biological rhythms must be synchronized by light.

If you start doing the reverse, playing at night and sleeping during the day, your body clock will be disrupted and the whole hormonal system will be impacted.

In terms of metabolism, you will gain more weight and synthesize less melatonin.

However, we know that this melatonin has an anti-oxidant, anti-cancerous action.

We have thus been able to prove that, for example, nurses who work at night have more breast cancer when they do shifts. 

When you don't sleep at night, you aren't repairing your brain.

That's why we absolutely have to try to have balanced rhythms.

You have to understand that sleep will be disrupted by screens.

This will disrupt the melatonin.

And if you go to sleep when you go to bed at midnight, after being exposed to screens in a massive way, even if you feel like you are sleeping well, if we made a sleep recording, we would find that your sleep is disturbed. 

We must not forget that the main competitor of the platforms is your sleep, they are there to put you permanently in front of your screens with these series which follow one another.

I advise you to take advantage of the good things.

Get frustrated, set limits.

You will sleep better, and the next day you will be happy to find your streak.

Make a contract with your child

So of course, especially for parents of young children who are stuck at home with the new restrictions against the coronavirus epidemic, we can accept that children consume a little more screen, but by setting rules.

If you explain to your child that it is half an hour of screen time, before they are in front of that screen, they will accept it.

On the other hand, if you remove his screen after half an hour without warning him, he will be frustrated. 

You can also try to be a little more flexible on weekends, by signing a contract: on weekdays, we work as if we were at school, and on weekends, we can relax and enjoy a little. "