Here’s a good excuse to sleep in on Presidents Day: New research suggests there’s a scientific reason why many of us feel more tired this time of year. A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal “Frontiers in Neuroscience” found that its subjects were naturally clocking an extra hour of sleep each night on average during the winter months, compared with their summertime sleep. Even more notably, they were catching an extra 30 minutes of REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, which is the important sleep phase that plays a vital role in processing information, memory, dreaming and healthy brain development. REM sleep also aids in better mental concentration and mood regulation, the National Sleep Foundation notes, which are both critical to your daily work performance and your overall quality of life.
Now, one major caveat of this study’s findings is that the results were recorded in 188 Berlin patients who were suffering from sleep disorders — although none of them were taking any sleep medications to help them sleep. So these weren’t your typical sleepers. But the team of scientists from the Charité Medical University of Berlin who recruited these patients and tracked their sleep throughout the year noted that, while the sleep disorders could potentially affect the results, this data is still valuable. And that’s because it comes from people being evaluated in a special sleep lab that monitored the quality, length and type of sleep these folks were getting, which can be more reli …