If you want to sleep, there is really no shortage of reasons. The old saying “spring sleepy summer sleepy autumn snooze, sleepy winter March”, is probably what it means. Spring temperatures rise, especially in the afternoon always make people’s eyelids can not stop fighting, but also love to yawn. Now the question arises, yawning is necessarily sleepy? Maybe you have already yawned as you read this.
Frankly speaking, although everyone yawns, it is not easy to say what causes the yawn at hand.
It could be one of the following 6 reasons, which may or may not be related to sleep.
May be related
1, we all have such life experience when we are students, sitting in a classroom with closed windows in winter, this kind of low oxygen and high carbon dioxide environment, and soon become drowsy. The easiest way to get rid of sleepyheads is to open the windows to change the air. By the same token, when there is too much carbon dioxide in the blood, it stimulates the central nervous system and makes people yawn. By yawning, the way to promote the exhalation of carbon dioxide and oxygen inhalation.
2, yawning turns out to be the brain in cooling itself. Studies have found that the frequency of yawning increases when the brain temperature is high, and fatigue and lack of sleep are likely to cause an increase in brain temperature. From this point of view, the brain is called “brain burn” is really a few points of truth. This time you need to yawn, like Ichigo said: rest, take a break.
Maybe it’s okay.
1, yawning is usually accompanied by stretching, and we can not see is responsible for breathing, swallowing, talking muscles are also doing stretching. This theory thus suggests that yawning occurs when certain respiratory muscles need to be stretched to recover from overwork.
2. Yawning may be a way for the body to unconsciously balance the pressure inside and outside the eardrum. Experiments have observed that the human body is more likely to yawn when the pressure inside the eardrum is increased, when the pressure inside and outside the ear is balanced while the mouth is opened wide. Similar to the principle of chewing gum when taking off and landing in an airplane.
3, yawning is due to changes in feelings, emotions and even hunger, resulting in the release of certain neurotransmitters that play a signaling role in the brain. When the brain secretes pentothal, dopamine, glutamine, glutamate or nitric oxide, people are more likely to yawn; in contrast when the brain releases opiate neurotransmitters, such as endorphins, it is not easy to yawn.
4, yawning is a group behavior. It is said that yawning is contagious, in fact, not only to see others yawn, even just read the text of yawning, such as the beginning of this article, will also increase the possibility of yawning. This is due to the fact that there are cells called mirror neurons in the frontal cortex of the brain, which are responsible for the job of imitating the behavior of others.
Does it matter if you yawn?
For the ancient Greeks and Mayans, yawning was a big deal: it was a sign that the soul was trying to escape the body. So it was important to keep your mouth shut. Modern people generally think that yawning is not a big deal, at most a little unsightly. Then just cover your mouth with your hand or turn around.
Usually there is no problem with this idea, however, if you are always yawning continuously, if not lack of sleep, it may indicate the occurrence of certain diseases.
1. Food accumulation and indigestion. This is because the parasympathetic nervous system regulates the gut and the brain at the same time.
2. Migraine. Existing research shows that dopamine plays an important role in the onset of migraine, and as mentioned above, dopamine tends to trigger yawning.
3. Stroke. Whether the stroke is ischemic or hemorrhagic, and whether the patient is aware of it or not, it is often accompanied by frequent yawning at the time of the stroke.
As early as 1888, Dr. Charcot recorded a female patient yawning 8 times per minute, and on the one hand, pentothal disorder is found in mental disorders, and as mentioned above, pentothal promotes yawning.
5. Heavy use of caffeine or opiates. Cases of babies with respiratory defects and constant yawning have been reported in pregnant women who have taken large amounts of these two types of substances.
But it’s not a good thing if you don’t yawn all the time. Patients with Parkinson’s disease have degeneration of dopaminergic neurons, and because dopamine promotes yawning, noticing that an elder in the family has stopped yawning for a long period of time is a sign that a neurodegenerative disease may be present.