Too little sleep affects your mood and can contribute to irritability and sometimes depression. The fact is that stress and anxiety can cause sleeping problems, or worsen existing ones. Many people with anxiety disorders have trouble sleeping and at some point it’s hard to tell whether you’re having trouble sleeping because you’re anxious, or you’re anxious because you can’t sleep. At any rate, the new studies add to the growing evidence that sleep shouldn't be considered an indulgence, but a necessity.Another sleepless night spent worrying as you stare at the ceiling? Stress and anxiety can often keep you from getting the sleep you need. And it's pretty logical that chronic sleep loss could have lasting effects -research has definitely suggested this. "Although this work is very preliminary, it is clear from the results that even a single night of sleep deprivation can trigger events that may contribute to the development of chronic disease," said study author Siu-Wai Choi in a news release.Īgain, what's interesting about all three studies is that sleep loss on a small scale can lead to significant changes. Most people might not lose an entire night of sleep so often, but losing even half of one regularly might also have an effect in the long-term. The authors suggest that these molecular changes may help explain why sleep deprivation is known to be linked to increased risk for cancer, as well as cardiovascular, neurodegenerative, and metabolic diseases. Doctors who had just one night of sleep loss had more breaks in their DNA and a reduction in DNA repair genes, compared to rested participants. But it can't hurt, and this and other data suggest that it may even help delay and slow down the disease process if it has begun."įinally, another study, from the University of Hong Kong, looked at the genes of young doctors who either worked during the day or worked the night shift. We don't know yet whether getting adequate sleep as people age will protect against Alzheimer's disease. "Our brains need time to recover from the stresses of the day. "Getting a good night's sleep is something we should all try to do," Holtzman said. He also suggests that sleep is a necessary part of brain maintenance. "We've known that sleep problems and Alzheimer's are associated in part via a different Alzheimer's protein - amyloid beta - but this study shows that sleep disruption causes the damaging protein tau to increase rapidly and to spread over time." "The interesting thing about this study is that it suggests that real-life factors such as sleep might affect how fast the disease spreads through the brain," said study author David Holtzman in a statement. Finally, when the team injected mice with tau, those who were allowed to sleep normally had much less of it four weeks later than mice who were sleep-deprived-in these mice, it had spread notably, and to parts of the brain known to be affected in humans with Alzheimer’s. And in humans, kept awake for one whole night, their tau levels rose by 50%. In one, mice, who are nocturnal, showed a doubling of tau levels when they were kept awake during their normal daytime slumber. The researchers studied both mice and humans, depriving them of sleep in several experiments. But the new study, from Washington University School of Medicine, focused on the protein tau, which forms the “tangles” also seen in Alzheimer’s-affected brains. “It’s a form of nocturnal therapy that many of us shortchange in this modern era of insufficient sleep.”Īnother study built upon the growing consensus that sleep is a big protector against dementia, clearing away the brain gunk that can accumulate and eventually lead to the amyloid-beta plaques associated with Alzheimer’s. “Deep sleep provides a nocturnal soothing balm, taking the sharp edges off our lives and lowering our anxiety,” said study author Matthew Walker in a statement.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |