Sleep+and+Wellness

=Introduction = toc A typical sleep cycle fluctuates between two major sleep types. The length of time spent in each changes as sleep progresses and depends on the individual. On average, the first cycle lasts around 90 minutes. This is known as the “quiet” sleep phase. During this time body temperature drops, the muscles relax, and both heart rate and breathing slow. Progressing through these phases, a person falls deeper and deeper into sleep. When the person reaches the deepest stage of quiet sleep, physiological changes occur that help boost the immune system and other bodily functions [1].

 The succeeding cycle is known as the REM (rapid eye movement) sleep phase. This is also known as the dreaming state. On average a person is in this phase from 100-120 minutes. Body temperature, blood pressure, heart rate, and breathing increase to about the same levels measured in someone whose awake. REM sleep is essential because it is the restorative portion of the sleep cycle. Studies report that REM sleep is vital to learning ability, memory, emotional health, and essentially overall health of the body [1].

 It is well known that getting enough sleep is important, but many people don’t realize just how detrimental sleep deprivation can be on the mind and body. Scientists have given reason to believe that even getting an hour less of sleep a night longterm affects the mind, heart, body weight, and pretty much overall health.

Mind
 Sleep mechanisms affect levels of neurotransmitters and stress hormones. These levels need to be balanced for proper brain function. Sleep deprivation disrupts that balance, which impairs cognitive ability, emotional regulation, and can lead to mental illnesses. A review [2] looks at a tremendous amount of conducted experiments to find the consequences of sleep deprivation. There was a unanimous conclusion that “sleep deprivation, whether a result of a clinical disorder or lifestyle choices, and whether acute or chronic, poses significant cognitive risks in the performance of many ordinary tasks such as driving and operating machinery” [2]. When a person does not get enough sleep everyday, conventional tasks become difficult because cognitive ability is impaired. In some ways a sleep-deprived mind can act similar to that of an alcohol impaired mind.

 Study [3] uses twenty-six healthy volunteers to find that sleep loss produces changes in emotion and behavior consistent with mild [|prefrontal lobe dysfunction]. The frontal lobe plays the key role in higher mental functions such as motivation, planning, social behavior, and speech production. The subjects were tested for emotional and mental ability at a rested baseline to be used as the control state. Then the subjects were sleep deprived and the tests were conducted again. After comparison, there was a decrease in global emotional intelligence, reduced self-awareness, reduced empathy towards others, reduced impulse control, and reduced positive thinking and action orientation. Conclusively sleep deprivation causes serious damage to one’s emotional state.

 Mental illness can also result from lack of sleep. For example, symptoms of depression have been associated with sleep duration during a study [4] conducted in 2013. It was a cross-sectional study using data from [|Wave 3 of the Walk the Ozarks to Wellness Project] including 12 rural communities in Missouri, Arkansas, and Tennessee. They defined sleep duration based on average weeknight and weekend hours per day. A short night sleep is considered less than seven hours. The optimal length of sleep is seven to eight hours and a long night’s sleep is anything greater than eight hours. Participants produced different symptoms at each sleep duration. The most prominent difference revealed was, of course, from the shorter sleep duration. The results indicated a positive association between symptoms of depression and less sleep.

Heart
It is more widely recognized that deficient sleep is linked to poor attention and performance deficits. It is not as commonly known, though, that getting enough sleep is essential for a healthy heart as well. Sleeping too little causes you to be at higher risk for [|cardiovascular disease]. This is regardless of age, weight, smoking and exercise habits. Recent studies have revealed relationships between sleep deprivation and hypertension, coronary heart disease, and diabetes. A review article [5] analyzes and summarizes the literature on these correlations. One conclusion drawn was that sleep deprivation increases sympathetic nervous system activity. The increased activity serves in promoting the processes that leads to [|hypertension] and diabetes. Additionally, they unanimously determined that adequate sleep duration plays an important role in preventing cardiovascular diseases.

Article [6] also summarizes the discoveries of known effects from lack of sleep on cardiovascular risk factors like blood pressure, glucose metabolism, hormonal regulation and inflammation. There was a particular emphasis on experimental sleep loss, by depriving healthy individuals (with and average sleep range of 7-8 hours) of sleep. With the creation of these models, these studies demonstrate that insufficient sleep alters established cardiovascular risk factors, which in turn increases the risk of cardiac disease.

 Recently in 2016, the Radiological Society of North America conducted a study [7] that further supports these claims. Researchers, for the first time, presented that 24-hour, shift-related, short-term sleep deprivation causes a significant increase in the contraction of the heart, blood pressure, heart rate and stress hormone secretion. Daniel Kuetting, MD, from the Department of Diagnostic and Interventional Radiology at the University of Bonn and colleagues enlisted 20 subjects. They scanned them for cardiovascular measurements before a 24-hour shift as a baseline. Following a 24-hour shift with an average of three hours of sleep increases in systolic and diastolic blood pressure and heart rate strain were exposed. Getting the right amount of sleep isn't just important in the long term, but also in the short term. Therefore, getting the right amount of sleep every night is incredibly important to maintain a healthy heart.

Weight
 Over the past decade, scientists have given reason to believe that the amount of sleep obtained has a direct correlation to weight gain. Research suggests that the less sleep you get, the more likely you are to be overweight or obese. A review [8] looks at 36 publications (31 cross-sectional, 5 prospective, and 0 experimental) regarding the matter. All three studies in adults found a positive association between short sleep duration and future weight gain. Another study [9] from UC Berkeley concluded that the later you stay up, the more you eat. It seems people are hard-wired to prefer salty, fatty, or sugary foods after 8 p.m. Furthermore, night owls who stay up until 4 a.m. eat about 550 more calories than early birds who go to sleep by 10 p.m.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Additionally, a British study [10] followed more than 8,000 children from birth. They found that those who slept fewer than 10 and a half hours a night at age 3 had a 45 percent higher risk of becoming obese by age 7 in comparison to children who slept more than 12 hours a night. From the studies stated above it is easy to conclude that the less sleep you get, the more likely you are to gain weight.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Recommended sleep
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">So what is the right amount of sleep? Most studies have been looking at adults with a sleep range of about eight hours a night and one study looked at children, but what are the recommended hours for all ages? The National Sleep Foundation (NSF), convened with a panel of experts in sleep, anatomy and physiology, as well as pediatrics, neurology, gerontology and gynecology to issue a two-year study in 2015 [11]. Revisions of sleep ranges included six children and teen age groups. The panel finalized a summary for all age ranges below:


 * ~ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Age ||~ <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Needed Sleep ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Newborns (0-3 months) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">14-17 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Infants (4-11 months) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">12-15 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Toddlers (1-2 years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">11-14 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Preschoolers (3-4 years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">10-13 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">School-age children (5-12 years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">9-11 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Teenagers (13-17 years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">8-10 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Adults (18-64 years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">7-9 hours ||
 * <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Older Adults (65 or more years) || <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">7-8 hours ||

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">Conclusion
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;"> Could an extra hour of sleep really make a difference in your life? Experts say quite a lot. Though scientists are still trying to unravel all the mechanisms of the sleep cycle, they more importantly discovered that sleep disruption wreaks havoc on your health. Less than the recommended amount of sleep even just one night disrupts the balance of your body, but continuously over time can be detrimental. Not only will your emotional state become bleak and irritable, the risk for mental illnesses like depression, the risk for cardiovascular diseases, and the risk of obesity increase tremendously.

<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">References
<span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[1] H. H. Publications, “Sleep and mental health,” Harvard Health, 09-Jul-2009. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[2] N. Goel, H. Rao, J. S. Durmer, and D. F. Dinges, “Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation,” Seminars in neurology, Sep-2009. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[3] W. D. S. Killgore, E. T. Kahn-Greene, and E. L. Lipizzi, “Sleep deprivation reduces perceived emotional intelligence and constructive thinking skills,” sleep medicine, Jul-2008. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[4] C. JJ, S. J, H. K, P. GW, S. KA, and B. RC, “The association of sleep duration and depressive symptoms in rural communities of southeastern Missouri, Tennessee, and Arkansas,” The Journal of rural health : official journal of the American Rural Health Association and the National Rural Health Care Association, Jul-2013. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[5] S. R. Patel and F. B. Hu, “Short sleep duration and weight gain: a systematic review.,” Obesity (Silver Spring, Md.)., Mar-2008. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[6] M. Nagai, S. Hoshide, and K. Kario, “Sleep Duration as a Risk Factor for Cardiovascular Disease- a Review of the Recent Literature,” Current Cardiology Reviews, Feb-2010. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[7] J. M. Mullington, M. Haack, M. Toth, J. Serrador, and H. Meier-Ewert, “Cardiovascular, Inflammatory and Metabolic Consequences of Sleep Deprivation,” Progress in Cardiovascular Diseases, 2009. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[8] “Short-term Sleep Deprivation Affects Heart Function,” RSNA, Dec-2016. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[9] Yasmin Anwar, Media Relations | August 6, 2013July 9, 2015 and Y. Anwar, “Sleep deprivation linked to junk food cravings,” Berkeley News, 09-Jul-2015. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[10] J. J. Reilly, J. Armstrong, A. R. Dorosty, P. M. Emmett, A. Ness, I. Rogers, C. Steer, A. Sherriff, and T. e Avon, “Early life risk factors for obesity in childhood: cohort study.,” BMJ (Clinical research ed.)., 11-Jun-2005. <span style="font-family: Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif;">[11] “National Sleep Foundation Recommends New Sleep Times,” National Sleep Foundation, Feb-2015.