It is good to be back after a hot summer. I expect you had a good Haj season. For those of you who were blessed to perform Haj this year, I hope you had a fulfilling and rewarding Haj.

Now, it is time to catch up with where I left you during Ramadan, the holy month of fasting, with Part 4 of this series of articles about the importance of sleep. I was discussing sleep debt and how it can be taxing on the body, brain, emotions, and immune system. Studies show how sleep loss impacts the speed of processing information, short-term and working memory, task switching, visual attention, verbal fluency, and mathematical responses and how it reduces our killer cells, which defend us against cancer.

Sleep expert Gregory Belenky, director of the Sleep and Performance Research Center at Washington State University said, “Unless you’re doing work that doesn’t require much thought, you are trading time awake at the expense of performance [both physical and mental].”

Sleep scientist David Dinges of the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine did the following study, which supports Belenky’s work. It also confirms Walker’s findings (Part 4). Four participants were wired up to electrodes and were kept awake until 4 a.m. They were then left to sleep until 8 a.m. They were subjected to this schedule for five consecutive days. At the end of the experiment, they were given tests to see how “chronic partial sleep deprivation affected their cognitive abilities.”

One of the first findings that were observed in these participants was slower thinking abilities, responses, and recalling. Dinges’ comment was that even one single night of six-hour sleep could slow down your speed of thinking and “…show affects on your attention and your memory…” Every additional night causes “additional burden or deficit to your cognitive ability.” The slowed reaction appears in your ability to function as well. The experiment was done without allowing the subjects to have caffeine and physical activity or be in bright light. Dinges continued saying that “The impairments get so bad, that there’s little to no rescue possible without getting more sleep.”

One subject in another experiment was asked simple questions on how she felt after the sleep loss she experienced. She became quieter than usual and her responses were incomplete, indicating that her alertness and reaction time had been impaired. She seemed confused and did not realize how impacted she was by her lack of sleep.

Virginia Tech’s Transportation Institute performed a study to test if alertness and reaction time impacted by sleep loss were relevant to car accident and crashes. 241 volunteers had their cars wired with five cameras. A year later, the drowsy drivers had the riskiest behavior. Dinges’ comment was: “You only need two seconds to have a lapse, in driving a car at 60 miles an hour, to drift completely out of lane.” Such lapses are known as “micro-sleeps,” which can also happen with open eyes. Inadequate sleep makes such sleep attacks possible even in the middle of action; it takes only seconds to lose control of the vehicle.

Dinges also believes that sleep deprivation may have been behind the infamous Exxon Valdes oil spill, Chernobyl, The Three Mile Island disaster, and the Staten Island ferry crash, which caused numerous deaths, casualties, and ecological disasters. Most of these disasters occurred at night, involving human error due to inadequate sleep that resulted in poor judgment, miscalculations, losing control of reactions, and slowed responses, which happen when people are tired and sleep deprived. Dinges compares the condition to those under the effects of alcohol, losing sense of their limitations and not recognizing their own mental impairment. Such people also develop mood swings and impatience.

Researcher Matthew Walker, the director of the Sleep and Neuroimaging Lab at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted a study on young college undergraduates, who were kept awake for about 35 hours and then were placed inside MRI scanners. Their brains showed hyperactive emotional response, which is not to be compared to the brain images of the more logical and rational reasoning of normal subjects. The images could be associated with those of psychiatric disorder patients.

Walker’s comment on the similarities was that “Their pattern of brain activity was not dissimilar. So I think what it forces us to do really now is to appreciate more significantly the role that sleep may be playing in mental health and in psychiatric diseases.” These results showed that mental disorders could be associated with sleep loss. According to Walker, our bodies and brains require a minimum of seven and a half to eight hours of night sleep.

Endocrinologist E. Van Cauter of the University of Chicago School of Medicine has monitored organs and systems in young volunteers during disturbed sleep or reduced hours of sleep. Her comment was “We noticed that they were already in pre-diabetic state.” This is a disturbing finding, showing young participants on their way to becoming diabetic in a matter of six sleepless nights. Sleep loss causes a drop in the hormone leptin, which made them hungrier, eating more than usual, which lead them to obesity.

Large studies have shown an association between inadequate sleep and obesity, heart disease, hypertension, and stroke. Sex drive also diminishes with insufficient sleep, which impacts mental and physical functions. Scientists suggest that the only way to reverse such dysfunctions is to sleep sufficiently. Siestas and power naps cannot replace a good night sleep, but they can relieve part of the load of sleep debt.

Recent studies on aging women showed that those who slept well and/or had good social interaction had stronger immune defenses. Restful sleep has a lowering effect on interleukin-6 (IL-6) level, a protein in the immune system, which increases inflammation and which rises generally with age. IL-6 is associated with osteoporosis, rheumatoid arthritis, heart disease, Alzheimer’s disease, inflammation, and cancer.

According to Dr. Elliot M. Friedman “…Poor quality sleep and low quality social relationships increase the risk of high levels of IL-6 and, thereby, age-related disease.” IL-6 was found more elevated in women who had bad sleep and poor social ties.

UK sleep experts say that longterm of less than optimal sleep can ‘dramatically’ alter the genes as well as the immune system. Heart disease, obesity, and poor brain function are related to poor sleeping habits. At the University of Surrey, blood samples were taken for analysis of 26 participants in a study, who had around a total of 10 hours of sleep during a whole week. The samples were compared to their own blood samples taken a week later, when they had less than six hours of night sleep.

After one week of inadequate sleep, blood analyzes showed an alteration in 700 genes. These genes normally are made to build proteins in a controlled manner; instead they went into overdrive, producing more proteins than they should, thus modifying the body chemistry.

When the body clock is disrupted by sleep loss, the activity of certain genes gets blunted and signals run amok. According to Professor Colin Smith of The University of Surrey, “There was quite a dramatic change in inactivity in different kinds of genes.” And “Clearly sleep is critical to rebuilding and maintaining a functional state…” Because sleep restores and regenerates cells and repairs tissues, sleep loss may lead to ill health and “degenerative diseases.”

I shall continue next week on the same topic. There is much more to discuss than I had anticipated. It is necessary to know that sleep is an important health pillar that keeps health function optimally.

References:

• “Body clock alters immune system” by James Gallagher

• “How Exhaustion Might Change the Way You Think,” by

Amanda Woerner

• “Emotions Run Amok in Sleep-deprived brains, ” by

Charles Q. Choi

• Ben Hirschler on sleep on Reuters

• CBS Lesley Stahl interview with Matthew Walker, director

of Sleep and Neuroimaging at the University of California, Berkeley

• “Good Sleep, Sociability may keep Grandma Healthy,”by

Megan Rauscher for Reuters.

• The Science of Good Sleep: There is a reason You’re Always So Tired by James Clear in Wellness

N.B.:

Individuals with medical conditions or on medication should consult their physicians when they decide to introduce anything new in their diet even if it is natural.

The previous Health Solutions articles are located on www. arabnews.com

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