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Using a mouse model of chronic sleep loss, Sigrid Veasey, MD , associate professor of Medicine and a member of the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the Perelman School of Medicine and collaborators from Peking University, have determined that extended wakefulness is linked to injury to, and loss of, neurons that are essential for alertness and optimal cognition, the locus coeruleus (LC) neurons.
"In general, we’ve always assumed full recovery of cognition following short- and long-term sleep loss," Veasey says. "But some of the research in humans has shown that attention span and several other aspects of cognition may not normalize even with three days of recovery sleep, raising the question of lasting injury in the brain. We wanted to figure out exactly whether chronic sleep loss injures neurons, whether the injury is reversible, and which neurons are involved." ...
• After missing one night of sleep, expect fatigue, reduced attention span and problems with short-term memory.
• After missing 2 to 3 nights, one will also suffer poor coordination, muscle twitches, marked loss of concentration, impaired judgment, blurred vision, nausea, and slurring of speech. Often one will experience episodes of microsleep (briefly sleeping for a few seconds at a time, without being aware of it).
• At about 4 to 5 days without sleep, expect extreme irritability, hallucinations, and delusional episodes.
• After about 6 to 8 missed nights, add slowed speech, tremors in limb extremities, memory lapse, confusion concerning one’s own identity, unusual behavior, and paranoia to the list.
• After 9 to 11 nights without sleep, fragmented thinking occurs (beginning sentences without completing them), and prolonged episodes of unresponsive “conscious stupor ...
The recently completed study, commissioned by Estée Lauder, demonstrated that poor sleepers had increased signs of skin aging and slower recovery from a variety of environmental stressors, such as disruption of the skin barrier or ultraviolet (UV) radiation. Poor sleepers also had worse assessment of their own skin and facial appearance. ...
Results show that one night of partial sleep deprivation activates gene expression patterns in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) consistent with increasing accumulation of damage that initiates cell cycle arrest and increases susceptibility to senescence. These findings causally link sleep deprivation to the etiology of biological aging, and further supports the hypothesis that sleep deprivation may be associated with elevated disease risk because it promotes molecular processes involved in biological aging ...
So Gibson and Shrader looked at similar populations that lie at opposite ends of time zones — for instance, Huntsville, Alabama (on the eastern edge of the Central Time Zone), and Amarillo, Texas (on the western edge). Even though cities like this are on the same clock, the western city gets roughly an hour more of sunlight – which means that people there tend to go to bed later. But they have to wake up the same time as people in the eastern city – so, on average, they get less sleep. Gibson and Shrader could then look at the wage data in places like this to see how an extra dose of sleep affects earnings:
www.webmd.com...
In the 1970s, a depressed insomniac discovered that getting much less sleep than he wanted surprisingly improved his mood the next day. Doctors who treated depression began using sleep deprivation as a form of therapy. But sleep deprivation's popularity was brief, and soon the evolution of highly effective antidepressant medications made it all but obsolete.
originally posted by: intrptr
Torturers know about sleep deprivation, it is one of their primary tools used in interrogations.
A subject is kept awake for five days straight before questioning even begins.
Alexander Soljenitzen(spelling?) wrote about it in "Gulag Archipelago".
Detainees were made to sit up in their bunks, if they even nodded they were poked with a ten foot pole thru bars in the door windows by watchful guards.
Alexander Soljenitzen(spelling?) wrote about it in "Gulag Archipelago".
originally posted by: CJCrawley
a reply to: blend57
Risk of depression as a complication of insomnia?
Sleep Deprivation is actually one of the treatments for depression, and very effective it is too.
It just goes to show how little we understand this sleep thingy.
Much more research is needed.
originally posted by: Bluesma
Are many of you having trouble sleeping right now?
For about four days, I haven't slept... or at most I will doze between 5 AM and 7 AM. Last night I put on headphones and did youtube binaural beats for sleeping, hypnosis...each time I seemed to get totally relaxed and "almost" asleep, but never completely.