Hard day's night needs sleep
Thursday January 14th, 2010
People who are deprived of a full day's sleep over long periods face an increased risk of having accidents and make errors late at night, researchers have reported.
Even
making up the deficit with one long sleep - typically of about ten hours
- does little to reduce the loss of concentration, according to a new
analysis.
Researchers found sleep loss having an impact on two levels - one over hours and the other over weeks.
The study by Daniel Cohen and colleagues at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, USA, revealed that sleep loss may affect the brain by at least two different biological regulatory mechanisms: one sleep regulatory process that builds over hours spent awake, and another that builds over days or weeks of getting too little sleep.
The research, published in AAAS journal Science Translational Medicine, saw study participants living on a recurring sleep-wake cycle, which was comparable to 5.6 hours of sleep per 24 hours.
Cohen designed a protocol that allowed researchers to determine how the effects of acute sleep loss, chronic sleep loss and circadian timing combine to influence performance on a task that required sustained attention.
It was found that while most participants caught up on acute sleep loss with one night of 10 hours sleep, those with chronic sleep loss showed deteriorating performance for each hour spent awake.
Cohen said the findings might be useful for developing healthy schedules to promote wakefulness for people who work shifts, as well as patients with sleep disorders.
Previous studies have shown that a lack of sleep can make individuals more prone to illness, stress, learning and memory problems, traffic accidents and even weight gain.
Science Translational Medicine January 13 2010 Article #4: "Uncovering Residual Effects of Chronic Sleep Loss on Human Performance," by D.A. Cohen; W. Wang; C.A. Czeisler; E.B. Klerman at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston, MA; D.A. Cohen at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston, MA; J.K. Wyatt at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, IL; R.E. Kronauer at Harvard University in Cambridge, MA; D.-J. Dijk at University of Surrey in Surrey, UK.
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