A Good Snooze
News and Information about Sleep
Experience tells us that sleepless nights can lead to overwrought emotions. Now scientists have uncovered some of the first evidence of how this occurs. Their imaging studies show that lack of sleep can lead to greater activation of the brain’s emotional centers and disrupt the brain circuits that tame emotional responses.
Adequate sleep is essential to good health, yet many Americans don’t get enough. About 75% of adults have symptoms of sleep problems at least a few nights each week, according to the National Sleep Foundation. Countless studies have shown that lack of sleep can interfere with a range of biological processes, including learning and memory and your ability to fight disease. However, research into the physical connections between sleep and emotions has been sparse.
Dr. Matthew Walker and his colleagues at the University of California, Berkeley, and Harvard Medical School set out to examine how sleep loss affects activation of the brain’s amygdala. This primitive brain region triggers emotional responses to potentially threatening, nonverbal cues. The study, published in the October 22, 2007, issue of Current Biology, was funded by NIH’s National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke (NINDS), National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) and National Center for Research Resources (NCRR), along with the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
The scientists assigned 26 healthy people to either a normal sleep group or a sleep-deprived group, who were kept awake for about 35 hours straight—about how long you’d be up if you stayed awake all night and into the next afternoon without naps. Functional MRI scans then measured participants’ brain activity while they viewed 100 images. The initial images were emotionally neutral. They later became increasingly unpleasant and disturbing—for example, showing a dirty toilet bowl, a burn victim, a dying patient or mutilated bodies.
Both groups had greater amygdala activation in response to more negative pictures. The intensity and volume of activation, however, was significantly amplified in the sleep-deprived group. “The size of the increase truly surprised us,” Walker said. “The emotional centers of the brain were over 60% more reactive under conditions of sleep deprivation than in subjects who had obtained a normal night of sleep.”
Lack of sleep also seemed to have another effect on the brain’s emotional controls. The amygdalae in the sleep-deprived group appeared to be more strongly connected to the brain’s primitive, impulsive regions and less connected to the more sophisticated and rational prefrontal lobe, which normally keeps emotions and behaviors in check. Malfunctioning brain circuits linking the amygdala to the prefrontal lobe have been associated with depressive symptoms.
“This study demonstrates the dangers of not sleeping enough. Sleep deprivation fractures the brain mechanisms that regulate key aspects of our mental health,” Walker said. “Sleep appears to restore our emotional brain circuits, and in doing so prepares us for the next day’s challenges and social interactions.”
—by Vicki Contie
Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health
Chronic snoring can dramatically affect both your life and the lives of everyone you live with.
Uninterrupted sleep is necessary to maintain your health and to reduce stress. If your or your partners snoring is continually waking you up, you need to do something now!
If you are overweight, that may be what’s causing your snoring. Adjust your diet and start exercising to lose weight. Your snoring will steadily decrease and eventually stop.
How you lay in bed can be a big influence on whether or not you snore. Avoid sleeping on your back. People who sleep on their backs tend to snore more than those who sleep on their sides or stomach, change your sleeping position, it might work.
Smoking is a big cause of snoring. Tobacco smoke and its additives cause the throat muscles to relax and obstruct the airway, interrupting your breathing. Yet another good reason to stop smoking.
Alcohol is another snore starter as it also relaxes your throat tissue. Reducing your drinking in the evening, especially before bed, can really help.
Eating also causes your throat muscles to relax, so avoid late dinners and snacks. Eating earlier in the evening gives your body a chance to digest and normalize your throat muscles.
Successfully tackling a snoring problem means being aware of your routines and habits so you can narrow down the cause. Sometimes minor adjustments to the way you live and eat can make all the difference. Nothing is better than a good nights sleep!
Doctors diagnose sleep apnea based on your medical and family histories, a physical exam, and results from sleep studies. Usually, your primary care doctor evaluates your symptoms first. He or she then decides whether you need to see a sleep specialist.
These specialists are doctors who diagnose and treat people with sleep problems. Such doctors include lung, nerve, or ear, nose, and throat specialists. Other types of doctors also can be sleep specialists.
Medical and Family Histories
Your doctor will ask you and your family questions about how you sleep and how you function during the day. To help your doctor, consider keeping a sleep diary for 1 to 2 weeks. Write down how much you sleep each night, as well as how sleepy you feel at various times during the day.
Your doctor also will want to know how loudly and often you snore or make gasping or choking sounds during sleep. Often you’re not aware of such symptoms and must ask a family member or bed partner to report them.
If you’re a parent of a child who may have sleep apnea, tell your child’s doctor about your child’s signs and symptoms.
Let your doctor know if anyone in your family has been diagnosed with sleep apnea or has had symptoms of the disorder.
Many people aren’t aware of their symptoms and aren’t diagnosed.
Physical Exam
Your doctor will check your mouth, nose, and throat for extra or large tissues. The tonsils often are enlarged in children with sleep apnea. A physical exam and medical history may be all that’s needed to diagnose sleep apnea in children.
Adults with the condition may have an enlarged uvula or soft palate. The uvula is the tissue that hangs from the middle of the back of your mouth. The soft palate is the roof of your mouth in the back of your throat.
Sleep Studies
A sleep study is the most accurate test for diagnosing sleep apnea. It captures what happens with your breathing while you sleep.
A sleep study is often done in a sleep center or sleep lab, which may be part of a hospital. You may stay overnight in the sleep center.
Polysomnogram
A polysomnogram (poly-SOM-no-gram), or PSG, is the most common study for diagnosing sleep apnea. This test records:
• Brain activity
• Eye movement and other muscle activity
• Breathing and heart rate
• How much air moves in and out of your lungs while you’re sleeping
• The amount of oxygen in your blood
A PSG is painless. You will go to sleep as usual, except you will have sensors on your scalp, face, chest, limbs, and finger. The staff at the sleep center will use the sensors to check on you throughout the night.
A sleep specialist reviews the results of your PSG to see whether you have sleep apnea and how severe it is. He or she will use the results to plan your treatment.
Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health
When you’re awake, throat muscles help keep your airway stiff and open so air can flow into your lungs. When you sleep, these muscles are more relaxed. Normally, the relaxed throat muscles don’t stop your airway from staying open to allow air into your lungs.
But if you have obstructive sleep apnea, your airways can be blocked or narrowed during sleep because:
• Your throat muscles and tongue relax more than normal.
• Your tongue and tonsils (tissue masses in the back of your mouth) are large compared to the opening into your windpipe.
• You’re overweight. The extra soft fat tissue can thicken the wall of the windpipe. This causes the inside opening to narrow and makes it harder to keep open.
• The shape of your head and neck (bony structure) may cause a smaller airway size in the mouth and throat area.
• The aging process limits the ability of brain signals to keep your throat muscles stiff during sleep. This makes it more likely that the airway will narrow or collapse.
Not enough air flows into your lungs when your airways are fully or partly blocked during sleep. This can cause loud snoring and a drop in your blood oxygen levels.
When the oxygen drops to dangerous levels, it triggers your brain to disturb your sleep. This helps tighten the upper airway muscles and open your windpipe. Normal breaths then start again, often with a loud snort or choking sound.
The frequent drops in oxygen levels and reduced sleep quality trigger the release of stress hormones. These compounds raise your heart rate and increase your risk for high blood pressure, heart attack, stroke, and irregular heartbeats. The hormones also raise the risk for or worsen heart failure.
Untreated sleep apnea also can lead to changes in how your body uses energy. These changes increase your risk for obesity and diabetes.
Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health
Causes of Secondary Insomnia
Secondary insomnia is often a symptom of an emotional, neurological, or other medical disorder, or of another sleep disorder.
The emotional disorders that can cause secondary insomnia include depression, anxiety, and post traumatic stress disorder. Alzheimer’s disease and Parkinson’s disease are examples of common neurological disorders that can cause secondary insomnia.
A number of other diseases and conditions can cause secondary insomnia, including:
Conditions that cause chronic pain, such as arthritis and headache disorders.
Conditions that cause difficulty breathing, such as asthma or heart failure
Overactive thyroid
Gastrointestinal disorders, such as heartburn
Stroke
Sleep disorders, such as restless legs syndrome, also can cause secondary insomnia. In addition, secondary insomnia can be a side-effect of certain medicines or commonly used substances, including:
Caffeine or other stimulants
Tobacco or other products with nicotine
Alcohol or other sedatives
Certain asthma medicines (for example, theophylline) and some allergy and cold medicines
Beta blockers (medicines used to treat heart conditions)
Causes of Primary Insomnia
Primary insomnia is not due to another medical or emotional condition and typically occurs for periods of at least 1 month. Whether some people are born with a greater chance of having insomnia is not clear yet. A number of life changes can trigger primary insomnia, including:
Major or long lasting stress and emotional upset
Travel or other factors such as work schedules that disrupt your sleep routine
Even after these causes go away, the insomnia might stay. Trouble sleeping may persist because of habits formed to deal with the lack of sleep. These habits include taking naps, worrying about sleep, or going to bed early.
Source: U.S. National Institutes of Health
