Links of interest: Sleep | The Health Culture

Data Underload #18 – Sleep Schedule (Flowing Data)

A picture worth a thousand words. Diagram of the hours of the day showing when we’re asleep and awake throughout the lifespan.

Sleeping (or Not) by the Wrong Clock (The New York Times)

When your sleep schedule is out of sync with the rest of the world, there’s hope from the science of chronotherapeutics. It can reset your internal circadian clock.

In American psychiatry, chronotherapeutics is a new kid on the block, viewed by some as a counter-intuitive departure from conventional medication. By contrast, in Europe, where it is already well established, it is seen as compatible with medication and a means for expediting improvement with fewer residual symptoms.

Sleeping for less than six hours may cause early death, study finds (The Guardian)

[T]hose who generally slept for less than six hours a night were 12% more likely to experience a premature death over a period of 25 years than those who consistently got six to eight hours’ sleep. … [T]hose who consistently sleep more than nine hours a night can be more likely to die early. Oversleeping itself is not seen as a risk but as a potential indicator of underlying ailments. “Whilst short sleep may represent a cause of ill health, long sleep is believed to represent more an indicator of ill health.”

Modern society has seen a gradual reduction in the average amount of sleep people take, and this pattern is more common amongst full-time workers, suggesting that it may be due to societal pressures for longer working hours and more shift-work.

Lifespan linked to sleep (NHS Behind the Headlines)

Don’t believe any health news until you’ve read an analysis by the National Health Service. Commenting on the “less than six hours may cause early death” reports:

This is interesting and informative research. However, it should not be taken to mean that people who do not follow the ‘standard’ pattern for sleep are more likely to die early. Though a causal relationship is possible, the underlying reasons for poor sleep patterns and their possible relation to physiological changes in the body also need consideration. The BBC quotes Professor Horne from the Loughborough Sleep Research Centre: “Sleep is just a litmus paper to physical and mental health. Sleep is affected by many diseases and conditions, including depression.”

In addition, different people need different amounts of sleep, and this can be influenced by age, lifestyle, diet and environment. For example, newborn babies can sleep for 16 hours a day, while school-age children need an average of 10 hours sleep. Most healthy adults sleep for an average of seven to nine hours a night. As you get older, it is normal to need less sleep. Most people over 70 need less than six hours sleep a night, and they tend to be light sleepers.

Bad night’s sleep can hamper body’s insulin use (Reuters)

Researchers said their findings suggest it may be no coincidence that while sleep duration has shortened in western societies in the past decade there has also been an increase in cases of “insulin resistance” and adult-onset diabetes. “Our findings show a short night of sleep has more profound effects on metabolic regulation than previously appreciated.” … Previous studies have found that several nights of poor sleep can result in impaired use of insulin, but Donga said this was the first study to examine the effects of only a single bad night’s sleep.

Many stories on this (Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, Medical News Today, Diabetes Health), but no comment (so far) from the NHS.

Trouble sleeping? Maybe it’s your iPad (CNNTech)

Using laptops and iPads just before bedtime may affect sleep. Very interesting.

Unlike paper books or e-book readers like the Amazon Kindle, which does not emit its own light, the iPad’s screen shines light directly into the reader’s eyes from a relatively close distance.

That makes the iPad and laptops more likely to disrupt sleep patterns than, say, a television sitting across the bedroom or a lamp that illuminates a paper book, both of which shoot far less light straight into the eye, researchers said. …

To make matters worse, our eyes are particularly sensitive to blue light, which is common during the day, but is less so in the evening. The fact that computer screens and phones tend to put out a lot of blue light could intensify the screen’s awakening effects, even if the light isn’t all that bright.

Several solutions are suggested, including computer programs that reduce blue light and orange sunglasses.

The article included this report on someone who tried turning out all the lights in his house (including the refrigerator bulb) at sunset:

Instead of falling asleep at midnight, Moyer’s head was hitting the pillow as early as 9 p.m. He felt so well-rested during the test, he said, that friends remarked on his unexpected morning perkiness.

“I had the experience, a number of times, just feeling kind of unreasonably happy for no reason. And it was the sleep,” he said. “Sure, you can get by with six or seven hours, but sleeping eight or nine hours — it’s a different state of mind.”

Resources:

Photo source: In the Pink

Nathan Yau, Data Underload #18 – Sleep Schedule, Flowing Data, April 18, 2010

Michael Terman, Sleeping (or Not) by the Wrong Clock, The New York Times, April 19, 2010

Peter Walker, Sleeping for less than six hours may cause early death, study finds, The Guardian, May 5, 2010

Lifespan linked to sleep, Behind the Headlines, May 5, 2010

Andrew Roche, Bad night’s sleep can hamper body’s insulin use, Reuters, May 5, 2010

John D. Sutter, Trouble sleeping? Maybe it’s your iPad, CNN Tech, May 13, 2010