Just a few nights of bad sleep upsets your brain - BBC News - BBC.com

A Lack Of Sleep Can Have A Very Damaging Effect On Your Brain

Night work 'throws body into chaos' - BBC News - BBC.com

Fragmented Sleep and Memory | Art of Memory Forum

Just a few nights of bad sleep upsets your brain
 

By Dr Michael Mosley    BBC  1 November 2017
  http://www.bbc.com/news/health-41816398

  Thanks to the clocks going back, many of us managed to grab a little bit of extra shut-eye over the weekend.
  And that's no bad thing because, as a country, we seem to be chronically sleep-deprived. According to the Sleep Council, the average Briton gets six-and-a-half hours sleep a night, which for most people is not enough.
  Lots of studies have shown that cutting back on sleep, deliberately or otherwise, can have a serious impact on our bodies.
  A few nights of bad sleep can really mess with our blood sugar control and encourage us to overeat. It even messes with our DNA.
  A few years ago, Trust Me I'm a Doctor did an experiment with Surrey University, asking volunteers to cut down on their sleep by an hour a night for a week.
  Dr Simon Archer, who helped run the experiment, found that getting an hour's less sleep a night affected the activity of a wide range of our volunteers' genes (around 500 in all) including some which are associated with inflammation and diabetes.
  Disturbed nights
  So the negative effects on our bodies of sleep deprivation are clear. But what effect does lack of sleep have on our mental health?
  To find out Trust Me teamed up with sleep scientists at the University of Oxford to run a small experiment.
  This time, we recruited four volunteers who normally sleep soundly. We fitted them with devices to accurately monitor their sleep and then, for the first three nights of our study, let them get a full, undisturbed eight hours.
  For the next three nights, however, we restricted their sleep to just four hours.
  A woman after a good night's sleepImage copyrightGETTY IMAGES
  Each day our volunteers filled in a psychological questionnaire designed to reveal any changes in their mood or emotions. They also kept video diaries. So what happened?
  Sarah Reeve, a doctoral student who ran the experiment for us was surprised by how quickly their mood changed.
  "There were increases in anxiety, depression and stress, also increases in paranoia and feelings of mistrust about other people", she said.
  "Given that this happened after only three nights of sleep deprivation, that is pretty impressive."
  Three of our four volunteers found the experience unpleasant, but one of them - Josh - claimed to be largely unaffected.
  "This week probably hasn't taken as much of a toll as I thought it would on me," he said. "I feel perfectly fine - not happy, sad, stressed or anything."
  Yet the tests we did on him showed something very different.
  His positive emotions fell sharply after two nights of disturbed sleep, while negative emotions began to rise.
  So even though he felt OK there were signs that he was, mentally, beginning to suffer.
  'Stuck' in negative thoughts
  The outcome of our small test reflects the results of a much bigger study looking at the impact of sleep deprivation on the mental health of students.
  Researchers recruited more than 3,700 university students from across the UK who had reported problems sleeping and randomised them into two groups.
  One group received six sessions of online CBT (cognitive behavioural therapy) aimed at improving their sleep; the other group got standard advice.
  Ten weeks into the study, the students who received CBT reported a halving in rates of insomnia, accompanied by significant improvements in scores for depression and anxiety, plus big reductions in paranoia and hallucinations.
  This is thought to be the largest ever randomised controlled trial of a psychological treatment for mental health, and it strongly suggests that insomnia can cause mental health problems rather than simply be a consequence of them.
  Daniel Freeman, professor of clinical psychology at Oxford University, who led that study thinks one of the reasons why sleep deprivation is so bad for our brains is because it encourages repetitive negative thinking.
  "We have more negative thoughts when we're sleep-deprived and we get stuck in them," he said.
  Reassuringly he doesn't think a few nights of bad sleep means you will become mentally ill. But he does think it increases the risk.
  "It's certainly not inevitable," he said. "In any one night, one in three people is having difficulty sleeping, perhaps 5% to 10% of the general population has insomnia, and many people get on with their lives and they cope with it. But it does raise the risk of a whole range of mental health difficulties."
  The positive side of this research is it implies that helping people get a good night's sleep will go a long way to helping improve our sense of well-being.
  Norbert Schwarz, a professor of psychology at the University of Southern California, has even put a figure on it.
  He claims: "Making $60,000 (£48,400) more in annual income has less of an effect on your daily happiness than getting one extra hour of sleep a night."
So, sleep well.
  Trust Me I'm a Doctor - Mental Health Special is on BBC2 at 21:00 GMT on Wednesday 1 November .

英研究发现：偶尔睡眠不足也会损伤大脑

   2017-11-02 16:18:00环球网 

   【环球网综合报道】据英国广播公司(BBC)11月1日报道，英国近日发布的一项研究显示，偶尔睡眠不足也会损伤大脑。
   报道称，10月份的最后一个星期日夏令时调回冬令时，很多人在这周末多睡了一小时。不过这并不是件坏事，因为英国人似乎长期处于睡眠严重不足的状态。据英国睡眠委员会调查显示,英国人平均每天只睡 6.5 小时，这对大多数人来说根本不够。
  大量研究表明，无论你是否有意缩短睡眠时间，睡眠不足都会使身体受到严重影响。
   报道称，长期睡眠不佳会影响血糖控制，诱使人们过度进食，甚至引起DNA异常。几年前，在英国纪录片《相信我，我是医生》中，英国萨里大学进行了一项试验，要求所有参与者每天缩短一小时睡眠时间，为期一周。负责这项试验的西蒙•阿彻(Simon Archer)博士发现，每晚少睡一小时会对这些参与者的基因活动产生极大的影响，比如与炎症、糖尿病有关的基因。
   由此，睡眠不足对身体造成的危害显而易见。不过，缺少睡眠对身体究竟有哪些伤害呢？为获得答案，该纪录片制作人与牛津大学的睡眠科学家们合作，进行了一项试验。
  这一次他们招募了4名睡眠质量高的志愿者，并给他们配戴设备。这些设备用于精准监测他们的睡眠情况。此外，在研究进行的前3天让他们每晚安然入睡8小时。而接下来的3天，我们将他们的睡眠时间限制到4小时。然后每天让这4位研究对象填写心理调查问卷，旨在发现他们的心理或情感变化。同时，他们也会录视频日记。
   一名叫莎拉•里夫斯(Sarah Reeve)的博士生参与了这次试验，她对各研究对象快速的心理变化感到震惊。她说，“不仅这4位参与者的焦虑、沮丧、压力情绪均有上升，而且多疑、不相信他人的情感也有所增加。” 她补充说，“想想看，他们只是连续3天睡眠不足，就出现了这些变化。这个结果令人吃惊。”
   此外，研究人员还就睡眠不足对学生造成的精神损伤进行了另一项大型调查研究。报道称，该项研究从英国各地招募了3700多名有睡眠问题的大学生，其研究结果和之前的小型研究结果一致。
   这项研究的负责人丹尼尔•弗里曼(Daniel Freeman)教授认为，睡眠不足损害大脑的原因之一是睡眠不足导致个人不断出现消极情绪。他说，“人们缺乏睡眠就会产生更多的消极情绪，然后沉溺于其中。”
令人放心的是，弗里曼教授认为，仅仅几天睡眠不佳并不意味人们会出现精神问题。但同时，他也表示，睡眠不足会增加患精神疾病的风险。
   这项研究的积极意义在于帮助人们睡个好觉也是在帮助人们提升幸福感。南加利福尼亚大学的心理学教授诺贝特•施瓦茨(Norbert Schwarz)先生甚至用数据来支撑这一观点。他说，“年收入在40万元以上并不能给予人们日常的幸福感，而每天多睡一小时才会让人们觉得幸福。”(实习编译：陈妍  审稿：田瑞哲)