December 2012

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www.starlightbi.com

A Monthly Newsletter The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Sleep Apnea; Stress and Sleep Patterns Study; Children’s Sleep Patterns Related to Resources for Science Behavior - Study Learning: The Human Resources for Science Brain Learning: The Human Brain www.fi.edu/learn/brain www.fi.edu/learn/brain

Sleep & The Brain: Missing Sleep

www.science.how stuff works.com

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Issue No 3 - December 2012 Facts About Sleep You Didn’t Know

Dreams

The National Sleep Research Project

Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works

www.fi.edu/learn/brain

www.abe.net.au/science

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Marshall Brain, How Stuff Works

Intellectual growth should commence at birth & cease only at death ~ Albert Einstein

THE EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION

Adequate sleep is crucial to proper brain function – no less so than air, water, and food – but stress can modify sleep-wakefulness cycles.

Any amount of sleep deprivation will diminish mental performance, cautions Mark Mahowald, a professor of neurology at the University of Minnesota Medical School. "One complete night of sleep deprivation is as impairing in simulated driving tests as a legally intoxicating blood-alcohol level."

At the American Diabetes Association's annual meeting in June 2001, Eve Van Cauter, Ph.D., reported that people who regularly do not get enough sleep can become less sensitive to insulin. This increases their risk for diabetes and high blood pressure – both serious threats to the brain.

Previous work by Dr. Van Cauter, a professor of medicine at the University of Chicago, found that "metabolic and endocrine changes resulting from a significant sleep debt mimic many of the hallmarks of aging. We suspect that chronic sleep loss may not only hasten the onset but could also increase the severity of age-related ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity, and memory loss .

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Sleep Apnea A serious concern for the brain is obstructive sleep apnea, a Stress and Sleep disorder of interrupted breathing muscles relax during sleep.

Patterns - Study when It usually occurs in association Why do some people lose sleep with fat buildup or loss of muscle during periods of stress, while tone with aging. others seem to "sleep like a During an episode of obstructive baby"? Research suggests that the apnea, the person's effort to difference may be explained by inhale air creates suction that collapses the windpipe. This the ways people cope. blocks the air flow for ten At Tel Aviv University, Dr. Avi seconds to a minute, while the Sadeh conducted a study of sleeping person struggles to students. He found that those breathe. When the blood oxygen "who tended to focus on their level falls, the brain responds by emotions and anxiety during the awakening the person enough to high-stress period were more tighten the upper airway muscles likely to shorten their sleep, while and open the windpipe. The those who tended to ignore person may snort or gasp, then emotions and focus on tasks resume breathing – a cycle extended their sleep and shut repeated hundreds of times a themselves off from stress." night.

During a routine week of studies, Frequent awakenings due to and again during a highly sleep apnea may lead to stressful month, sleep patterns of personality changes such as 36 students (aged 22 to 32) were irritability or depression, and documented.

Sleep quality because it also deprives the improved or remained the same person of oxygen, it can lead to a for students who directed their decline in mental functioning and focus away from their emotions, an increased risk of stroke or but diminished for those who heart attack. fretted and brooded as a way to Loud snoring and excessive cope with stress. daytime sleepiness are symptoms of sleep apnea, but not everyone It is a common experience that a who snores has this disorder. problem difficult at night is resolved Also, frequent morning in the morning after the committee of sleep has worked on it ~ headaches may be a sign of sleep John Steinbeck apnea.

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Children’s Sleep Patterns Related to Behavior Study

A Northwestern University study of 500 preschoolers found that those who slept less than 10 hours in a 24-hour period (including daytime naps) were 25% more likely to misbehave.

They were consistently at greatest risk for "acting out" behavioral problems, such as aggression and oppositional or noncompliant behavior.

Research shows that sleep disturbances in children are not only associated with medical problems (allergies, ear infections, hearing problems), but also with psychiatric and social issues. Children who were aggressive, anxious, or depressed had more trouble falling and staying asleep. Although sleep problems usually decline as children get older, these early patterns are the best indicator of future sleep troubles.

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Sleep And The Brain - Missing Sleep

One way to understand why we sleep is to look at what happens when we don't get enough: •

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As you know if you have ever pulled an all-nighter, missing one night of sleep is not fatal. A person will generally be irritable during the next day and will either slow down (become tired easily) or will be totally wired because of adrenalin.

If a person misses two nights of sleep, it gets worse. Concentration is difficult, and attention span falls by the wayside. Mistakes increase.

After three days, a person will start to hallucinate and clear thinking is impossible. With continued wakefulness a person can lose grasp of reality. Rats forced to stay awake continuously will eventually die, proving that sleep is essential.

A person who gets just a few hours of sleep per night can experience many of the same problems over time. Two other things are known to happen during sleep. Growth hormone in children is secreted during sleep, and chemicals important to the immune system ring sleep. You can become more prone to disease if you don't get enough sleep, and a child's growth can be stunted by sleep deprivation. But the question remains -- why do we need to sleep? No one really knows, but there are all kinds of theories, including these: • • • •

Sleep gives the body a chance to repair muscles and other tissues, replace aging or dead cells, etc.

Sleep gives the brain a chance to organize and archive memories. Dreams are thought by some to be part of this process.

Sleep lowers our energy consumption, so we need three meals a day rather than four or five. Since we can't do anything in the dark anyway, we might as well "turn off" and save the energy.

According to ScienceNewsOnline: Napless cats awaken interest in adenosine, sleep may be a way of recharging the brain, using adenosine as a signal that the brain needs to rest: "Since adenosine secretion reflects brain cell activity, rising concentrations of this chemical may be how the organ gauges that it has been burning up its energy reserves and needs to shut down for a while."

Adenosine levels in the brain rise during wakefulness and decline during sleep.

What we all know is that, with a good night's sleep, everything looks and feels better in the morning.

Both the brain and the body are refreshed and ready for a new day.

Finish each day before you begin the next, and interpose a solid wall of sleep between the two. This you cannot do without temperance ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson Starlight Brain Integration, llc

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Naps

Why do cats nap? Because they can. But so can you.

Simply taking a nap may be one of the best things you can do to correct poor mental performance, especially after a stressful night of disrupted sleep, such as from sleep apnea or snoring. Naps can help make up for nighttime loss. In a study of Japanese men, a mid-afternoon nap had positive effects upon the maintenance of their daytime vigilance level.

The 20-minute nap improved performance level and their self-confidence.

Facts About Sleep You Probably Didn’t Know Taken from “40 Facts About Sleep You Probably Didn’t Know”

• The record for the longest period without sleep is 18 days, 21 hours, 40 minutes during a rocking chair marathon. The record holder reported hallucinations, paranoia, blurred vision, slurred speech and memory and concentration lapses.

• It's impossible to tell if someone is really awake without close medical supervision. People can take cat naps with their eyes open without even being aware of it.

• Anything less than five minutes to fall asleep at night means you're sleep deprived. The ideal is between 10 and 15 minutes, meaning you're still tired enough to sleep deeply, but not so exhausted you feel sleepy by day.

• A new baby typically results in 400-750 hours lost sleep for parents in the first year • One of the best predictors of insomnia later in life is the development of bad habits from having sleep disturbed by young children.

• The continuous brain recordings that led to the discovery of REM (rapid eye-movement) sleep were not done until 1953, partly because the scientists involved were concerned about wasting paper.

• No-one knows for sure if other species dream but some do have sleep cycles similar to humans.

• Elephants sleep standing up during non-REM sleep, but lie down for REM sleep.

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• Scientists have not been able to explain a 1998 study showing a bright light shone on the backs of human knees can reset the brain's sleep-wake clock.

• Seventeen hours of sustained wakefulness leads to a decrease in performance equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.

• Some sleeping tablets, such as barbiturates suppress REM sleep, which can be harmful over a long period.

• In insomnia following bereavement, sleeping pills can disrupt grieving.

• Tiny luminous rays from a digital alarm clock can be enough to disrupt the sleep cycle even if you do not fully wake. The light turns off a "neural switch" in the brain, causing levels of a key sleep chemical to decline within minutes.

• To drop off we must cool off; body temperature and the brain's sleep-wake cycle are closely linked.

That's why hot summer nights can cause a restless sleep. The blood flow mechanism that transfers core body heat to the skin works best between 18 and 30 degrees. But later in life, the comfort zone shrinks to between 23 and 25 degrees - one reason why older people have more sleep disorders.

• Most of what we know about sleep we've learned in the past 25 years.

• Experts say one of the most alluring sleep distractions is the 24-hour accessibility of the internet.

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Why do we have such crazy, kooky dreams? Why do we dream at all for that matter? According to Joel Achenbach in his book “Why Things Are”: The brain creates dreams through random electrical activity. Random is the key word here.

About every 90 minutes the brain stem sends electrical impulses throughout the brain, in no particular order or fashion. The analytic portion of the brain -- the forebrain -- then desperately tries to make sense of these signals. It is like looking at a Rorschach test, a random splash of ink on paper. The only way of comprehending it is by viewing the dream (or the inkblot) metaphorically, symbolically, since there's no literal message. This doesn't mean that dreams are meaningless or should be ignored. How our forebrains choose to "analyze" the random and discontinuous images may tell us something about ourselves, just as what we see in an inkblot can be revelatory. And perhaps there is a purpose to the craziness: Our minds may be working on deep-seated problems through these circuitous and less threatening metaphorical dreams.

Here are some other things you may have noticed about your dreams: • • • • •

Dreams tell a story. They are like a TV show, with scenes, characters and props.

Dreams are egocentric. They almost always involve you.

Dreams incorporate things that have happened to you recently. They can also incorporate deep wishes and fears.

A noise in the environment is often worked in to a dream in some way, giving some credibility to the idea that dreams are simply the brain's response to random impulses.

You usually cannot control a dream -- in fact, many dreams emphasize your lack of control by making it impossible to run or yell. (However, proponents of lucid dreaming try to help you gain control.)

Dreaming is important. In sleep experiments where a person is woken up every time he/she enters REM sleep, the person becomes increasingly impatient and uncomfortable over time.

All our dreams can come true, if we have the courage to pursue them ~ Walt Disney Starlight Brain Integration, LLC

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