Sleep loss and psychosis

Sleep deprivation has interesting affects on our mental and physical functioning. For example, sleep deprivation tends to temporarily improve the mood of patients with depression. In fact, too little sleep can result in a manic episode in patients with bipolar disorder. This study showed that one full night of sleep depression can produce symptoms that resemble psychosis. Psychosis is a mental disorder where the person "breaks" with reality, and is part of the disorder called schizophrenia. The most common symptoms are hallucinations and delusions. The results of the study about sleep deprivation are remarkable because the psychotic symptoms occurred after only one night of sleep loss. But don't worry, the psychotic symptoms resolved completely after sleeping the next night. The researchers theorize that psychosis from sleep loss may possibly be used to study mental illness and medications used to treat mental illness.

Sleep loss and metabolic syndrome

Metabolic syndrome is a chronic disorder characterized by abdominal obesity, impaired blood sugar metabolism, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure. Here is an article about sleep loss and it's affect on our metabolism. The article is a review of the observational studies that examine the relationship between sleep deprivation and metabolic syndrome. The authors discuss some of the studies that show that acute sleep loss is linked with obesity, type 2 diabetes, cholesterol problems, high blood pressure, and even death. Of note, some of the studies show increased rates of some of these issues when people report sleeping less than or more than a specified "normal" amount of sleep. So it's not just sleep loss that is linked to problems, including mortality.

The authors note that sleep loss can affect appetite, food intake, physical activity levels, and energy expenditure. Again, these are short term studies and the reasons for the changes are not entirely clear. Results sometimes are conflicting, such as some studies showing higher levels, and other studies showing lower levels of appetite regulating hormones.

The authors conclude that sleep loss may be a "promising target for the prevention, and probably the treatment, of the metabolic syndrome and its components." Perhaps that is the case, but telling people to get more sleep is unlikely to improve their metabolic syndrome. It's certainly more complicated than that. Diet and exercise are just as important, and most likely much more so than just getting more sleep. I concede that insufficient sleep may contribute a small part to metabolic syndrome, but more long term studies are needed. And I agree with the authors when they conclude that ongoing and future studies will show whether interventions to improve sleep duration and quality can prevent or even reverse adverse metabolic traits."

Sleep deprivation and food purchases

Another study linking diet and sleep. This article describes research with normal weight, healthy men after one night of sleep deprivation. Researchers gave the men about $50.00 to buy groceries the morning after a normal night's sleep or a night of sleep deprivation. After the night of sleep deprivation, the men bought more food and food that had more calories. The sleep-deprived men also had elevated levels of ghrelin, a hormone involved in appetite, but this did not correlate with food purchase behavior.

The take home message was to not go grocery shopping after a night of sleep loss. I wonder if the effect would taper for the many Americans who have chronic, partial sleep deprivation?

Sleep loss affects bone health

This article discusses research showing that sleep loss can affect bone health, including changes to bone marrow in animals. If the results are also true for humans, than it supports studies showing sleep loss increases inflammation and possibly artery clogging.