Why stress and anxiety aren't always bad

Expecting to always feel happy and relaxed a recipe for disappointment

August 10, 2019

Science Daily/American Psychological Association

People generally think of stress and anxiety as negative concepts, but while both stress and anxiety can reach unhealthy levels, psychologists have long known that both are unavoidable -- and that they often play a helpful, not harmful, role in our daily lives, according to a presentation at the annual convention of the American Psychological Association.

"Many Americans now feel stressed about being stressed and anxious about being anxious. Unfortunately, by the time someone reaches out to a professional for help, stress and anxiety have already built to unhealthy levels," said Lisa Damour, PhD, a private-practice psychologist who presented at the meeting. Damour also writes a regular column for The New York Times and is author of the book "Under Pressure: Confronting the Epidemic of Stress and Anxiety in Girls."

Stress usually occurs when people operate at the edge of their abilities -- when they push themselves or are forced by circumstances to stretch beyond their familiar limits, according to Damour. It's also important to understand that stress can result from both bad and good events. For instance, being fired is stressful but so is bringing a baby home for the first time.

"It's important for psychologists to share our knowledge about stress with broad audiences: that stress is a given in daily life, that working at the edge of our abilities often builds those capacities and that moderate levels of stress can have an inoculating function, which leads to higher than average resilience when we are faced with new difficulties," she said.

Anxiety, too, gets an unnecessarily bad rap, according to Damour.

"As all psychologists know, anxiety is an internal alarm system, likely handed down by evolution, that alerts us to threats both external -- such as a driver swerving in a nearby lane -- and internal -- such as when we've procrastinated too long and it's time to get started on our work," said Damour.

Viewing anxiety as sometimes helpful and protective allows people to make good use of it. For example, Damour said she often tells the teenagers she works with in her practice to pay attention if they start to feel anxious at a party because their nerves may be alerting them to a problem.

"Similarly, if a client shares that she's worried about an upcoming test for which she has yet to study, I am quick to reassure her that she is having the right reaction and that she'll feel better as soon as she hits the books, " she said.

That doesn't mean that stress and anxiety can't be harmful, said Damour. Stress can become unhealthy if it is chronic (allowing for no possibility of recovery) or if it is traumatic (psychologically catastrophic).

"In other words, stress causes harm when it exceeds any level that a person can reasonably absorb or use to build psychological strength," she said. "Likewise, anxiety becomes unhealthy when its alarm makes no sense. Sometimes, people feel routinely anxious for no reason at all. At other times, the alarm is totally out of proportion to the threat, such as when a student has a panic attack over a minor quiz."

Untreated stress and anxiety can cause persistent misery but can also contribute to a host of additional psychological and medical symptoms, such as depression or an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, according to Damour.

"Anyone feeling overwhelmed by stress should, if possible, take measures to reduce his or her stress and/or seek help from a trained professional to learn stress management strategies. For the management of anxiety, some people find relief through workbooks that help them to evaluate and challenge their own irrational thoughts. If that approach isn't successful, or preferred, a trained professional should be consulted," said Damour. "In recent years, mindfulness techniques have also emerged as an effective approach to addressing both stress and anxiety."

Damour also urged psychologists to take an active role in providing counter-messaging to what she called "the happiness industry," or those wellness companies that are selling the idea that people should feel calm and relaxed most of the time.

"Psychologists are good at taking a more measured approach to thinking about the human experience. We want to support well-being, but don't set the bar at being happy nearly all of the time. That is a dangerous idea because it is unnecessary and unachievable," she said. "If you are under the impression that you should always be joyful, your day-to-day experience may ultimately turn out to be pretty miserable."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/08/190810151933.htm

Take a bath 90 minutes before bedtime to get better sleep

July 19, 2019

Science Daily/University of Texas at Austin

Biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin may have found a way for people to get better shuteye. Systematic review protocols -- a method used to search for and analyze relevant data -- allowed researchers to analyze thousands of studies linking water-based passive body heating, or bathing and showering with warm/hot water, with improved sleep quality. Researchers in the Cockrell School of Engineering found that bathing 1-2 hours before bedtime in water of about 104-109 degrees Fahrenheit can significantly improve your sleep.

"When we looked through all known studies, we noticed significant disparities in terms of the approaches and findings," said Shahab Haghayegh, a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Biomedical Engineering and lead author on the paper. "The only way to make an accurate determination of whether sleep can in fact be improved was to combine all the past data and look at it through a new lens."

The paper explaining their method was recently published in the journal Sleep Medicine Reviews.

In collaboration with the UT Health Science Center at Houston and the University of Southern California, the UT researchers reviewed 5,322 studies. They extracted pertinent information from publications meeting predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria to explore the effects of water-based passive body heating on a number of sleep-related conditions: sleep onset latency -- the length of time it takes to accomplish the transition from full wakefulness to sleep; total sleep time; sleep efficiency -- the amount of time spent asleep relative to the total amount of time spent in bed intended for sleep; and subjective sleep quality.

Meta-analytical tools were then used to assess the consistency between relevant studies and showed that an optimum temperature of between 104 and 109 degrees Fahrenheit improved overall sleep quality. When scheduled 1-2 hours before bedtime, it can also hasten the speed of falling asleep by an average of 10 minutes.

Much of the science to support links between water-based body heating and improved sleep is already well-established. For example, it is understood that both sleep and our body's core temperature are regulated by a circadian clock located within the brain's hypothalamus that drives the 24-hour patterns of many biological processes, including sleep and wakefulness.

Body temperature, which is involved in the regulation of the sleep/wake cycle, exhibits a circadian cycle, being 2-3 degrees Fahrenheit higher in the late afternoon/early evening than during sleep, when it is the lowest. The average person's circadian cycle is characterized by a reduction in core body temperature of about 0.5 to 1 F around an hour before usual sleep time, dropping to its lowest level between the middle and later span of nighttime sleep. It then begins to rise, acting as a kind of a biological alarm clock wake-up signal. The temperature cycle leads the sleep cycle and is an essential factor in achieving rapid sleep onset and high efficiency sleep.

The researchers found the optimal timing of bathing for cooling down of core body temperature in order to improve sleep quality is about 90 minutes before going to bed. Warm baths and showers stimulate the body's thermoregulatory system, causing a marked increase in the circulation of blood from the internal core of the body to the peripheral sites of the hands and feet, resulting in efficient removal of body heat and decline in body temperature. Therefore, if baths are taken at the right biological time -- 1-2 hours before bedtime -- they will aid the natural circadian process and increase one's chances of not only falling asleep quickly but also of experiencing better quality sleep.

The research team is now working with UT's Office of Technology Commercialization in the hopes of designing a commercially viable bed system with UT-patented Selective Thermal Stimulation technology. It allows thermoregulatory function to be manipulated on demand and dual temperature zone temperature control that can be tailored to maintain an individual's optimum temperatures throughout the night.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190719173554.htm

Biologist leads pioneering study on stress

July 19, 2019

Science Daily/Louisiana State University

A biologist at Louisiana State University conducted a pioneering research study that could help us to better understand the role of dopamine in stress resilience in humans through analyzing wild songbirds. This study could lead to increased prevention and treatment of stress-related disorders.

Dopamine is a chemical in the brain that is important for learning and memory. Department of Biological Sciences Assistant Professor Christine Lattin, and colleagues conducted this study of wild songbirds showing that dopamine is important in responding to chronic stressors, which can help wildlife conservation efforts in response to environmental stressors such as habitat destruction, natural disasters, extreme weather events and increases in predation.

Lattin, who is the lead author on the study published in Nature's Scientific Reports, applied a biomedical imaging technology called Positron Emission Tomography, or PET, scans that are used commonly on humans but rarely on wild animals to quantify dopamine receptors in house sparrows.

"This study is exciting because it is the first time PET scans have been used in wildlife to quantify dopamine receptors in the brain. Developing this technique has opened the door to being able to scan animals and release them back into the wild," she said. "We need to know how these wild birds are coping with stressors and responding to changes to the environment so we can understand how to best protect them."

In addition to the biomedical imaging, Lattin and colleagues tracked changes in the birds' body mass and hormone levels, and observed their behavior using a remotely operated video camera to study wild house sparrows' response to captivity over four weeks. The birds were scanned after being brought in to the lab and then again four weeks later. By using PET scans, they were able to study how the stress of captivity affected the birds over time.

They found that one type of dopamine receptor decreased over time during captivity, which suggests that birds became less resilient to stress over time. The greater the decrease in dopamine receptors, the more they exhibited anxiety-related behaviors such as feather ruffling. All of the wild birds also decreased body mass.

"These physiological, neurobiological and behavioral changes suggest that songbirds are not able to habituate to captivity, at least over short periods of time. It is very important that scientists studying stress in wildlife find more ways to study them in their natural habitat," Lattin said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190719173547.htm

Newly discovered neural pathway processes acute light to affect sleep

Different pathways process long-term circadian rhythms and short-term exposure to light

July 19, 2019

Science Daily/Northwestern University

Either to check the time or waste time, people often look at their smartphones after waking in the middle of the night.

While this acute burst of light does make it more difficult to fall back to sleep, a new Northwestern University study reports that it won't interfere with the body's overall circadian rhythms.

For the first time, researchers directly tested how short pulses of light are processed by the brain to affect sleep. They discovered that separate areas of the brain are responsible for short pulses versus long-term exposure to light. This finding challenges the widely accepted, long-held belief that all light information is relayed through the brain's suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN), which synchronizes the body's sleep/wake cycles.

"Prior to the widespread use of electricity, our exposure to light and darkness occurred in a very predictable pattern," said Northwestern's Tiffany Schmidt, who led the study. "But light has become very cheap. We all have smartphones, and their screens are very bright. We're all getting exposed to light at the wrong times of day. It's becoming more important to understand how these different types of light information are relayed to the brain."

The paper will publish July 23 in the journal eLife. Schmidt is an assistant professor of neurobiology in Northwestern's Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences. The study was carried out in collaboration with the laboratories of Fred Turek, the Charles and Emma Morrison Professor of Neurobiology in Weinberg, and Samer Hattar, section leader at the National Institute of Mental Health.

After light enters the eye, specialized neurons called intrinsically photosensitive retinal ganglion cells (ipRGCs) carry the light information to the brain. Before Northwestern's study, researchers widely believed that all light information went through the SCN, a densely packed area in the hypothalamus known as the body's "circadian pacemaker."

"Light information comes into the SCN, and that's what synchronizes all of the body's clocks to the light/dark cycle," Schmidt said. "This one master pacemaker makes sure everything is in sync."

To conduct the study, Schmidt and her team used a genetically modified mouse model that only had ipRGCs projecting to the SCN -- but no other brain regions. Because mice are nocturnal, they fall asleep when exposed to light. The mice in the experiment, however, stayed awake when exposed to short pulses of light at night. The mice's body temperature, which also correlates to sleep, also did not respond to the short-term light.

The mice maintained a normal sleep/wake cycle and normal rhythms in their body temperature, suggesting that their overall circadian rhythms remained intact. This helps explain why one night of restless sleep and smartphone gazing might make a person feel tired the following day but does not have a long-term effect on the body.

"If these two effects -- acute and long-term light exposure -- were driven through the same pathway, then every minor light exposure would run the risk of completely shifting our body's circadian rhythms," Schmidt said.

Now that researchers know that the light-response system follows multiple pathways, Schmidt said more work is needed to map these pathways. For one, it is still unknown what area of the brain is responsible for processing acute light.

After more is known, then researchers might understand how to optimize light exposure to increase alertness in those who need it, such as nurses, shift workers and emergency personnel, while mitigating the harmful effects of a wholesale shift in circadian rhythms.

"Light at the wrong time of day is now recognized as a carcinogen," Schmidt said. "We want people to feel alert while they are exposed to light without getting the health risks that are associated with shifted circadian rhythms, such as diabetes, depression and even cancer."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190719135543.htm

Music can be a viable alternative to medications in reducing anxiety before anesthesia

July 19, 2019

Science Daily/University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Music is a viable alternative to sedative medications in reducing patient anxiety prior to an anesthesia procedure, according to a Penn Medicine study published today in the journal Regional Anesthesia & Pain Medicine.

A peripheral nerve block procedure is a type of regional anesthesia -- done in the preoperative area under ultrasound guidance -- that blocks sensations of pain from a specific area of the body. The procedure is routinely performed for a variety of outpatient orthopedic surgeries, such as hip and knee arthroscopies and elbow or hand surgeries. To reduce anxiety, which can lead to prolonged recovery and an increase in postoperative pain, patients commonly take sedative medications, like midazolam, prior to the nerve block procedure. Yet, the medications can have side effects, including breathing issues and paradoxical effects like hostility and agitation. In this study, researchers found a track of relaxing music to be similarly effective to the intravenous form of midazolam in reducing a patient's anxiety prior to the procedure.

"Our findings show that there are drug-free alternatives to help calm a patient before certain procedures, like nerve blocks," said the study's lead author Veena Graff, MD, an assistant professor of Clinical Anesthesiology and Critical Care. "We've rolled out a new process at our ambulatory surgical center to provide patients who want to listen to music with access to disposable headphones. Ultimately, our goal is to offer music as an alternative to help patients relax during their perioperative period."

While research has shown music can help reduce a patient's anxiety prior to surgery, previous studies have primarily focused on music vs. an oral form of sedative medications, which are not routinely used in the preoperative setting. In this study -- the first to compare music medicine with an intravenous form of sedative medication -- researchers aimed to measure the efficacy of music in lowering a patient's anxiety prior to conducting a peripheral nerve block.

The team randomly assigned 157 adults to receive one of two options three minutes prior to the peripheral nerve block: either an injection of 1-2 mg of midazolam, or a pair of noise canceling headphones playing Marconi Union's "Weightless," -- an eight-minute song, created in collaboration with sound therapists, with carefully arranged harmonies, rhythms, and bass lines designed specifically to calm listeners down. Researchers evaluated levels of anxiety before and after the use of each method, and found similar changes in the levels of anxiety in both groups.

However, the team noted that patients who received midazolam reported higher levels of satisfaction with their overall experience and fewer issues with communication. Researchers attribute these findings to a number of factors, including the fact they used noise canceling headphones, didn't standardize the volume of music, and didn't allow patients to select the music.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190719082541.htm

Higher iron levels may boost heart health -- but also increase risk of stroke

July 16, 2019

Science Daily/Imperial College London

Scientists have helped unravel the protective -- and potentially harmful -- effect of iron in the body.

In a series of early-stage studies examining genetic data from over 500,000 people, a team of international scientists, led by Imperial College London, explored the role that iron plays in over 900 diseases.

The results reveal not only are naturally higher iron levels associated with a lower risk of high cholesterol levels, they also reduce the risk of arteries becoming furred with a build-up of fatty substances.

However the research, funded by the Wellcome Trust, also revealed the potential risks associated with naturally higher iron levels. These included a higher risk of blood clots related to slow blood flow blood -- a common cause of stroke -- and a higher risk of bacterial skin infection.

Dr Dipender Gill, lead author of the study from Imperial's School of Public Health, said: "Iron is a crucial mineral in the body, and is essential for carrying oxygen around the body. However, getting the right amount of iron in the body is a fine balance -- too little can lead to anemia, but too much can lead to a range of problems including liver damage."

Dr Gill cautioned the study only looked at naturally occurring iron levels in the body related to genetic variation between individuals -- and did not investigate the effect of taking iron supplements. He cautions anyone to speak to their doctor before starting -- or stopping -- iron supplements.

In the studies, the research team used a genetic technique called Mendelian Randomization to investigate the link between iron levels and the risk of disease. In this process, they sifted through genetic data from thousands of people to identify genetic 'variants' associated with naturally higher iron levels. They then investigated whether people who carry these variants, called single-nucleotide polymorphisms, also had higher or lower risk of a range of conditions and diseases, such as high cholesterol and atherosclerosis.

The results, published in the Journal of the American Heart Association and PLOS Medicine, revealed that naturally higher iron levels were associated with reduced risk of both high cholesterol and atherosclerosis.

Atherosclerosis is a potentially serious condition where the arteries become clogged with fatty substances. This can reduce the flow of blood in the arteries, and in some cases can lead to a block in flow to the brain (triggering a stroke), or the heart (triggering heart attack).

However, the picture was complicated by further findings from the same study, which revealed high iron levels may be linked to a risk of clots related to slow blood flow, which can increase the risk of certain types of stroke and the condition deep vein thrombosis.

And to add to this, the studies also revealed higher iron levels may also be linked to an increased risk of bacterial skin infections.

So what is going on?

Dr Gill said these findings now need to be investigated in patient trials. He explained: "These studies reveal new avenues of research, and present many questions. We are still unclear on how iron affects cholesterol levels, narrows arteries and form blood clots, but we have ideas. One possibility is that the lower cholesterol levels may be linked to the reduced risk of arteries becoming furred. Furthermore, higher iron levels may cause blood clots to arise when flow is reduced, possibly explaining the increased chance of clots."

He adds that previous research suggests that iron may also play a role in bacterial replication and virulence, which may be linked to the increased risk of skin infections.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190716193546.htm

Stress reduction benefits from petting dogs, cats

July 15, 2019

Science Daily/Washington State University

Just 10 minutes of interacting with cats and dogs produced a significant reduction in students' cortisol, a major stress hormone.

College is stressful. Students have classes, papers, and exams. But they also often have work, bills to pay, and so many other pressures common in modern life.

Many universities have instituted "Pet Your Stress Away" programs, where students can come in and interact with cats and/or dogs to help alleviate some of the strain.

Scientists at Washington State University have recently demonstrated that, in addition to improving students' moods, these programs can actually get "under the skin" and have stress-relieving physiological benefits.

"Just 10 minutes can have a significant impact," said Patricia Pendry, an associate professor in WSU's Department of Human Development. "Students in our study that interacted with cats and dogs had a significant reduction in cortisol, a major stress hormone."

Pendry published these findings with WSU graduate student Jaymie Vandagriff last month in AERA Open, an open access journal published by the American Educational Research Association.

This is the first study that has demonstrated reductions in students' cortisol levels during a real-life intervention rather than in a laboratory setting.

The study involved 249 college students randomly divided into four groups. The first group received hands-on interaction in small groups with cats and dogs for 10 minutes. They could pet, play with, and generally hang out with the animals as they wanted.

To compare effects of different exposures to animals, the second group observed other people petting animals while they waited in line for their turn. The third group watched a slideshow of the same animals available during the intervention, while the fourth group was "waitlisted."

Those students waited for their turn quietly for 10 minutes without their phones, reading materials, or other stimuli, but were told they would experience animal interaction soon.

Several salivary cortisol samples were collected from each participant, starting in the morning when they woke up. Once all the data was crunched from the various samples, the students who interacted directly with the pets showed significantly less cortisol in their saliva after the interaction. These results were found even while considering that some students may have had very high or low levels to begin with.

"We already knew that students enjoy interacting with animals, and that it helps them experience more positive emotions," Pendry said. "What we wanted to learn was whether this exposure would help students reduce their stress in a less subjective way. And it did, which is exciting because the reduction of stress hormones may, over time, have significant benefits for physical and mental health."

Now Pendry and her team are continuing this work by examining the impact of a four-week-long animal-assisted stress prevention program. Preliminary results are very positive, with a follow-up study showing that the findings of the recently published work hold up.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190715114302.htm

REM sleep silences the siren of the brain

Restless REM sleep a risk for many mental disorders?

July 11, 2019

Science Daily/Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience - KNAW

Upset by something unpleasant? We have all been there. Fortunately, it also passes. A new day, a new beginning. At least: if you have restful REM sleep. Researchers at the Netherlands Institute for Neuroscience discovered why you will be better able to bear tomorrow what you are distressed about today. And why that can go wrong.

Siren of the brain

Something frightening or unpleasant does not go unnoticed. In our brain, the so-called limbic circuit of cells and connections immediately becomes active. First and foremost, such experiences activate the amygdala. This nucleus of brain cells located deep in the brain can be regarded as the siren of the brain: attention! In order for the brain to function properly, the siren must also be switched off again. For this, a restful REM sleep, the part of the sleep with the most vivid dreams, turns out to be essential.

Good sleepers

The researchers placed their participants in a MRI scanner in the evening and presented a specific odor while they made them feel upset. The brain scans showed how the amygdala became active. The participants then spent the night in the sleep lab, while the activity of their sleeping brain was measured with EEG, and the specific odor was presented again on occasion. The next morning, the researchers tried to upset their volunteers again, in exactly the same way as the night before. But now they did not succeed so well in doing this. Brain circuits had adapted overnight; the siren of the brain no longer went off. The amygdala responded much less, especially in those who had had a lot of restful REM sleep and where meanwhile exposed to the specific odor.

Restless sleepers

However, among the participants were also people with restless REM sleep. Things went surprisingly different for them. Brain circuits had not adapted well overnight: the siren of the brain continued to sound the next morning. And while the nocturnal exposure to the odor helped people with restful REM sleep adapt, the same exposure only made things worse for people with restless REM sleep.

Neuronal connections weaken and strengthen

During sleep, 'memory traces' of experiences from the past day are spontaneously played back, like a movie. Among all remnants of the day, a specific memory trace can be activated by presenting the same odor as the one that was present during the experience while awake. Meanwhile, memory traces are adjusted during sleep: some connections between brain cells are strengthened, others are weakened. Restless REM sleep disturbs these nocturnal adjustments, which are essential for recovery and adaptation to distress.

Transdiagnostic importance

The findings were published on 11 July in the leading journal Current Biology. The finding can be of great importance for about two-thirds of all people with a mental disorder, as both restless REM sleep and a hyperactive amygdala are the hallmarks of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), anxiety disorders, depression and insomnia. People with PTSD carry their traumatic experience to the next day: people with an anxiety disorder take their greatest fear with them, people with depression their despair, and people with chronic insomnia their tension. Authors Rick Wassing, Frans Schalkwijk and Eus van Someren predict that treatment of restless REM sleep could transdiagnostically help to process emotional memories overnight and give them a better place in the brain.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190711141258.htm

Our brains appear uniquely tuned for musical pitch

July 11, 2019

Science Daily/NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke

Results of a study involving primates suggest that speech and music may have shaped the human brain's hearing circuits.

In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found that our brains are more sensitive to pitch, the harmonic sounds we hear when listening to music, than our evolutionary relative the macaque monkey. The study, funded in part by the National Institutes of Health, highlights the promise of Sound Health, a joint project between the NIH and the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts that aims to understand the role of music in health.

"We found that a certain region of our brains has a stronger preference for sounds with pitch than macaque monkey brains," said Bevil Conway, Ph.D., investigator in the NIH's Intramural Research Program and a senior author of the study published in Nature Neuroscience. "The results raise the possibility that these sounds, which are embedded in speech and music, may have shaped the basic organization of the human brain."

The study started with a friendly bet between Dr. Conway and Sam Norman-Haignere, Ph.D., a post-doctoral fellow at Columbia University's Zuckerman Institute for Mind, Brain, and Behavior and the first author of the paper.

At the time, both were working at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). Dr. Conway's team had been searching for differences between how human and monkey brains control vision only to discover that there are very few. Their brain mapping studies suggested that humans and monkeys see the world in very similar ways. But then, Dr. Conway heard about some studies on hearing being done by Dr. Norman-Haignere, who, at the time, was a post-doctoral fellow in the laboratory of Josh H. McDermott, Ph.D., associate professor at MIT.

"I told Bevil that we had a method for reliably identifying a region in the human brain that selectively responds to sounds with pitch," said Dr. Norman-Haignere.

That is when they got the idea to compare humans with monkeys. Based on his studies, Dr. Conway bet that they would see no differences.

To test this, the researchers played a series of harmonic sounds, or tones, to healthy volunteers and monkeys. Meanwhile, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) was used to monitor brain activity in response to the sounds. The researchers also monitored brain activity in response to sounds of toneless noises that were designed to match the frequency levels of each tone played.

At first glance, the scans looked similar and confirmed previous studies. Maps of the auditory cortex of human and monkey brains had similar hot spots of activity regardless of whether the sounds contained tones.

However, when the researchers looked more closely at the data, they found evidence suggesting the human brain was highly sensitive to tones. The human auditory cortex was much more responsive than the monkey cortex when they looked at the relative activity between tones and equivalent noisy sounds.

"We found that human and monkey brains had very similar responses to sounds in any given frequency range. It's when we added tonal structure to the sounds that some of these same regions of the human brain became more responsive," said Dr. Conway. "These results suggest the macaque monkey may experience music and other sounds differently. In contrast, the macaque's experience of the visual world is probably very similar to our own. It makes one wonder what kind of sounds our evolutionary ancestors experienced."

Further experiments supported these results. Slightly raising the volume of the tonal sounds had little effect on the tone sensitivity observed in the brains of two monkeys.

Finally, the researchers saw similar results when they used sounds that contained more natural harmonies for monkeys by playing recordings of macaque calls. Brain scans showed that the human auditory cortex was much more responsive than the monkey cortex when they compared relative activity between the calls and toneless, noisy versions of the calls.

"This finding suggests that speech and music may have fundamentally changed the way our brain processes pitch," said Dr. Conway. "It may also help explain why it has been so hard for scientists to train monkeys to perform auditory tasks that humans find relatively effortless."

Earlier this year, other scientists from around the U.S. applied for the first round of NIH Sound Health research grants. Some of these grants may eventually support scientists who plan to explore how music turns on the circuitry of the auditory cortex that make our brains sensitive to musical pitch.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190711111913.htm

A moderate dose of novel form of stress promotes longevity

July 10, 2019

Science Daily/Baylor College of Medicine

A newly described form of stress called chromatin architectural defect, or chromatin stress, triggers in cells a response that leads to a longer life. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine and the Houston Methodist Research Institute report in the journal Science Advances that moderate chromatin stress levels set off a stress response in yeast, the tiny laboratory worm C. elegans, the fruit fly and mouse embryonic stem cells, and in yeast and C. elegans the response promotes longevity. The findings suggest that chromatin stress response and the longevity it mediates may be conserved in other organisms, opening the possibility of new ways to intervene in human aging and promote longevity.

"Chromatin stress refers to disruptions in the way DNA is packed within the nucleus of the cell," said corresponding author Dr. Weiwei Dang, assistant professor of molecular and human genetics and the Huffington Center on Aging and member of the Dan L Duncan Comprehensive Cancer Center at Baylor. "One of the factors that influences chromatin structure is proteins called histones."

In the nucleus of cells, DNA wraps itself around histone proteins forming a 'beads-on-a-string' structure called chromatin. Other proteins bind along chromatin and the structure folds further into more complicated configurations. Everything involving DNA would have to deal with this chromatin structure, Dang explained. For example, when a particular gene is expressed, certain enzymes interact with the chromatin structure to negotiate access to the gene and translate it into proteins. When chromatin stress happens, disruption of the chromatin structure can lead to unwanted changes in gene expression, such as expression of genes when they are not supposed to or lack of gene expression when it should occur.

In this study, Dang and his colleagues worked in the lab with the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae to investigate how the dosage of histone genes would affect longevity.

They expected that yeast genetically engineered to carry fewer copies of certain histone genes than normal or control yeast would have chromatin changes that would result in the yeast living less than controls.

"Unexpectedly, we found that yeast with fewer copies of histone genes lived longer than the controls," said first author Ruofan Yu, research assistant in molecular and human genetics in the Dang lab.

Yeast with a moderately low dose of histone genes showed a moderate reduction of histone gene expression and significant chromatin stress. Their response to chromatin disruption was changes in the activation of a number of genes that eventually promoted longevity.

In previous work Dang and colleagues had shown that in aging cells chromatin structure progressively falls apart. Histone alterations, such as a decrease in their protein levels, are a characteristic of the aging process, but the researchers showed that if they compensated for this age-related decrease in histone levels by overexpressing certain histone genes they extended the lifespan of aging yeast cells. In this study they discovered that moderately reducing the number of copies of histone genes in young yeast also promoted longevity.

"We have identified a previously unrecognized and unexpected form of stress that triggers a response that benefits the organism," Yu said. "The mechanism underlying the chromatin stress response generated by moderate reduction of histone dosage is different from the one triggered by histone overexpression we had previously described, as shown by their different profiles of protein expression responses."

Dang, Yu and their colleagues found that chromatin stress also occurs in other organisms such as the laboratory worm C. elegans, the fruit fly and mouse embryonic stem cells, and in yeast and C. elegans the chromatin stress response promotes longevity.

"Our findings suggest that the chromatin stress response may also be present in other organisms. If present in humans, it would offer new possibilities to intervene in the aging process," Dang said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190710193923.htm

Neural sleep patterns emerged at least 450 million years ago

July 10, 2019

Science Daily/Stanford Medicine

Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that neural signatures in sleeping zebrafish are analogous to those of humans, suggesting that the brain activity evolved at least 450 million years ago, before any creatures crawled out of the ocean.

Scientists have known for more than 100 years that fish enter a sleeplike state, but until now they didn't know if their sleep resembled that of land animals.

The researchers found that when zebrafish sleep, they can display two states that are similar to those found in mammals, reptiles and birds: slow-wave sleep and paradoxical, or rapid eye movement, sleep. The discovery marks the first time these brain patterns have been recorded in fish.

"This moves the evolution of neural signatures of sleep back quite a few years," said postdoctoral scholar Louis Leung, PhD.

A paper describing the research will be published July 10 in Nature. Philippe Mourrain, PhD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, is the senior author. Leung is the lead author.

To study the zebrafish, common aquarium dwellers also known as danios, the researchers built a benchtop fluorescent light-sheet microscope capable of full-fish-body imaging with single-cell resolution. They recorded brain activity while the fish slept in an agar solution that immobilized them. They also observed the heart rate, eye movement and muscle tone of the sleeping fish using a fluorescence-based polysomnography that they developed.

They named the sleep states they observed "slow-bursting sleep," which is analogous to slow-wave sleep, and "propagating-wave sleep," analogous to REM sleep. Though the fish don't move their eyes during REM sleep, the brain and muscle signatures are similar. (Fish also don't close their eyes when they sleep, as they have no eyelids.)

Sleeping like the fish

The researchers found another similarity between fish and human sleep. By genetically disrupting the function of melanin-concentrating hormone, a peptide that governs the sleep-wake cycle, and observing neural expressions as the fish slept, the researchers determined that the hormone's signaling regulates the fish's propagating wave sleep the way it regulates REM sleep in mammals.

Other aspects of their sleep state are similar to those of land vertebrates, Mourrain said: The fish remain still, their muscles relax, their cardio-respiratory rhythms slow down and they fail to react when they're approached.

"They lose muscle tone, their heartbeat drops, they don't respond to stimuli -- the only real difference is a lack of rapid eye movement during REM sleep," Mourrain said, though he added, "The rapid movement of the eyes is not a good criterion of this state, and we prefer to call it paradoxical sleep, as the brain looks awake while one is asleep."

While scientists can't say for certain that all animals sleep, it appears to be a universal need among vertebrates and invertebrates. Animals will die if they are deprived of sleep long enough, and people who fail to receive adequate sleep suffer from mental problems such as memory lapses and impaired judgment, along with a higher risk of disorders such as obesity and high blood pressure.

The exact benefits of sleep are still a mystery, however. "It's an essential function," Mourrain said, "but we don't know precisely what it does."

He added that sleep disorders are linked to most neurological disorders such as autism spectrum disorders, Fragile X syndrome, and Alzheimer's and Parkinson's disease. "Sleep disturbances are an aggravating factor of these disorders," Mourrain said. It is critical to develop this animal model to study sleep functions at the cellular level, including neuronal connectivity and DNA repair, and in turn understand the pathophysiological consequences of sleep disruptions, he added.

The discovery means sleep research can be conducted on zebrafish, which are easy to study, in part because they're transparent. They breed quickly, are inexpensive to care for and are just over an inch long. Drug testing requires only the addition of chemicals to their water.

"Because the fish neural signatures are in essence the same as ours, we can use information about them to generate new leads for drug trials," Leung said. He added that mice, often a stand-in for human research, are nocturnal and a less relevant model for our sleep.

"As zebrafish are diurnal like humans, it's perhaps more biologically accurate to compare fish sleep with humans' for some aspects," Leung said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190710132015.htm

Heart risk raised by sitting in front of the TV, not by sitting at work

June 26, 2019

Science Daily/Columbia University Irving Medical Center

Sitting for long periods of time has been linked to increased risk of cardiovascular disease and early death, but a new study suggests that not all types of sitting are equally unhealthy.

The study, led by researchers at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons, found that leisure-time sitting (while watching TV) -- but not sitting at work -- was associated with a greater risk of heart disease and death among the study's more than 3,500 participants. The study also found that moderate-to-vigorous exercise may reduce or eliminate the harmful effects of sedentary television watching.

"Our findings show that how you spend your time outside of work may matter more when it comes to heart health," study author Keith M. Diaz, PhD, assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons and a certified exercise physiologist. "Even if you have a job that requires you to sit for long periods of time, replacing the time you spend sitting at home with strenuous exercise could reduce your risk of heart disease and death."

The study was published online today in the Journal of the American Heart Association.

Background

A growing body of research shows that people who are sedentary -- especially those who sit for long, uninterrupted periods of time -- have a higher risk of cardiovascular disease and death.

But most previous studies did not follow people over time, making it difficult to draw conclusions about the relationship between sedentary behavior and health risk. These studies have included mainly people of European descent rather than African Americans, a group that has a higher risk of heart disease compared with whites. Previous studies also measured physical activity using an activity monitor, which is unable to distinguish between different types of sedentary behavior.

What the Study Found

The new study followed 3,592 people, all African Americans, living in Jackson, Miss., for almost 8.5 years. The participants reported how much time they typically spent sitting while watching TV and during work. They also reported how much time they spent exercising in their down time.

The participants who had logged the most TV-viewing hours (4 or more hours a day) had a 50% greater risk of cardiovascular events and death compared to those who watched the least amount of TV (less than 2 hours a day).

In contrast, those who sat the most at work had the same health risks as those who sat the least.

Even for the most dedicated TV watchers, moderate to vigorous physical activity -- such as walking briskly or doing aerobic exercise -- reduced the risk of heart attacks, stroke, or death. No increased risk of heart attack, stroke, or death was seen in people who watched TV for 4 or more hours a day and engaged in 150 minutes or more of exercise a week.

Why Does the Type of Sitting Matter?

In a previous study, Diaz found that excessive sitting is linked to worse health outcomes, and even more so when sitting occurs in lengthy, uninterrupted bouts.

"It may be that most people tend to watch television for hours without moving, while most workers get up from their desk frequently," Diaz says. "The combination of eating a large meal such as dinner and then sitting for hours could also be particularly harmful."

"More research is needed, but it's possible that just taking a short break from your TV time and going for a walk may be enough to offset the harm of leisure-time sitting," adds Diaz. "Almost any type of exercise that gets you breathing harder and your heart beating faster may be beneficial."

And although occupational sitting was less problematic, Diaz notes that the same approach to movement applies at work. "We recognize that it isn't easy for some workers, like truck drivers, to take breaks from sitting, but everyone else should make a regular habit of getting up from their desks. For those who can't, our findings show that what you do outside of work may be what really counts."

The researchers suspect that the study's findings may be applicable to anyone who is sedentary, even though the study focused on African Americans.

What's Next

In future studies, Diaz will examine why TV watching may be the most harmful sedentary behavior and whether the timing of sedentary behavior around dinner time could be a contributing factor.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190626125045.htm

Settling the debate on serotonin's role in sleep

The brain chemical is necessary to get enough sleep

June 24, 2019

Science Daily/California Institute of Technology

New research finds that serotonin is necessary for sleep, settling a long-standing controversy.

Serotonin is a multipurpose molecule found throughout the brain, playing a role in memory, cognition, and feelings of happiness and other emotions. In particular, researchers have long debated serotonin's role in sleep: Does serotonin promote sleep, or its opposite, wakefulness?

Now, Caltech scientists have found that serotonin is necessary for sleep in zebrafish and mouse models.

A paper describing the research appears online on June 24 in the journal Neuron. The work is a collaboration between the Caltech laboratories of David Prober, professor of biology and affiliated faculty member of the Tianqiao and Chrissy Chen Institute for Neuroscience at Caltech; and Viviana Gradinaru (BS '05), professor of neuroscience and biological engineering, Heritage Medical Research Institute Investigator, and director of the Chen Institute's Center for Molecular and Cellular Neuroscience.

Previous studies on serotonin and sleep have yielded conflicting results. Some research showed that serotonin promotes sleep, but other work showed that serotonin-producing neurons were most active and releasing the chemical during wakefulness.

In order to settle this debate, the Caltech team focused on a region called the raphe nuclei, which has the brain's main population of serotonin-producing (or serotonergic) neurons. The raphe are evolutionarily ancient structures found in the brain stem of a wide range of organisms from fish to humans, and they are responsible for both manufacturing and sending out serotonin to other brain regions.

Led by senior postdoctoral scholar Grigorios Oikonomou of the Prober lab, the research began using zebrafish, tiny transparent fish that are widely used as a model to study sleep. Like humans, zebrafish larvae are diurnal -- meaning that their sleep occurs mostly at night.

First, the researchers genetically mutated zebrafish so that their raphe did not produce serotonin. These mutant fish, the team found, slept about half as much as normal fish. In another experiment, the researchers removed the raphe altogether, and these fish also slept much less than usual.

"This suggests that serotonin produced by the raphe is required for the fish to get normal amounts of sleep," says Oikonomou.

In a third set of experiments, zebrafish were genetically modified so that their raphe could be activated by light. Shining a light on these fish put them to sleep, implying that activation of the raphe induces sleep. This effect requires serotonin, because activating the raphe in fish that do not synthesize serotonin had no effect on sleep.

The team from the Prober laboratory then collaborated with scientists in the Gradinaru laboratory to continue the serotonin studies in mice. Led by graduate student Michael Altermatt, the team examined serotonergic neurons in the mouse raphe and confirmed that they are indeed mostly active while the animals are awake and less active during sleep, in agreement with previous studies.

As Prober's lab did in zebrafish, the Gradinaru lab's team genetically removed the serotonergic neurons in the mouse raphe and found that the mice slept less than usual. Stimulating these neurons with light also put the mice to sleep but only when the light was administered at frequencies that are consistent with the naturally occurring baseline activity pattern of these neurons during wakefulness.

"There's an obvious paradox here: stimulating the neurons causes the animals to sleep, and yet the neurons are normally active during the day," says Altermatt.

Oikonomou explains: "There are two main factors that control sleep. One is the circadian clock -- when it is light during the day, the body is awake, and when it gets dark, the body knows to sleep. The other factor is called homeostatic sleep pressure. When you wake up in the morning, you have just gotten rest, and so you're energetic. As the day goes on, you get tired and sleepy, so there is a building of pressure to sleep. If you don't sleep that night, your sleep pressure is even higher, and you are even more tired the next day even though it's light outside, and your circadian clock dictates that you should be awake."

"The theory is that, in order to sleep, you need to have high sleep pressure and the circadian clock needs to be aligned with the time of day -- nighttime for diurnal creatures like us and daytime for nocturnal animals."

The researchers theorize that the firing of neurons in the raphe and their release of serotonin is a way for the brain to build up sleep pressure. Indeed, they found that zebrafish lacking serotonin as well as mice with ablated raphe show reduced sleep pressure.

While the studies were in animal models, the raphe region and its production of serotonin are similar in human brains. The research can contribute to explanations of some sleep-related side effects of common antidepressant drugs that increase serotonin levels in the brain.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190624173822.htm

'Goldilocks' neurons promote REM sleep

June 19, 2019

Science Daily/University of Bern

It has been a mystery why REM sleep, or dream sleep, increases when the room temperature is 'just right'. Neuroscientists show that melanin-concentrating hormone neurons within the hypothalamus increase REM sleep when the need for body temperature defense is minimized, such as when sleeping in a warm and comfortable room temperature. These data have important implications for the function of REM sleep.

Every night while sleeping, we cycle between two very different states of sleep. Upon falling asleep, we enter non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) sleep where our breathing is slow and regular and movement of our limbs or eyes are minimal. Approximately 90 minutes later, how-ever, we enter rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. This is a paradoxical state where our breathing becomes fast and irregular, our limbs twitch, and our eyes move rapidly. In REM sleep, our brain is highly active, but we also become paralyzed and we lose the ability to thermoregulate or maintain our constant body temperature. "This loss of thermoregulation in REM sleep is one of the most peculiar aspects of sleep, particularly since we have finely-tuned mechanisms that control our body temperature while awake or in non-REM sleep," says Markus Schmidt of the Department for BioMedical Research (DBMR) of the University of Bern, and the Department of Neurology, Inselspital, Bern University Hospital. On the one hand, the findings confirm a hypothesis proposed earlier by Schmidt, senior author of the study, and on the other hand represent a breakthrough for sleep medicine. The paper was published in Current Biology and highlighted by the editors with a comment.

A control mechanism saving energy

The need to maintain a constant body temperature is our most expensive biological function. Panting, piloerection, sweating, or shivering are all energy consuming body reactions. In his hypothesis, Markus Schmidt suggested that REM sleep is a behavioral strategy that shifts energy resources away from costly thermoregulatory defense toward, instead, the brain to enhance many brain functions. According to this energy allocation hypothesis of sleep, mammals have evolved mechanisms to increase REM sleep when the need for defending our body temperature is minimized or, rather, to sacrifice REM sleep when we are cold. "My hypothesis predicts that we should have neural mechanisms to dynamically modulate REM sleep expression as a function of our room temperature," says Schmidt. Neuroscientists at the DBMR at the University of Bern and the Department of Neurology at Inselspital, Bern University Hospital, now confirmed his hypothesis and found neurons in the hypothalamus that specifically increase REM sleep when the room temperature is "just right."

REM sleep promoting neurons

The researchers discovered that a small population of neurons within the hypothalamus, called melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) neurons, play a critical role in how we modulate REM sleep expression as a function of ambient (or room) temperature. The researchers showed that mice will dynamically increase REM sleep when the room temperature is warmed to the high end of their comfort zone, similar to what has been shown for human sleep. However, genetically engineered mice lacking the receptor for MCH are no longer able to increase REM sleep during warming, as if they are blind to the warming temperature. The authors used optogenetics technics to specifically turn on or off MCH neurons using a laser light time locked to the temperature warming periods. Their work confirms the necessity of the MCH system to increase REM sleep when the need for body temperature control is minimized.

Breakthrough for sleep medicine

This is the first time that an area of the brain has been found to control REM sleep as a function of room temperature. "Our discovery of these neurons has major implications for the control of REM sleep," says Schmidt. "It shows that the amount and timing of REM sleep are finely tuned with our immediate environment when we do not need to thermoregulate. It also con-firms how dream sleep and the loss of thermoregulation are tightly integrated."

REM sleep is known to play an important role in many brain functions such as memory consolidation. REM sleep comprises approximately one quarter of our total sleep time. "These new data suggest that the function of REM sleep is to activate important brain functions specifically at times when we do not need to expend energy on thermoregulation, thus optimizing use of energy resources," says Schmidt.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190619111248.htm

Medical proof a vacation is good for your heart

June 20, 2019

Science Daily/Syracuse University

New research shows that using, instead of losing, your vacation time can be beneficial to your heart health.

We all treasure our vacation time and look forward to that time when we can get away from work. With the arrival of summer comes the prime vacation season and along with it one more reasons to appreciate our vacation time: the value to our heart health. While there has been much anecdotal evidence about the benefits of taking a vacation from work, a new study by Syracuse University professors Bryce Hruska and Brooks Gump and other researchers reveals the benefits of a vacation for our heart health.

"What we found is that people who vacation more frequently in the past 12 months have a lowered risk for metabolic syndrome and metabolic symptoms," says Bryce Hruska, an assistant professor of public health at Syracuse University's Falk College of Sport and Human Dynamics. "Metabolic syndrome is a collection of risk factors for cardiovascular disease. If you have more of them you are at higher risk of cardiovascular disease. This is important because we are actually seeing a reduction in the risk for cardiovascular disease the more vacationing a person does. Because metabolic symptoms are modifiable, it means they can change or be eliminated."

Bottom line: A person can reduce their metabolic symptoms -- and therefore their risk of cardiovascular disease -- simply by going on vacation.

Hruska says that we are still learning what it is about vacations that make them beneficial for heart health, but at this point, what we do know that it is important for people to use the vacation time that is available to them. "One of the important takeaways is that vacation time is available to nearly 80 percent of full-time employees, but fewer than half utilize all the time available to them. Our research suggests that if people use more of this benefit, one that's already available to them, it would translate into a tangible health benefit."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190620153443.htm

One day of employment a week is all we need for mental health benefits

June 18, 2019

Science Daily/University of Cambridge

Latest research finds up to eight hours of paid work a week significantly boosts mental health and life satisfaction. However, researchers found little evidence that any more hours -- including a full five-day week - provide further increases in wellbeing. They argue the findings show some paid work for the entire adult population is important, but rise of automation may require shorter hours for all so work can be redistributed.

As automation advances, predictions of a jobless future have some fearing unrest from mass unemployment, while others imagine a more contented work-free society.

Aside from economic factors, paid employment brings other benefits -- often psychological -- such as self-esteem and social inclusion. Now, researchers at the universities of Cambridge and Salford have set out to define a recommended "dosage" of work for optimal wellbeing.

They examined how changes in working hours were linked to mental health and life satisfaction in over 70,000 UK residents between 2009 and 2018*.

The study, published today in the journal Social Science and Medicine, shows that when people moved from unemployment or stay-at-home parenting into paid work of eight hours or less a week, their risk of mental health problems reduced by an average of 30%.

Yet researchers found no evidence that working any more than eight hours provided further boosts to wellbeing. The full-time standard of 37 to 40 hours was not significantly different to any other working time category when it came to mental health.

As such, they suggest that to get the mental wellbeing benefits of paid work, the most "effective dose" is only around one day a week -- as anything more makes little difference.

"We have effective dosage guides for everything from Vitamin C to hours of sleep in order to help us feel better, but this is the first time the question has been asked of paid work," said study co-author Dr Brendan Burchell, a sociologist from Cambridge University who leads the Employment Dosage research project.

"We know unemployment is often detrimental to people's wellbeing, negatively affecting identity, status, time use, and sense of collective purpose. We now have some idea of just how much paid work is needed to get the psychosocial benefits of employment -- and it's not that much at all."

Supporting the unemployed in a future with limited work is the subject of much policy discussion e.g. universal basic income. However, researchers argue that employment should be retained across adult populations, but working weeks dramatically reduced for work to be redistributed.

"In the next few decades we could see artificial intelligence, big data and robotics replace much of the paid work currently done by humans," said Dr Daiga Kamer?de, study first author from Salford University and Employment Dosage researcher.

"If there is not enough for everybody who wants to work full-time, we will have to rethink current norms. This should include the redistribution of working hours, so everyone can get the mental health benefits of a job, even if that means we all work much shorter weeks."

"Our findings are an important step in thinking what the minimum amount of paid work people might need in a future with little work to go round," she said.

The study used data from the UK Household Longitudinal Study to track the wellbeing of 71,113 individuals between the ages of 16 and 64 as they changed working hours over the nine-year period. People were asked about issues such as anxiety and sleep problems to gauge mental health.

Researchers also found that self-reported life satisfaction in men increased by around 30% with up to eight hours of paid work, although women didn't see a similar jump until working 20 hours.

They note that "the significant difference in mental health and wellbeing is between those with paid work and those with none," and that the working week could be shortened considerably "without a detrimental effect on the workers' mental health and wellbeing."

The team offer creative policy options for moving into a future with limited work, including "five-day weekends," working just a couple of hours a day, or increasing annual holiday from weeks to months -- even having two months off for every month at work.

They also argue that working hour reduction and redistribution could improve work-life balance, increase productivity, and cut down CO2 emissions from commuting. However, they point out that reduction of hours would need to be for everyone, to avoid increasing socioeconomic inequalities.

"The traditional model, in which everyone works around 40 hours a week, was never based on how much work was good for people. Our research suggests that micro-jobs provide the same psychological benefits as full-time jobs," said co-author and Cambridge sociologist Senhu Wang.

"However, the quality of work will always be crucial. Jobs where employees are disrespected or subject to insecure or zero-hours contracts do not provide the same benefits to wellbeing, nor are they likely to in the future."

Dr Burchell added: "If the UK were to plough annual productivity gains into reduced working hours rather than pay rises, the normal working week could be four days within a decade."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190618192030.htm

Your circle of friends is more predictive of your health

June 17, 2019

Science Daily/University of Notre Dame

To get a better reading on your overall health and wellness, you'd be better off looking at the strength and structure of your circle of friends, according to a new study.

Wearable fitness trackers have made it all too easy for us to make assumptions about our health. We may look to our heart rate to determine whether we really felt the stress of that presentation at work this morning, or think ourselves healthier based on the number of steps we've taken by the end of the day.

But to get a better reading on your overall health and wellness, you'd be better off looking at the strength and structure of your circle of friends, according to a new study in the Public Library of Science journal, PLOS ONE.

While previous studies have shown how beliefs, opinions and attitudes spread throughout our social networks, researchers at the University of Notre Dame were interested in what the structure of social networks says about the state of health, happiness and stress.

"We were interested in the topology of the social network -- what does my position within my social network predict about my health and well-being?" said Nitesh V. Chawla, Frank M. Freimann Professor of Computer Science and Engineering at Notre Dame, director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Network Science and Applications and a lead author of the study. "What we found was the social network structure provides a significant improvement in predictability of wellness states of an individual over just using the data derived from wearables, like the number of steps or heart rate."

For the study, participants wore Fitbits to capture health behavior data -- such as steps, sleep, heart rate and activity level -- and completed surveys and self-assessments about their feelings of stress, happiness and positivity. Chawla and his team then analyzed and modeled the data, using machine learning, alongside an individual's social network characteristics including degree, centrality, clustering coefficient and number of triangles. These characteristics are indicative of properties like connectivity, social balance, reciprocity and closeness within the social network. The study showed a strong correlation between social network structures, heart rate, number of steps and level of activity.

Social network structure provided significant improvement in predicting one's health and well-being compared to just looking at health behavior data from the Fitbit alone. For example, when social network structure is combined with the data derived from wearables, the machine learning model achieved a 65 percent improvement in predicting happiness, 54 percent improvement in predicting one's self-assessed health prediction, 55 percent improvement in predicting positive attitude, and 38 percent improvement in predicting success.

"This study asserts that without social network information, we only have an incomplete view of an individual's wellness state, and to be fully predictive or to be able to derive interventions, it is critical to be aware of the social network structural features as well," Chawla said.

The findings could provide insight to employers who look to wearable fitness devices to incentivize employees to improve their health. Handing someone a means to track their steps and monitor their health in the hopes that their health improves simply may not be enough to see meaningful or significant results. Those employers, Chawla said, would benefit from encouraging employees to build a platform to post and share their experiences with each other. Social network structure helps complete the picture of health and well-being.

"I do believe these incentives that we institute at work are meaningful, but I also believe we're not seeing the effect because we may not be capitalizing on them the way we should," Chawla said. "When we hear that health and wellness programs driven by wearables at places of employment aren't working, we should be asking, is it because we're just taking a single dimensional view where we just give the employees the wearables and forget about it without taking the step to understand the role social networks play in health?"

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190617110533.htm

Two hours a week is key dose of nature for health and wellbeing

June 13, 2019

Science Daily/University of Exeter

Spending at least two hours a week in nature may be a crucial threshold for promoting health and wellbeing, according to a new large-scale study.

Research led by the University of Exeter, published in Scientific Reports and funded by NIHR, found that people who spend at least 120 minutes in nature a week are significantly more likely to report good health and higher psychological wellbeing than those who don't visit nature at all during an average week. However, no such benefits were found for people who visited natural settings such as town parks, woodlands, country parks and beaches for less than 120 minutes a week.

The study used data from nearly 20,000 people in England and found that it didn't matter whether the 120 minutes was achieved in a single visit or over several shorter visits. It also found the 120 minute threshold applied to both men and women, to older and younger adults, across different occupational and ethnic groups, among those living in both rich and poor areas, and even among people with long term illnesses or disabilities.

Dr Mat White, of the University of Exeter Medical School, who led the study, said: "It's well known that getting outdoors in nature can be good for people's health and wellbeing but until now we've not been able to say how much is enough. The majority of nature visits in this research took place within just two miles of home so even visiting local urban greenspaces seems to be a good thing. Two hours a week is hopefully a realistic target for many people, especially given that it can be spread over an entire week to get the benefit."

There is growing evidence that merely living in a greener neighbourhood can be good for health, for instance by reducing air pollution. The data for the current research came from Natural England's Monitor of Engagement with the Natural Environment Survey, the world's largest study collecting data on people's weekly contact with the natural world.

Co-author of the research, Professor Terry Hartig of Uppsala University in Sweden said: "There are many reasons why spending time in nature may be good for health and wellbeing, including getting perspective on life circumstances, reducing stress, and enjoying quality time with friends and family. The current findings offer valuable support to health practitioners in making recommendations about spending time in nature to promote basic health and wellbeing, similar to guidelines for weekly physical."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190613095227.htm

Night owls can 'retrain' their body clocks to improve mental well-being and performance

June 10, 2019

Science Daily/University of Birmingham

A simple tweak to the sleeping patterns of 'night owls' -- people with extreme late sleeping and waking habits -- could lead to significant improvements in sleep/wake timings, improved performance in the mornings, better eating habits and a decrease in depression and stress.

New international research by the Universities of Birmingham and Surrey in the UK, and Monash University in Australia, showed that, over a three-week period, it was possible to shift the circadian rhythm of 'night owls' using non-pharmacological and practical interventions.

The study, recently published in Sleep Medicine, showed participants were able to bring forward their sleep/wake timings by two hours, while having no negative effect on sleep duration. In addition, participants reported a decrease in feelings of depression and stress, as well as in daytime sleepiness.

"Our research findings highlight the ability of a simple non-pharmacological intervention to phase advance 'night owls', reduce negative elements of mental health and sleepiness, as well as manipulate peak performance times in the real world," lead researcher Dr Elise Facer-Childs from Monash University's Turner Institute for Brain and Mental Health said.

'Night owls' are individuals whose internal body clock dictates later-than-usual sleep and wake times -- in this study participants had an average bedtime of 2.30am and wake-up time of 10.15am.

Disturbances to the sleep/wake system have been linked to a variety of health issues, including mood swings, increased morbidity and mortality rates, and declines in cognitive and physical performance.

"Having a late sleep pattern puts you at odds with the standard societal days, which can lead to a range of adverse outcomes -- from daytime sleepiness to poorer mental wellbeing," study co-author Dr Andrew Bagshaw from the University of Birmingham said.

"We wanted to see if there were simple things people could do at home to solve this issue. This was successful, on average allowing people to get to sleep and wake up around two hours earlier than they were before. Most interestingly, this was also associated with improvements in mental wellbeing and perceived sleepiness, meaning that it was a very positive outcome for the participants. We now need to understand how habitual sleep patterns are related to the brain, how this links with mental wellbeing and whether the interventions lead to long-term changes."

Twenty-two healthy individuals participated in the study. For a period of three weeks participants in the experimental group were asked to:

·     Wake up 2-3 hours before regular wake up time and maximise outdoor light during the mornings.

·     Go to bed 2-3 hours before habitual bedtime and limit light exposure in the evening.

·     Keep sleep/wake times fixed on both work days and free days.

·     Have breakfast as soon as possible after waking up, eat lunch at the same time each day, and refrain from eating dinner after 7pm.

The results highlighted an increase in cognitive (reaction time) and physical (grip strength) performance during the morning when tiredness is often very high in 'night owls', as well as a shift in peak performance times from evening to afternoon. It also increased the number of days in which breakfast was consumed and led to better mental well-being, with participants reporting a decrease in feelings of stress and depression.

"Establishing simple routines could help 'night owls' adjust their body clocks and improve their overall physical and mental health. Insufficient levels of sleep and circadian misalignment can disrupt many bodily processes putting us at increased risk of cardiovascular disease, cancer and diabetes," Professor Debra Skene from the University of Surrey said.

Dr Facer-Childs said 'night owls', compared to 'morning larks', tended to be more compromised in our society due to having to fit to work/school schedules that are out of sync with their preferred patterns.

"By acknowledging these differences and providing tools to improve outcomes we can go a long way in a society that is under constant pressure to achieve optimal productivity and performance," she said.

This intervention could also be applied within more niche settings, such as industry or within sporting sectors, which have a key focus on developing strategies to maximise productivity and optimise performance at certain times and in different conditions.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/06/190610100622.htm

How to Create Your Ideal Sleep-Friendly Bedroom (independent submission)

Submitted by: Mira Rakicevic miroslava@miroslavarakicevic.me

How much sleep do you get in 24 hours? Six? Eight? Less? It is scientifically proven that your sleep environment plays a vital part in the quality of your sleep. Therefore, your bedroom environment is relative to the quality and quantity of sleep. A slight change in the bedroom arrangement, lighting, and a few adjustments to the air circulation go a long way towards helping you sleep better. 

Think relaxed colors

Your bedroom is your own personal space. That’s why you get satisfaction from painting and decorating it to suit your unique personalities. However, you need to strike a balance between the quality of your sleep and the bedroom design.

Our minds are highly polychromatic and are stimulated more by bright colors than dull ones. Therefore, colors such as red and bright orange will work against healthy sleeping patterns. Instead, consider painting your bedroom with soothing colors such as blue, green, yellow, grey, and silver.

Dim the lights

Due to our polychromatic nature, try to dim any bright light that may keep you from sleeping. More so, it is advisable to switch off any ambient lighting a few hours before you sleep. This helps the brain to get ready for sleep by stimulating the hypothalamus to release melatonin, the hormone responsible for sleep.

Additionally, if you enjoy a nice read before you sleep, make use of shaded bedside lamps. Such lights illuminate a focused area while keeping the rest of your room dim enough to stimulate sleep.

Choose the right mattress

Do you ever wake up and can’t wait to get out of bed? Or do you wake up feeling extremely tired or experiencing backaches? Chances are, your mattress is the culprit. Your body needs the right surface to rest on. Some people prefer firm mattresses, others love medium firmness. It is an entirely personal choice that only you can know. Make it work for you, no matter how bizarre it may look.

For instance, a fascinating infographic on celebs' bizarre sleeping patternsclaims that singer Jessica Simpson, who suffers from psychophysiological insomnia, finds it hard sleeping on any type of mattress. However, she can comfortably sleep on the floor.

What about the noise?

The human brain processes sound even when we are asleep. That is why your partner’s snore or a mosquito’s buzz can leave you tossing and turning all night. Some people sleep better with total silence. Others prefer “white noise” from a fan or low volume music in their sleep environment. If you enjoy complete silence, take measures to reduce the noise from both within and outside your home. 

Actor Tom Cruise is known to sleep in a completely soundproof room to keep his partner from hearing his loud snores. If you enjoy white noise, reduce the intensity of the noises from outside by turning on a fan or air conditioner that produces a low humming sound. Eminem sleeps better with white noise playing from the speakers and television when traveling different time zones.