Does 'mommy brain' last? Study shows motherhood does not diminish attention

June 23, 2020

Science Daily/Purdue University

"Mommy brain" is a long-held perception that mothers are more forgetful and less attentive.

"In most studies, however, attention and memory tests are given to mothers very early postpartum," said Valerie Tucker Miller, a Ph.D. student in Purdue University's Department of Anthropology department. Miller is studying the effects of motherhood on attention, memory and other psychological processes.

"There are few issues with that," she added. "When you first have a child, you have a cascade of hormones and sleep deprivation that might be affecting attention and memory processes in the brain."

In a new study testing the prevalence of "mommy brain," Miller used a revised version of the Attention Network Test (ANT), called the ANT-R, to compare reaction times among 60 mothers, all of whom were at least one year postpartum, and 70 non-mothers. The results, published online in the journal Current Psychology, show that mothers performed equally as well or better compared with women who had never been pregnant or had children.

"For this particular study, we recruited moms who were past that first year postpartum because we wanted to see the long-term effects of maternity," she said. "Overall, moms did not have significantly different attention than non-mothers, so we did not find evidence to support 'mommy brain' as our culture understands it. It's possible, if anything, that maternity is related to improved, rather than diminished, attentiveness."

Co-author Amanda Veile, an assistant professor of anthropology at Purdue, said the mixed-method study may be the first to investigate the long-term effects of biological motherhood on real-life attention network functioning. Lisa A. VanWormer, a Purdue University alumna and visiting associate professor of psychology at St. Norbert College, also is a co-author.

Researchers used a seven-point scale to measure participants' responses to survey questions such as, "How sleepy do you feel?" and "How do you think your attentiveness is?" Women's perceived attention functioning was strongly associated with their tested attention scores, regardless of motherhood status, Veile said.

"This means that women have accurate awareness of their cognitive state, and that their concerns regarding their perceived attentional functioning should be taken seriously," she said. "We also believe that 'mommy-brain' may be a culture-bound phenomenon, and that mothers will feel the most distracted and forgetful when they feel stressed, overextended and unsupported. Unfortunately, many U.S. moms feel this way, especially now in the midst of economic and political instability and pandemic."

During the computer test, a cue box flashes for 100 milliseconds in one of two possible locations where a target image will appear on the screen. Next, an image of five arrows, each pointing left or right in consistent or conflicting directions, flashes on the screen for 500 milliseconds. Participants are then asked to press a button that corresponds to the direction of only the middle arrow.

Miller said the test measures response times and provides scores for the three main networks of attention: The alerting network helps the brain prepare for incoming stimuli; the orienting network directs the brain's attention to something new; and the executive control network helps resolve conflicting information.

Mothers in the study were, on average, 10 years older than non-mothers. Even after controlling for age, however, the researchers found that mothers had similar alerting and orienting attention, and better executive control attention, compared to non-mothers.

"Moms were not as distracted by those outside, incongruent items," Miller said. "It makes perfect sense that moms who have brought children into this world have more stimuli that needs to be processed to keep themselves and other humans alive, and then to continue with all the other tasks that were required before the children."

Heightened attention isn't always a good thing. It could become amplified with feelings of stress and isolation, which many U.S. moms experience, causing them to develop anxiety, Veile said.

"We plan to do cross-cultural investigations to further examine how narratives of motherhood and social support are associated with maternal tested attention and well-being around the world," she said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200623145352.htm

Sleep, death and ... the gut?

June 4, 2020

Science Daily/Harvard Medical School

A new study finds a causal link between sleep deprivation and death. In sleep-deprived fruit flies, death is preceded by the accumulation of molecules known as reactive oxidative species in the gut. When fruit flies were given antioxidant compounds that neutralize ROS, sleep-deprived flies remained active and had normal lifespans. The findings may one day inform new approaches to counteract the harmful effects of insufficient sleep in humans.

The first signs of insufficient sleep are universally familiar. There's tiredness and fatigue, difficulty concentrating, perhaps irritability or even tired giggles. Far fewer people have experienced the effects of prolonged sleep deprivation, including disorientation, paranoia and hallucinations.

Total, prolonged sleep deprivation, however, can be fatal. While it has been reported in humans only anecdotally, a widely cited study in rats conducted by Chicago-based researchers in 1983 showed that a total lack of sleep inevitably leads to death. Yet, despite decades of study, a central question has remained unsolved: why do animals die when they don't sleep?

Now, Harvard Medical School neuroscientists have identified an unexpected, causal link between sleep deprivation and premature death. In a study on sleep-deprived fruit flies, researchers found that death is always preceded by the accumulation of molecules known as reactive oxidative species (ROS) in the gut.

When fruit flies were given antioxidant compounds that neutralize and clear ROS from the gut, sleep-deprived flies remained active and had normal lifespans. Additional experiments in mice confirmed that ROS accumulate in the gut when sleep is insufficient.

The findings, published in Cell on June 4, suggest the possibility that animals can indeed survive without sleep under certain circumstances. The results open new avenues of study to understand the full consequences of insufficient sleep and may someday inform the design of approaches to counteract its detrimental effects in humans, the authors said.

"We took an unbiased approach and searched throughout the body for indicators of damage from sleep deprivation. We were surprised to find it was the gut that plays a key role in causing death," said senior study author Dragana Rogulja, assistant professor of neurobiology in the Blavatnik Institute at HMS.

"Even more surprising, we found that premature death could be prevented. Each morning, we would all gather around to look at the flies, with disbelief to be honest. What we saw is that every time we could neutralize ROS in the gut, we could rescue the flies," Rogulja said.

Scientists have long studied sleep, a phenomenon that appears to be fundamental for life, yet one that in many ways remains mysterious. Almost every known animal sleeps or exhibits some form of sleeplike behavior. Without enough of it, serious consequences ensue. In humans, chronic insufficient sleep is associated with heart disease, type 2 diabetes, cancer, obesity, depression and many other conditions.

Previous research has shown that prolonged, total sleep restriction can lead to premature death in animal models. In attempts to answer how sleep deprivation culminates in death, most research efforts have focused on the brain, where sleep originates, but none have yielded conclusive results.

Gut accumulation

Spearheaded by study co-first authors Alexandra Vaccaro and Yosef Kaplan Dor, both research fellows in neurobiology at HMS, the team carried out a series of experiments in fruit flies, which share many sleep-regulating genes with humans, to search for signs of damage caused by sleep deprivation throughout the body. To monitor sleep, the researchers used infrared beams to constantly track the movement of flies housed in individual tubes.

They found that flies can sleep through physical shaking, so the team turned to more sophisticated methods. They genetically manipulated fruit flies to express a heat-sensitive protein in specific neurons, the activity of which are known to suppress sleep. When flies were housed at 29 degrees C (84 degrees F), the protein induced neurons to remain constantly active, thus preventing the flies from sleeping.

After 10 days of temperature-induced sleep deprivation, mortality spiked among the fruit flies and all died by around day 20. Control flies that had normal sleep lived up to approximately 40 days in the same environmental conditions.

Because mortality increased around day 10, the researchers looked for markers of cell damage on that and preceding days. Most tissues, including in the brain, were indistinguishable between sleep-deprived and non-deprived flies, with one notable exception.

The guts of sleep-deprived flies had a dramatic buildup of ROS -- highly reactive, oxygen-containing molecules that in large amounts can damage DNA and other components within cells, leading to cell death. The accumulation of ROS peaked around day 10 of sleep deprivation, and when deprivation was stopped, ROS levels decreased.

Additional experiments confirmed that ROS builds up in the gut of only those animals that experienced sustained sleep loss, and that the gut is indeed the main source of this apparently lethal ROS.

"We found that sleep-deprived flies were dying at the same pace, every time, and when we looked at markers of cell damage and death, the one tissue that really stood out was the gut," Vaccaro said. "I remember when we did the first experiment, you could immediately tell under the microscope that there was a striking difference. That almost never happens in lab research."

The team also examined whether ROS accumulation occurs in other species by using gentle, continuous mechanical stimulation to keep mice awake for up to five days. Compared to control animals, sleep-deprived mice had elevated ROS levels in the small and large intestines but not in other organs, a finding consistent with the observations in flies.

Death rescue

To find out if ROS in the gut play a causal role in sleep deprivation-induced death, the researchers looked at whether preventing ROS accumulation could prolong survival.

They tested dozens of compounds with antioxidant properties known to neutralize ROS and identified 11 that, when given as a food supplement, allowed sleep-deprived flies to have a normal or near-normal lifespan. These compounds, such as melatonin, lipoic acid and NAD, were particularly effective at clearing ROS from the gut. Notably, supplementation did not extend the lifespan of non-deprived flies.

The role of ROS removal in preventing death was further confirmed by experiments in which flies were genetically manipulated to overproduce antioxidant enzymes in their guts. These flies had normal to near-normal lifespans when sleep-deprived, which was not the case for control flies that overproduced antioxidant enzymes in the nervous system.

The results demonstrate that ROS buildup in the gut plays a central role in causing premature death from sleep deprivation, the researchers said, but cautioned that many questions remain unanswered.

"We still don't know why sleep loss causes ROS accumulation in the gut, and why this is lethal," said Kaplan Dor. "Sleep deprivation could directly affect the gut, but the trigger may also originate in the brain. Similarly, death could be due to damage in the gut or because high levels of ROS have systemic effects, or some combination of these."

Insufficient sleep is known to interfere with the body's hunger signaling pathways, so the team also measured fruit fly food intake to analyze whether there were potential associations between feeding and death. They found that some sleep-deprived flies ate more throughout the day compared with non-deprived controls. However, restricting access to food had no effect on survival, suggesting that factors beyond food intake are involved.

The researchers are now working to identify the biological pathways that lead to ROS accumulation in the gut and subsequent physiological disruptions.

The team hopes that their work will inform the development of approaches or therapies to offset some of the negative consequences of sleep deprivation. One in three American adults gets less than the recommended seven hours of sleep per night, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and insufficient sleep is a normal part of life for many around the world.

"So many of us are chronically sleep deprived. Even if we know staying up late every night is bad, we still do it," Rogulja said. "We believe we've identified a central issue that, when eliminated, allows for survival without sleep, at least in fruit flies."

"We need to understand the biology of how sleep deprivation damages the body, so that we can find ways to prevent this harm," she said.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/06/200604152053.htm

Science underestimated dangerous effects of sleep deprivation

November 21, 2019

Science Daily/Michigan State University

One of the largest sleep studies dubunks theory that suggests attention is the only cognitive function affected by sleep deprivation.

Michigan State University's Sleep and Learning Lab has conducted one of the largest sleep studies to date, revealing that sleep deprivation affects us much more than prior theories have suggested.

Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, the research is not only one of the largest studies, but also the first to assess how sleep deprivation impacts placekeeping -- or, the ability to complete a series of steps without losing one's place, despite potential interruptions. This study builds on prior research from MSU's sleep scientists to quantify the effect lack of sleep has on a person's ability to follow a procedure and maintain attention.

"Our research showed that sleep deprivation doubles the odds of making placekeeping errors and triples the number of lapses in attention, which is startling," Fenn said. "Sleep-deprived individuals need to exercise caution in absolutely everything that they do, and simply can't trust that they won't make costly errors. Oftentimes -- like when behind the wheel of a car -- these errors can have tragic consequences."

By sharing their findings on the separate effects sleep deprivation has on cognitive function, Fenn -- and co-authors Michelle Stepan, MSU doctoral candidate and Erik Altmann, professor of psychology -- hope that people will acknowledge how significantly their abilities are hindered because of a lack of sleep.

"Our findings debunk a common theory that suggests that attention is the only cognitive function affected by sleep deprivation," Stepan said. "Some sleep-deprived people might be able to hold it together under routine tasks, like a doctor taking a patient's vitals. But our results suggest that completing an activity that requires following multiple steps, such as a doctor completing a medical procedure, is much riskier under conditions of sleep deprivation."

The researchers recruited 138 people to participate in the overnight sleep assessment; 77 stayed awake all night and 61 went home to sleep. All participants took two separate cognitive tasks in the evening: one that measured reaction time to a stimulus; the other measured a participant's ability to maintain their place in a series of steps without omitting or repeating a step -- even after sporadic interruptions. The participants then repeated both tasks in the morning to see how sleep-deprivation affected their performance.

"After being interrupted there was a 15% error rate in the evening and we saw that the error rate spiked to about 30% for the sleep-deprived group the following morning," Stepan said. "The rested participants' morning scores were similar to the night before.

"There are some tasks people can do on auto-pilot that may not be affected by a lack of sleep," Fenn said. "However, sleep deprivation causes widespread deficits across all facets of life."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/11/191121183923.htm

Sleep readies synapses for learning

Findings offer insight into changes that occur in the brain during sleep

July 1, 2019

Science Daily/Society for Neuroscience

Synapses in the hippocampus are larger and stronger after sleep deprivation, according to new research in mice published in JNeurosci. Overall, this study supports the idea that sleep may universally weaken synapses that are strengthened from learning, allowing for new learning to occur after waking.

Sleep is thought to recalibrate synaptic strength after a day of learning, allowing for new learning to take place the next day. Chiara Cirelli and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin-Madison examined how synapses in the hippocampus, a structure involved in learning, changed following sleep and sleep deprivation in mice.

Consistent with previous studies in the cortex, the researchers observed that synapses were larger, and therefore stronger, after the mice were awake for six to seven hours compared to after they were asleep for the same amount of time. Additionally, the researchers found that the synapses were strongest when the mice were forced to stay awake and interact with new stimuli, compared to mice that stayed awake on their own. This is consistent with the hippocampus' role in learning, and suggests that synaptic changes take place when learning occurs, not merely from being awake.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/07/190701144310.htm

How sleep deprivation hinders memory

October 2, 2018

Science Daily/Michigan State University

Researchers have conducted the largest experimentally controlled study on sleep deprivation to date, revealing just how detrimental operating without sleep can be in everything from bakers adding too much salt to cookies to surgeons botching surgeries.

While sleep deprivation research isn't new, the level at which distractions hinder sleep-deprived persons' memories and challenge them from successfully completing tasks was not clear until MSU's team quantified the impact.

"If you look at mistakes and accidents in surgery, public transportation and even operating nuclear power plants, lack of sleep is one of the primary reasons for human error," said Kimberly Fenn, associate professor of psychology and director of the MSU Sleep and Learning Lab. "There are many people in critical professions who are sleep-deprived. Research has found that nearly one-quarter of the people with procedure-heavy jobs have fallen asleep on the job."

Published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Fenn's research is unlike previous studies because of its focus on sleep deprivation's impact on completing tasks. These tasks, Fenn explained, involve following directions and include multiple steps.

Some basic errors, such as adding salt twice to a recipe, might not be so serious. However, some of the world's greatest human-caused catastrophes -- like Chernobyl, the Exxon Valdez oil spill and the Challenger explosion -- along with daily train and car accidents have sleep deprivation at least partially to blame, she said.

Fenn hopes that her lab's findings will shed light on how critical sleep is to completing any task, be it large or small.

"Every day, approximately 11 sponges are left inside of patients who have undergone surgery. That's 4,000 potentially dire missteps each year and an example of a procedural task gone terribly wrong that can result from sleep deprivation," Fenn said. "Our research suggests that sleep-deprived people shouldn't perform tasks in which they are interrupted -- or, only perform them for short periods."

To test sleep deprivation's impact on how people follow steps in a task, Fenn's team brought 234 people into the sleep lab at 10 p.m. That night, all of the participants worked on a sequence-based procedure that involved following a series of tasks in order. Periodically, they were interrupted and had to remember where they were in the procedure before picking up again. At midnight, half of the participants went home to sleep while the other half stayed awake all night at the lab. The next morning, everyone completed the procedure once again.

What Fenn's team found was a stark jump in errors for those who were sleep-deprived.

"All participants met performance criteria in the evening, but roughly 15 percent of participants in the sleep-deprived group failed in the morning, compared to 1 percent of those who slept," Fenn said. "Furthermore, sleep-deprived participants not only showed more errors than those who slept but also showed a progressive increase in errors associated with memory as they performed the task -- an effect not observed in those who slept. This shows that the sleep-deprived group experienced a great deal of difficulty remembering where they were in the sequence during interruptions."

Memory maintenance, the research found, was the real culprit keeping the sleep-deprived from completing tasks successfully. With hindered memory maintenance, it's much more difficult to pick up a task where you left off without missteps, Fenn explained.

Fenn also explained that distractions we face every day -- whether receiving a text message or simply answering a question -- are unavoidable but especially harmful to sleep-deprived people.

"Operating with reduced cognitive capacity has wide-ranging effects," Fenn said. "Students may pull all-nighters and not retain information for their exams. More worrisome, individuals working critical jobs may put themselves and other members of society at risk because of sleep deprivation. It simply cannot be overlooked."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181002114027.htm

World's largest sleep study shows too much shut-eye can be bad for your brain

October 9, 2018

Science Daily/University of Western Ontario

Preliminary results from the world's largest sleep study have shown that people who sleep on average between 7 to 8 hours per night performed better cognitively than those who slept less, or more, than this amount.

Neuroscientists from Western University's Brain and Mind Institute released their findings today in the high-impact journal, SLEEP.

The world's largest sleep study was launched in June 2017 and within days more than 40,000 people from around the world participated in the online scientific investigation, which includes an in-depth questionnaire and a series of cognitive performance activities.

"We really wanted to capture the sleeping habits of people around the entire globe. Obviously, there have been many smaller sleep studies of people in laboratories but we wanted to find out what sleep is like in the real world," says Adrian Owen, Western's superstar researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging. "People who logged in gave us a lot of information about themselves. We had a fairly extensive questionnaire and they told us things like which medications they were on, how old they were, where they were in the world and what kind of education they'd received because these are all factors that might have contributed to some of the results."

Approximately half of all participants reported typically sleeping less than 6.3 hours per night, about an hour less than the study's recommended amount. One startling revelation was that most participants who slept four hours or less performed as if they were almost nine years older.

Another surprising discovery was that sleep affected all adults equally. The amount of sleep associated with highly functional cognitive behaviour was the same for everyone (7 to 8 hours), regardless of age. Also, the impairment associated with too little, or too much, sleep did not depend on the age of the participants.

"We found that the optimum amount of sleep to keep your brain performing its best is 7 to 8 hours every night and that corresponds to what the doctors will tell you need to keep your body in tip-top shape, as well. We also found that people that slept more than that amount were equally impaired as those who slept too little," says Conor Wild, Owen Lab Research Associate and the study's lead author.

Participants' reasoning and verbal abilities were two of the actions most strongly affected by sleep while short-term memory performance was relatively unaffected. This is different than findings in most scientific studies of complete sleep deprivation and suggests that not getting enough sleep for an extended period affects your brain differently than staying up all night.

On the positive side, there was some evidence that even a single night's sleep can affect a person's ability to think. Participants who slept more than usual the night before participating in the study performed better than those who slept their usual amount or less.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181009135845.htm

Sleep deprived people more likely to have car crashes

September 18, 2018

Science Daily/Oxford University Press USA

A new study indicates that people who have slept for fewer than seven of the past 24 hours have higher odds of being involved in and responsible for car crashes. The risk is greatest for drivers who have slept fewer than four hours.

Experts recommend that adults should sleep for seven to nine hours a night, yet government surveys indicate that one in five U.S. adults sleeps for fewer than seven hours on any given night, and one in three report usually sleeping for fewer than seven hours. An estimated seven percent of all motor vehicle crashes in the U.S. and 16 percent of fatal crashes involve driver drowsiness.

While the dangers of driving drowsy were already well known, this is the first peer-reviewed study to quantify the relationship between how much a driver has slept and his or her risk of being responsible for a crash. For this new study, researchers analyzed data from a previous study by the U.S. Department of Transportation, which involved in-depth investigations of a sample of 5,470 crashes, including interviews with the drivers involved.

The researchers here found that drivers who reported fewer than four hours of sleep had 15.1 times the odds of responsibility for car crashes, compared with drivers who slept for the recommended seven to nine hours in the preceding 24-hour period, comparable to U.S. Department of Transportation estimates of the crash risk of a driver with a blood alcohol concentration roughly 1.5 times the legal limit.

Researchers involved in the study also discovered that drivers who reported six, five, and four hours of sleep in the past 24 hours had 1.3, 1.9 and 2.9 times the odds of responsibility for a crash, respectively, compared with a driver who slept for seven to nine hours. Drivers who reported less than four hours of sleep had particularly elevated risk of single-vehicle crashes, which are more likely to result in injury or death. Drivers who had changed their sleep or work schedule in the past week and drivers who had been driving for 3 hours or longer without a break were also found to be at increased risk.

"Being awake isn't the same as being alert. Falling asleep isn't the only risk," said study author Brian Tefft. "Even if they manage to stay awake, sleep-deprived drivers are still at increased risk of making mistakes -- like failing to notice something important, or misjudging a gap in traffic -- which can have tragic consequences," he added.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180918082041.htm

Broadband internet causes sleep deprivation

August 2, 2018

Science Daily/Bocconi University

Individuals with DSL access tend to sleep 25 minutes less than their counterparts without DSL Internet. They are significantly less likely to sleep between 7 and 9 hours, the amount recommended by the scientific community, and are less likely to be satisfied with their sleep, researchers find. The effect is largely driven by individuals that face time constraints in the morning and by the use of electronic devices in the evening (not by their use throughout the day)

Exploiting the fact that the deployment of broadband in Germany over the years was dependent on technical and historical reasons, they link data on broadband to surveys where individuals report their sleep duration. The researchers conclude that access to high-speed Internet reduces sleep duration and sleep satisfaction in individuals that face time constraints in the morning for work or family reasons.

"Individuals with DSL access tend to sleep 25 minutes less than their counterparts without DSL Internet. They are significantly less likely to sleep between 7 and 9 hours, the amount recommended by the scientific community, and are less likely to be satisfied with their sleep," Francesco Billari, a Full Professor of Demography at Bocconi University, Milan, and the Principal Investigator of the project DisCont, funded by the European Research Council, within which this research was conducted.

The effect that the authors find is largely driven by individuals that face time constraints in the morning and by the use of electronic devices in the evening (not by their use throughout the day). "Digital temptations may lead to a delay in bedtime, which ultimately decreases sleep duration for individuals who are not able to compensate for later bedtime by waking up later in the morning," Prof. Billari says.

The temptations individuals are prone to vary according to age, the scholars find. Among teenagers and young adults (aged 13-30), there is a significant association between insufficient sleep and time spent on computer games or watching TV or videos in the evening, while for older adults (31-59) the correlation is with the use of PCs and smartphones.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180802102340.htm

Lack of Sleep May Increase Calorie Consumption

March 14, 2012

Science Daily/American Heart Association

If you don't get enough sleep, you may also eat too much -- and thus be more likely to become obese. That is the findings of researchers who presented their study at the American Heart Association's Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition, Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions.

Participants ate as much as they wanted during the study.

Researchers found:

• ·      The sleep deprived group, who slept one hour and 20 minutes less than the control group each day consumed an average 549 additional calories each day.

• ·      The amount of energy used for activity didn't significantly change between groups, suggesting that those who slept less didn't burn additional calories.

• ·      Lack of sleep was associated with increased leptin levels and decreasing ghrelin -- changes that were more likely a consequence, rather than a cause, of over-eating.

"Sleep deprivation is a growing problem, with 28 percent of adults now reporting that they get six or fewer hours of sleep per night," said Andrew D. Calvin, M.D., M.P.H., co-investigator, cardiology fellow and assistant professor of medicine at the Mayo Clinic.

The researchers noted that while this study suggests sleep deprivation may be an important part and one preventable cause of weight gain and obesity, it was a small study conducted in a hospital's clinical research unit.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120314170456.htm

Cannot sleep due to stress? Here is the cure

September 5, 2017

Science Daily/University of Tsukuba

Everyone empirically knows that stressful events certainly affect sound sleep. Scientists have found that the active component rich in sugarcane and other natural products may ameliorate stress and help having sound sleep.

In today's world ever-changing environment, demanding job works and socio-economic factors enforces sleep deprivation in human population. Sleep deprivation induces tremendous amount of stress, and stress itself is one of the major factors responsible for sleep loss or difficulty in falling into sleep. Currently available sleeping pills does not address stress component and often have severe side effects. Sleep loss is also associated with certain other diseases including obesity, cardiovascular diseases, depression, anxiety, mania deficits etc.

The research group led by Mahesh K. Kaushik and Yoshihiro Urade of the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS), University of Tsukuba, found that octacosanol reduces stress and restores stress-affected sleep back to normal.

Octacosanol is abundantly present in various everyday foods such as sugarcane (thin whitish layer on surface), rice bran, wheat germ oil, bee wax etc. The crude extract is policosanol, where octacosanol is the major constituent. Policosanol and octacosanol have already been used in humans for various other medical conditions.

In the current study, authors made an advancement and investigated the effect of octacosanol on sleep regulation in mildly stressed mice by oral administration. Octacosanol reduced corticosterone level in blood plasma, which is a stress marker. The octacosanol-administered mice also showed normal sleep, which was previously disturbed due to stress. They therefore claim that the octacosanol mitigates stress in mice and restores stress-affected sleep to normal in mice. The sleep induced by octacosanol was similar to natural sleep and physiological in nature. However, authors also claimed that octacosanol does not affect sleep in normal animals. These results clearly demonstrated that octacosanol is an active compound that has potential to reduce stress and to increase sleep, and it could potentially be useful for the therapy of insomnia caused by stress. Octacosanol can be considered safe for human use as a therapy, because it is a food-based compound and believed to show no side effects.

Octacosanol/policosanol supplements are used by humans for functions such as lipid metabolism, cholesterol lowering or to provide strength. However, well-planned clinical studies need to be carried out to confirm its effect on humans for its stress-mitigation and sleep-inducing potentials. "Future studies include the identification of target brain area of octacosanol, its BBB permeability, and the mechanism via which octacosanol lowers stress," Kaushik says.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/09/170905111357.htm