Minor sleep loss can put your job at risk

April 23, 2019

Science Daily/University of South Florida

Losing just 16 minutes of sleep could be the difference between a clear-headed day at the office or one filled with distractions.

A new study published in the Sleep Health (Journal of the National Sleep Foundation) finds shorting your sleep routine during the work-week greatly interferes with job performance. University of South Florida researchers found workers are more likely to have poor judgement and fall off-task the next day.

Lead author Soomi Lee, PhD, assistant professor in the School of Aging Studies, and her colleagues surveyed 130 healthy employees who work in Information Technology and have at least one school-aged child. Participants reported that when they slept 16 minutes less than usual and had worse quality sleep, they experienced more cognitive issues the next day. That raised their stress levels, especially regarding issues related to work-life balance, resulting in them going to bed earlier and waking up earlier due to fatigue.

"These cyclical associations reflect that employees' sleep is vulnerable to daily cognitive stress and also a contributor to cognitively stressful experiences," said Lee. "Findings from this study provide empirical evidence for why workplaces need to make more efforts to promote their employees' sleep. Good sleepers may be better performers at work due to greater ability to stay focused an on-task with fewer errors and interpersonal conflicts."

Researchers also compared work-days to weekends. They conclude the consequences of less sleep is not as apparent when one has the next day off from work.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2019/04/190423133605.htm

Inadequate sleep could cost countries billions

June 4, 2018

Science Daily/Oxford University Press USA

Inadequate sleep is a public health problem affecting more than one in three adults worldwide. A new study suggests that insufficient sleep could also have grave economic consequences.

Community sleep surveys suggest that inadequate sleep is substantial and increasing. Surveys performed several years ago demonstrated that complaints of inadequate sleep were common, with between 20 and 30 percent of respondents complaining of inadequate sleep on a regular basis across several Western nations. Recent surveys suggest this proportion is increasing; between 33 and 45 percent of Australian adults now have this complaint.

The growth of the problem over time is shared by other nations with similar demographics. Some 35 percent of U.S. adults are not getting the recommended 7 hours of sleep each night. About 30 percent of Canadians don't feel they're getting enough sleep. Some 37 percent of those in the UK, 28 percent of people in Singapore, and 26 percent of French people also report insufficient sleep.

Insufficient sleep is associated with lapses in attention and the inability to stay focused; reduced motivation; compromised problem solving; confusion, irritability and memory lapses; impaired communication; slowed or faulty information processing and judgment; diminished reaction times; and indifference and loss of empathy. Furthermore, short sleep increases the risk of heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, obesity, diabetes, and depression.

Here researchers attempted to measure the economic consequences of limited sleep times -- defined as "difficulties with sleep initiation, maintenance or quality associated with the presence of impaired daytime alertness" at least several days a week -- in Australia. Researchers evaluated financial and non-financial cost data derived from national surveys and databases. Costs considered included: financial costs associated with health care, informal care provided outside the healthcare sector, productivity losses, non-medical work and vehicle accident costs, deadweight loss through inefficiencies relating to lost taxation revenue and welfare payments; and nonfinancial costs of a loss of well-being.

The financial cost component was $17.88 billion, comprised of: direct health costs of $160 million for sleep disorders and $1.08 billion for associated conditions; productivity losses of $12.19 billion ($5.22 billion reduced employment, $0.61 billion premature death, $1.73 billion absenteeism, $4.63 billion lost through workers showing up for work but not actually performing work on the job); non-medical accident costs of $2.48 billion; informal care costs of $0.41 billion; and deadweight loss of $1.56 billion. The non-financial cost of reduced well-being was $27.33 billion. Thus, the estimated overall cost of inadequate sleep in Australia in 2016-17 (population: 24.8 million) was $45.21 billion.

The financial and non-financial costs associated with inadequate sleep are substantial. The estimated total financial cost of $17.88 billion represents 1.55% of Australian gross domestic product. The estimated non-financial cost of $27.33 billion represents 4.6% of the total Australian burden of disease for the year. The researchers argue that these costs warrant substantial investment in preventive health measures to address the issue through education and regulation.

In setting national health priorities, governments have attempted to identify issues that involve high communal illness and injury burden with associated high costs for attention through public education, regulation, and other initiatives to effect improvements in health status. The authors say that governments have been remarkably successful in targeting diabetes, depression, and smoking, for example. These data presented above suggest that sleep health may merit similar attention. The situation is likely to be similar in equivalent economies.

Researcher quote: "We are in the midst of a worldwide epidemic of inadequate sleep, some from clinical sleep disorders, some through pressure from competing work, social and family activities and some from failure to give sleep sufficient priority through choice or ignorance. Apart from its impact on well-being, this problem comes at a huge economic cost through its destructive effects on health, safety and productivity. Addressing the issue by education, regulation and other initiatives is likely to deliver substantial economic as well as health benefits."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/06/180604093111.htm

Americans are getting more ZZZZs

Decline in reading and watching TV before bed and increasing opportunities to perform tasks online and from home could be why

January 18, 2018

University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Although more than one in three Americans still don't get enough sleep, a new analysis shows first signs of success in the fight for more shut eye. According to data from 181,335 respondents aged 15 and older who participated in the American Time Use Survey (ATUS) between 2003 and 2016, most Americans averaged an extra 7.5 hours of sleep each year over the 14-year period. The study, by researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, was published online this month in the journal Sleep.

The findings reveal that daily sleep duration increased by 1.4 minutes on weekdays and 0.8 minutes on weekends per year. At first glance, this may not seem like substantial progress. However, over the 14-year period it translates to 17.3 minutes more sleep each night, or 4.4 full days more sleep each year. This is the first study to show that sleep duration has increased among broad segments of the United States population (students 15 and older, people who are employed, and retirees) over this period. The increase in sleep duration was mostly explained by respondents turning in earlier at night, and to a lesser degree by getting up later in the morning.

In addition to sleep, the ATUS covers all waking activities over a 24-hour period and thus allowed Penn researchers to investigate behaviors that could be responsible for the increase in sleep duration. For example, over the 14-year period, fewer respondents decided to read or watch TV prior to bed in the evening, two prominent activities that compete with sleep for time.

"This shows an increased willingness in parts of the population to give up pre-bed leisure activities to obtain more sleep," said the study's lead author, Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, an associate professor of Sleep and Chronobiology in Psychiatry. "Also, the data suggest that increasing opportunities to work, learn, bank, shop, and perform administrative tasks online and from home freed up extra time, and some of it was likely used to get more sleep."

No significant sleep time trend was found for unemployed respondents or those not in the labor force, thus bringing attention to the difficulty of work/family balance and the finding that sometimes people sacrifice sleep to make the other two work. In earlier work, the Penn team identified time spent working as the #1 waking activity competing with sleep for time. Changes in time spent working were not found to play a substantial role in the increasing sleep time trend in this study, though.

The study also showed that the number of Google searches on the topic "sleep" has more than doubled and scientific publications on "short sleep" and its consequences has grown more than 10 fold from 2003 to 2016, and was highly correlated with the observed increase in sleep duration. Although the team says this does not prove causality, it gives hope that increasing awareness through reports of insufficient sleep and its consequences as well as campaigns to encourage healthy sleep -- such as the 2013 National Healthy Sleep Awareness Project -- may be working.

The dangers of short sleep are well documented. Earlier research by senior author David F. Dinges, PhD, chief of the division of Sleep and Chronobiology, showed that cognitive performance and vigilant attention decline quickly after being awake past 16 hours or if sleep is chronically curtailed, which increases the risk for errors and accidents. Also, additional studies have found associations between chronic short sleep and obesity, hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and declines in cognitive function.

In 2015, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society published a consensus statement that adults should sleep 7 or more hours per night on a regular basis to promote optimal health.

"As researchers, increasing awareness of short sleep and its consequences remains a critically important task to improve public health," said Basner. "At the same time, this data provides new hope that these efforts may be effective in motivating many Americans to sleep more."

The researchers caution that the findings need to be replicated and that there is still a long way to go in the fight against chronic, widespread sleep loss. Since the ATUS is a survey, more population research with objective measures of sleep is needed. The authors also add that an increase in reported "long sleep," i.e. for more than nine hours each night, of 0.48 percent/year over this 14-year period, calls for further research into the health effects of "long sleep."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180118175315.htm

Importance of studying sleep and eating in tandem

October 13, 2017

Science Daily/Scripps Research Institute

A new study from scientists on the Florida campus of The Scripps Research Institute (TSRI) offers important insights into possible links between sleep and hunger -- and the benefits of studying the two in tandem. A related paper from the same lab is providing researchers an accessible tool for pursuing further investigations involving multiple fruit fly behaviors.

While many humans enjoy a daily caffeine fix, scientists have found that caffeine repels Drosophila melanogaster -- a species of fruit fly often used as a model for studying human conditions and genetics. Scientists believe that plants produce the caffeine molecule as a defense mechanism to prevent organisms such as fruit flies from eating them. Regardless of the cause of the fly's aversion, caffeine does seem to negatively impact their sleep, much like it does in humans.

Caffeine is known to stave off sleep in humans through pharmacological effects on the adenosine receptor. Nonetheless, many studies in mammals have shown genetic differences in responses to caffeine. Interestingly, caffeine apparently can prevent sleep in fruit flies despite the fact that it doesn't act through their adenosine receptor.

Erin Keebaugh, Ph.D., a postdoctoral researcher in Associate Professor William Ja's Laboratory at TSRI, suspected that the systems responsible for caffeine's impact on fly (and maybe human) sleep patterns are more complex than a single caffeine and receptor interaction.

In her study, published in the journal Sleep on October 3, 2017, her team gave groups of flies varying levels of dietary caffeine. They then measured how much the flies slept in the following 24 hours while on those diets. They also studied whether varying levels of caffeine impacted the insects' feeding behavior by measuring how much they ate over the same 24-hour period.

Interestingly, the team found that sleep loss couldn't be explained by caffeine intake alone. Instead, they believe that the sleep loss was mediated by changes in the animal's feeding behavior. "There could still be a pharmacological effect, but there's definitely dietary inputs to that," said Keebaugh.

The study reinforced the idea that the processes of sleep and eating need to be studied together, explained the scientists, especially as a growing number of researchers investigate the relationship between sleep and metabolic disorders. Further studies into this relationship could lead to the development of therapies that treat disorders such as obesity and diabetes.

A Closer Look at Fly Behavior

To that end, another member of the Ja Laboratory, Graduate Student Keith Murphy, has developed a new open-source, customizable technique for jointly studying multiple fly behaviors. Many studies designed to understand the interactions between multiple fly behaviors require researchers to measure each behavior separately; for example, one study measures how much the flies eat while a second study measures how much they sleep, and then the data are combined and compared. With Murphy's device, the Activity Recording CAFE (ARC), researchers could measure both behaviors simultaneously, giving the researchers a cleaner, simpler strategy to investigate previously convoluted questions.

Using the ARC protocol, as described in a paper recently published in Nature Protocols, anyone with access to a 3D printer can print the chamber and set it up in two hours or less to collect fly data. The chamber is hooked up to a computer that continuously tracks both the amount of food that a fly consumes and its position in the chamber, which can tell a researcher whether or not it's sleeping.

Though the protocol is specifically designed for studying sleep and feeding behaviors, Murphy emphasized that the ARC could be customized to study a variety of behaviors in flies. Researchers could program the machine vision program on the computer to apply optogenetic controls tied to certain behaviors, deliver vibrations or cause the fly's food to move to assess memory, motivation and other behaviors.

"We're hoping that this paper creates a community around the tool and people come up with new uses," said Murphy. "If others get on board, this thing could change what a small lab can do."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/10/171013132234.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