Newsflash: Your mother was right. You do need your sleep. It turns out that chronic sleep deprivation is really bad. And it’s not just because your mother or your grandmother said so. In case you don’t believe them, take it from scientists.
In a recent study published in Molecular Neurobiology, scientists interrupted REM sleep in adolescent male rats for 18 hours a day, and then let them sleep freely for 6 hours each day. The poor rats were subjected to this (without even getting a morning Starbucks) for 21 days. Then, the animals were allowed to sleep as much as they wanted for 2 days before being tested.
The animals that were sleep-deprived, and their brothers who were not disturbed were put through behavioral tests to assess their levels of anxiety. It turns out that the animals who were chronically sleep-deprived showed higher levels of anxiety even though they had been given 2 full days to recover as much sleep as they wanted.
What’s more, even after a 2 day recovery, the levels of stress hormones were increased in the chronically sleep deprived animals,
some neurotransmitters and receptors that regulate mood were all wonky in certain brain regions of sleep deprived animals,
and physical growth was stunted in chronically sleep deprived animals for an additional week after sleep cycles were restored.
Granted, this is not the first study on sleep deprivation. Not even close. Scientists already know that sleep restriction in adults will activate a stress response (can I get an “Amen?”), and can trigger emotional disorders (did they really need a controlled experiment to figure that one out?). This experiment, however, was looking at adolescents, which is a hot topic given how many teenagers deny themselves a good night’s sleep. In addition, the scientists made sure to looks at stress hormone levels in addition to behavior AND some areas of the brain that might be affected. And they were affected.
In the world of science, understanding a mechanism for behavioral and hormonal changes goes towards proving CAUSATION. Uh-oh. Sleep deprivation very well may not just be correlated with crazy, moody mommy, uh, I mean, heightened anxiety and mood disorders… sleep deprivation very well may be causing it via changes in the brain.
Now, we all know that we feel terrible and function worse with less sleep, but this study really hit home for a mother of an infant who still wakes every 20-90 minutes at night. I can attest that my anxiety levels are heightened as a not-so-lovely side effect of sleep deprivation (could everyone pleeeeeeze just quiet down????!).
It’s pretty concerning though, that very real physiological changes in stress hormone levels, and brain transmitters and receptors are happening – and persisting even after 2 days of unlimited sleep (when 2 days of unlimited sleep sounds absolutely divine, and completely unrealistic).
Now, here’s to hoping that self-medicating with a cup of coffee is somehow reversing these effects. Perhaps Starbucks will fund that study next…
How about you… do you prioritize sleep? How often are you chronically sleep-deprived and what are your not-so-lovely side effects of sleep deprivation? Isn’t it awesome that we should all be given a prescription for more than 6 hours of sleep each night? Let’s chat about our own personal experiments with this phenomenon below…
Wishing you all the simple things,
Zara
References
da Silva Rocha-Lopes J, Machado RB, Suchecki D. Chronic REM sleep restriction in juvenile male rats induces anxiety-like behavior and alters monoamine systems in the amygdala and hippocampus. Molecular Neurobiology. 2017 April 28 (epub ahead of print)
