Want to learn something new? Try getting a good night’s sleep or taking a long nap.

Sleep is now recognized as being critical for learning and memory, and now a new study in fruit flies offers clues as to why.

The research found that, in fruit flies at least, sleep weakens and even destroys existing synapses within the brain to make room for the creation of new ones.

Neurologists believe that the brain encodes memories and learning by creating these new synapses, which connect information-processing neurons throughout the central nervous system.

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Wesleyan Resources: Sleep

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A Central Michigan University study has determined that many college students have sleep patterns that could have detrimental effects on their daily performance.

As a graduate student, CMU alumna LeAnne Forquer, now a psychology faculty member at Delta State University in Cleveland, Miss., had her own trouble sleeping, prompting her to conduct a study to determine if other students experienced the same problems. Along with CMU psychology professor Carl Johnson, Forquer surveyed more than 300 college students, freshmen through graduate students, many of whom admitted that it took longer than 30 minutes for them to fall asleep and/or they woke more than once a night for at least five nights a week.

The study, which was published in the Journal of American College Health, concluded that one third of the sample took more than 30 minutes to fall asleep and 43 percent woke more than once a night. The students in the sample also had later bedtimes and wake times on weekends compared to weekdays, disrupting the circadian rhythm, a person’s 24-hour day-night cycle that influences quantity and quality of sleep. Stability of the circadian rhythm ensures better sleep, therefore, bed and wake times should be the same every day of the week, including weekends.

“What I found most interesting about the study was the large numbers of students who were having the same problems as me, such as taking a long time to fall asleep and waking numerous times throughout the night,” Forquer said. “I had felt for so many years that I was the only one.”

College students are among the most sleep-deprived age group in the U.S. Sleep deprivation can have detrimental effects on daily performance, including academics and driving, and has also been linked to depressed mood and behavioral problems.

A similar study by Forquer and Johnson, published in “Sleep and Hypnosis,” found that the use of continuous white noise may help college students get better sleep. The study found that white noise was effective for college students with self-reported sleep problems to decrease difficulty in falling asleep and night wakings.

“These issues are extremely important because not getting enough sleep is associated with impaired attention, school performance, and also can lead to driving accidents as people fall asleep behind the wheel of their car,” said Forquer. “Helping students sleep better will hopefully carry over to help them in some of these areas as well.”

Forquer would like to see sleep issues included in courses aimed at helping students transition into college life in order to help them understand the consequences of staying up too late and not getting enough sleep. She also uses her research to introduce these topics in her introductory psychology course at Delta State.

Discussion: What would it take for college students to improve their sleep patterns?

A cup of joe or a short nap can fend off normal afternoon sleepiness, but sleeping longer in the morning won’t keep a person who’s already gotten a full night’s sleep alert, a new study shows.

Researchers from the Sleep Research Center at Loughborough University in England tested 20 healthy young adults for daytime sleepiness. All of the volunteers got about 7.4 hours of sleep per night, and none of them complained of feeling sleepy. But when researchers put them in a quiet room and asked them to close their eyes — something the volunteers were asked to do several times in the afternoon and evening — all fell asleep within five to 10 minutes in the afternoon, indicating sleepiness. It took longer for the people to fall asleep when tested at other times, indicating that while they were drowsy in the afternoon, the people weren’t generally fatigued.

Previous studies by other groups have shown that extending nighttime sleep by 90 minutes for two weeks could help combat afternoon sleepiness, but the Loughborough team wanted to know whether naps or caffeine might also help, said Clare Anderson, lead author of the study presented Monday in Baltimore at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

The researchers compared sleeping in for 90 minutes each morning to taking a 20-minute nap at 2:30 p.m. or taking 150 milligrams of caffeine (equivalent to about two cups of coffee) at 2:00 p.m. Each participant tried each of the three methods of combating afternoon slumps for one week. Although all of the volunteers normally drank caffeinated beverages, during the experiment they received decaffeinated drinks and took caffeine pills when tested for the effect of the afternoon caffeine kick.

When the volunteers did nothing, they fell asleep within nine minutes on average when tested at 3:30 in the afternoon. Sleeping late kept people awake only a minute longer on average than did doing nothing. Caffeine worked better, keeping people awake for about 12 minutes longer on average.

But nothing beat a nap. After a 20-minute nap, people nearly doubled the amount of time it took to fall asleep when tested later in the afternoon, indicating that they were no longer sleepy. None of the measures impaired people’s ability to fall asleep at night.

The study shows that several measures can fend off the afternoon slump, said Dennis Nicholson, a spokesman for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and medical director of the Sleep Disorders Center at Pomona Valley Hospital in California. But “from a practical standpoint, it’s not feasible to have those naps,” he said.

Anderson said that while napping is the clear winner in combating afternoon drowsiness, caffeine is probably a more socially acceptable alternative.

“Napping is seen as some kind of laziness,” she said, “or something associated with old people.”

Wesleyan Resources:  Sleep

From Scientific American…

Let’s do some sleep math. You lost two hours of sleep every night last week because of a big project due on Friday. On Saturday and Sunday, you slept in, getting four extra hours. Come Monday morning, you were feeling so bright-eyed, you only had one cup of coffee, instead of your usual two. But don’t be duped by your apparent vim and vigor: You’re still carrying around a heavy load of sleepiness, or what experts call “sleep debt”—in this case something like six hours, almost a full nights’ sleep.

Sleep debt is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. It’s a deficit that grows every time we skim some extra minutes off our nightly slumber.

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From OrdinaryComics.com.

Visit the WesWELL website here for more information on sleep hygiene and disorders.

If you have ever woken up only to feel like you never closed your eyes at all, then you know the feeling of wanting to crawl back under the covers and snuggle your head into your ever-so-soft pillow.

But, unfortunately, sleeping in like you did as a kid – oh the days of yore! – is no longer an option for those of us who have, well, a life. read full article…

WesWELL offers more resources on Sleep Hygiene here.

Some people choose to “get away” with less sleep, and this attitude is often rewarded in our society. But lack of sleep can actually make you less productive, even if you feel as though you’re getting more done. Sleep deprivation can do much more than hurt your productivity – it can damage your health as well.

Sleep helps your body to repair itself. It also helps your mind absorb and “file” the day’s learning. When we deprive ourselves of sleep, we notice the effects both mentally and physically. In the short term, these effects include:

• fatigue
• irritability
• careless mistakes
• difficulty concentrating
• slower reaction times
• increased stress

These short-term effects can affect our relationships, our performance at work or school, and our ability to enjoy life. They may even increase the risk of injury and accidents at work or on the road.

After only a few days of sleep deprivation, the body undergoes changes similar to “fast-forward” aging: memory loss, metabolism problems (with sugar and hormones), and poor athletic performance. If sleep deprivation continues over the long term, it increases the risk of more serious health problems, such as:

• a weakened immune system
• diabetes (the body cannot process sugar properly)
• depression
• high blood pressure
• obesity

The good news is that you can prevent these long-term problems by recognizing the early signs that you aren’t getting enough sleep, and then to increase the amount of sleep you’re getting until you feel well rested. The greater the “sleep debt” that you have, the longer it will take to recover.

Click here for more information from WesWELL on sleep hygiene.

Must. Stay. Awake. Yes, it’s the 3 o’clock mantra. And who hasn’t mumbled it while fighting off midday yawns and drooping eyes?

Fatigue and flagging energy seem to be epidemics, especially among women who burn the candle at both ends (and who doesn’t?). Instead of moping, pump up your mojo with these 10 strategies from experts in sleep, fitness, nutrition, psychology, and alternative medicine.

1. See the light

Get the right light, and you’ll have lots more energy. But that can be a challenge, given the poorly lit offices we sit in and the scant doses of daily sunlight (which contains brain-activating short-wavelength blue light) we get. “Our circadian rhythms are more sensitive to blue light than any other kind,” says Mariana Figueiro, assistant professor at the Lighting Research Center at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York.

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Ah, sweet sleep. We seem to get too little. Now researchers are finding that too much or too little sleep could lead to unhealthy weight gain.

Researchers at Laval University in Quebec looked at 276 people for six years who were part of a larger Canadian study. 

Sleep duration was determined from a questionnaire and the participants were classified into three groups: short sleepers slept five to six hours a night, the average got seven to eight hours, and the long sleepers put in nine to 10 hours of sleep every night.

Some of the findings:

• Over six years, short sleepers were 35% more likely to gain 11 pounds than average-duration sleepers.
• Over the same time period, long sleepers were 25% more likely to gain 11 pounds than average-duration sleepers.
• Short sleepers gained 58% more around their waists and 124% more body fat than the average sleeper.

Sleep Sweet Spot?

Researchers also think there might be an “optimal sleeping time” to stay healthy.

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine recommends that adults sleep between seven and eight hours a night.

Study researcher Jean-Philippe Chaput of Laval University says in a news release the findings provide “evidence that both short and long sleeping times predict an increased risk of future body weight and fat gain in adults.”

Chaput adds that “these results emphasize the need to add sleep duration to the list of environmental factors that are prevalent in our society that contribute to weight gain and obesity.”

A Nation Deprived?

Study authors say people in the United States are losing sleep, with Americans sleeping one and a half to two hours less a night than we did 40 years ago.

Previous studies have shown similar findings linking a lack of sleep to creeping obesity. Researchers say this new study adds to a growing body of evidence showing a sleep connection to weight gain involving fluctuating hormone levels.

According to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, nearly a third of adults say they sleep less than six hours a night.

Dreams of Good Sleep

Here are some tips for getting good sleep from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine:

• Follow a consistent bedtime routine.
• Establish a relaxing setting at bedtime.
• Get a full night’s sleep every night.
• Avoid caffeine or any other stimulants before bedtime.
• Be worry-free at bedtime.
• Don’t go to bed hungry, or too full.
• Avoid rigorous exercise within six hours of your bedtime.
• Make your bedroom quiet, dark, and a little cool.
• Get up at the same time every morning.

The study is published in the April 1 issue of the journal Sleep.  

Click here for additional resources on sleep from WesWELL.

Sleep is such a fundamental biological drive that it’s shared by practically every species, from fruit flies to humans. Indeed, sleep is so essential that animals will die as quickly from sleep deprivation as they will from food deprivation. And yet despite such alarming evidence (not to mention all the things your mother told you about the importance of sleep), human beings are one of the few species that deliberately deprive themselves of sleep. Why do we do this?

Most would blame the frantic pace of modern life: we live in a 24/7 world, fuelled by ever-present deadlines, demands and responsibilities. With so much to do and so little time, it seems tempting, or perhaps even necessary, to shave off a few hours of sleep in order to get things done. Given this chronic shortage of shuteye, wouldn’t it be wonderful if a quick nap could refresh us mentally and improve our memories? Results from a recent study by Lahl et al. (2008) suggest that a mere six-minute nap may be able do just that.

Before discussing this intriguing finding, some background is in order. The past decade has witnessed a boom in reports demonstrating that sleep after learning is critical for the offline “consolidation” of memories. The process is what allows the brain to convert newly learned information into long-term storage in the brain. Sleep has been shown to promote consolidation of various kinds of memory, from procedural skills (for example, learning to play a musical instrument or mastering a sport), to episodic memories (such as remembering facts and experiences learned during the day).

These benefits were initially thought to require a full night of sleep, but more recent studies suggest that, for episodic memories, a 60-to 90-minute nap may generate the same memory benefits in much less time. Until the study by Lahl et al., however, many scientists would have been skeptical about the efficacy of a nap that was any shorter. In part, this skepticism is because the biological mechanisms believed to be necessary for cementing long-term memories – particularly the synthesis of new proteins needed to strengthen synaptic connections – takes at least this long. Nonetheless, there are many anecdotal accounts describing the cognitive benefits of ultra-short “power naps.” The study by Lahl et al. provides the first empirical support for such a claim.

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Click here for more information on Sleep Hygiene & Disorders from WesWELL.