21 Sep Health Megatrends – Sleep Deprivation
In today’s online and connected society, we are never far from contact. This has brought higher expectations to be readily available. As a result longer work hours, added stresses, increased smartphone device usage have likely contributed to decreased sleep time, insomnia and chronic sleep deprivation. Use of actigraphy wrist watches, sleep diaries and polysomnography may play a more important role in optimising the treatment of chronic diseases by ensuring adequate quality sleep is achieved for patients.
Sleep duration and mortality – Does weekend sleep matter?
Åkerstedt T, Ghilotti F, Grotta A, et al. Sleep duration and mortality – Does weekend sleep matter?. J Sleep Res. 2018;e12712. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.12712
This study investigated both weekday and weekend sleep duration with overall mortality. 43,880 subjects was followed for 13 years. Among individuals <65 years old, short sleep (≤5 hr) during weekends at baseline was associated with a 52% higher mortality rate compared with the reference group (7 hr). No association was observed for long (≥9 hr) weekend sleep. When, instead, different combinations of weekday and weekend sleep durations were analysed, a 65% higher mortality risk was found with consistently sleeping ≤5 hr and 25% higher risk when sleeping ≥8 hr compared with consistently sleeping 6-7 hr per day (reference).
However sleeping short during the week and long on weekends showed no difference to the reference.
Sleeping too little or too much may increase mortality however catching up on the weekend may compensate for short weekday sleep.
Sleep quality as a mediator of problematic smartphone use and clinical health symptoms.
J Behav Addict. 2018 May 23:1-7. doi: 10.1556/2006.7.2018.40. [Epub ahead of print]
Although smartphone use brings many benefits, it is also associated with many serious health problems. This study examined the relationship between problematic smartphone use (PSU) and clinical health symptoms (e.g., body dysfunction) and the mediating effects of sleep quality on this relationship in adolescents. 686 middle- and high-school students completed self-report measures of PSU, sleep quality, and physical symptoms.
A significant positive correlation between PSU and health symptoms was noted. Sleep quality mediated the relationship between PSU and health symptoms.
In order to promote health and wellness in adolescents, individuals should be encouraged to place boundaries on smartphone use, especially at bedtime to improve sleep quality and in turn improve clinical health symptoms.
Relationship between sleep duration and self-reported health-related quality of life among US adults with or without major chronic diseases, 2014.
Yong Liu, Anne G Wheaton, Janet B Croft, Fang Xu, Timothy J Cunningham, Kurt J Greenlund, Relationship between sleep duration and self-reported health-related quality of life among US adults with or without major chronic diseases, 2014,Sleep Health,Volume 4, Issue 3,2018,
This survey based study analysed self-reported data from adults with (n=277,757, unhealthy group) and without (n=172,052. healthy group) history of chronic diseases (heart disease, stroke, cancer, COPD, diabetes, asthma, arthritic, depression, kidney disease).
The prevalence of poor/fair health, frequent physical distress, frequent mental distress, frequent activity limitation, and short sleep duration was 27.9%, 19.3%, 17.0%, 13.6%, and 38.3% in the unhealthy group and 6.9%, 4.0%, 5.3%, 2.1%, and 31.0% in the healthy group, respectively. U-shaped relationships of sleep duration to all indicators were observed among the unhealthy group, and in 3 out of 4 indicators in the healthy group.
Relationships between extreme sleep durations (short or long) and health related quality of life were noted in all subjects and should stress the importance of sleep for health and well-being.