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from the shortest-distance-between-despair-and-hope-is-a-good-night's-sleep dept.
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Stressed to the max? Deep sleep can rewire the anxious brain
[UC Berkeley] researchers have found that the type of sleep most apt to calm and reset the anxious brain is deep sleep, also known as non-rapid eye movement (NREM) slow-wave sleep, a state in which neural oscillations become highly synchronized, and heart rates and blood pressure drop.
"We have identified a new function of deep sleep, one that decreases anxiety overnight by reorganizing connections in the brain," said study senior author Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of neuroscience and psychology. "Deep sleep seems to be a natural anxiolytic (anxiety inhibitor), so long as we get it each and every night."
The findings, published today, Nov. 4, in the journal Nature Human Behaviour, provide one of the strongest neural links between sleep and anxiety to date. They also point to sleep as a natural, non-pharmaceutical remedy for anxiety disorders, which have been diagnosed in some 40 million American adults and are rising among children and teens.
"Our study strongly suggests that insufficient sleep amplifies levels of anxiety and, conversely, that deep sleep helps reduce such stress," said study lead author Eti Ben Simon, a postdoctoral fellow in the Center for Human Sleep Science at UC Berkeley.
In a series of experiments using functional MRI and polysomnography, among other measures, Simon and fellow researchers scanned the brains of 18 young adults as they viewed emotionally stirring video clips after a full night of sleep, and again after a sleepless night. Anxiety levels were measured following each session via a questionnaire known as the state-trait anxiety inventory.
After a night of no sleep, brain scans showed a shutdown of the medial prefrontal cortex, which normally helps keep our anxiety in check, while the brain's deeper emotional centers were overactive.
"Without sleep, it's almost as if the brain is too heavy on the emotional accelerator pedal, without enough brake," Walker said.
After a full night of sleep, during which participants' brain waves were measured via electrodes placed on their heads, the results showed their anxiety levels declined significantly, especially for those who experienced more slow-wave NREM sleep.
"Deep sleep had restored the brain's prefrontal mechanism that regulates our emotions, lowering emotional and physiological reactivity and preventing the escalation of anxiety," Simon said.
Beyond gauging the sleep-anxiety connection in the 18 original study participants, the researchers replicated the results in a study of another 30 participants. Across all the participants, the results again showed that those who got more nighttime deep sleep experienced the lowest levels of anxiety the next day.
Journal Reference: Eti Ben Simon, Aubrey Rossi, Allison G. Harvey, Matthew P. Walker. Overanxious and underslept. Nature Human Behaviour, 2019; DOI: 10.1038/s41562-019-0754-8
(Score: 2) by barbara hudson on Thursday November 14 2019, @01:13PM (2 children)
Depression and anxiety are normal reactions to shitty life situations. Job loss, sickness, death, loss of relationships - the only one the DSM allows as normal is death (the grief exception). Everything else, here, have a pill because you have a (not proven by any test) chemical imbalance in your brain. Most people end up doing worse long-term on drugs than on talking about it and treating the underlying causes - help finding a new job, getting involved in community service to combat loss of relationships and isolation, support services such as home care for catastrophic illness. Taking pills won't get you a job or help combat the effects of illness any more than getting drunk will - the next day the problem still exists, and you haven't done anything to work towards fixing it, so now you're even more anxious and depressed. Increasing the dose or throwing more drugs into the brain still doesn't fix the underlying causes, just increases the side effects and contributes to learned helplessness (it's your brain that has a chemical imbalance - nothing you can do to change tit, so give up trying and dope yourself up and live with the side effects).
Practical example - drugs are approved after showing a "statistically significant" improvement of 1 or 2 points on a 50-point scale of depression. Even though clinically speaking the difference is not significant. Someone who is suicidal will still be suicidal. If I wanted to give you a pill that would make you feel 1 or 2 degrees warmer when it's minus 30°c outside, you'd say what's the point - it's still freaking cold. So on the 50 point temperature scale, where -30c is really cold, and +20c is room temperature, you're not going into notice a two point improvement.
Same with patients outcomes 2 point improvement doesn't make a difference to the patient that they will notice. Same as a 1 or 2 point improvement on the 27-point PHQ-9 won't matter. Try it yourself https://www.mdcalc.com/phq-9-patient-health-questionnaire-9. [mdcalc.com]
That people do worse long term on medication than by getting help with their problems doesn't matter - it's far cheaper to just prescribe a pill and hope it works. Too bad that long term double blind tests show it's no better than a placebo. And too bad we can't give people a blood test to actually see if the serotonin levels in their brains are actually low before prescribing drugs to change it.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:40PM (1 child)
Barbara (tom) Hudson CHEMICALLY CASTRATED itself with estrogen since you failed as a man lol! You also FAIL as a "woman" you NEUTERED delusional freakazoid! What is is like knowing you are a living mockery? A parody of both a 'woman' or a man! You know that. Everyone knows it about you "TraNsTeSticLe" hohohohoho. Barbara Hudson is a twistoid mental case deluding itself it is a REAL woman. Clue: You will never EVER be able to pass a DNA test due to the fact you do not, nor did you ever, possess female mitochondrial material you crackpot weirdo. It isn't logical to attempt to "fix" bodyparts that work with no issues. You had a working (extremely small) penis and balls you sawed off with estrogen hahahaha!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 14 2019, @05:42PM
Hehehehehe Barbara Hudson sawed off his shotgun! Possession of sawed off shotguns is highly illegal.