Feeling Sleepy? Six Findings That Reveal The Nuanced Effects Of Poor Sleep

By Emma Young

We all know that too little sleep is bad for us. Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley sleep scientist and author of the best-selling Why We Sleep, has gone so far as to declare: “The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.” However, some researchers fear that our concerns about not getting enough sleep are becoming overblown — and that, ironically, they could be making the problem worse. In this feature, we take a look at evidence that “too little” sleep isn’t always the disaster that it’s held up to be.

It’s not always about a lack of sleep

You’ll be familiar with the chronotype concepts of larks (early to bed and early to rise) and owls (late to bed, and late to rise). Most kids start out as larks, but during adolescence, many shift to becoming owls. Waking up late is fine for teenagers at the weekends, but not during the school week. Unsurprisingly, then, various studies have found that delaying the time school starts improves academic results for this age-group, and many sleep scientists and paediatricians support such a policy. It’s been assumed that this is because it allows teens to get a decent night’s sleep. But there’s some evidence that this may not be the reason. A recent study of Dutch secondary school pupils, published in Scientific Reports, found that owls did get poorer exam grades, but this effect was largely independent of sleep duration.

This suggests that even when owls get “enough” sleep, they don’t do as well as larks on exams. And this, it seems, is because exams are often administered in the mornings, when owls aren’t at their cognitive peak. When owls took exams in the afternoon, closer to that peak, they achieved similar grades as larks. This was especially true for science subjects. Of course, if the school day starts later, then exams start later — and this could be a better fit for many teens’ chronotype. What this all means, though, is that, in many cases, trying to get teens to go to bed earlier, to sleep for longer, may not make as much of a difference to their performance at school as has been claimed.

Cause or effect?

Anxiety, OCD, ADHD, schizophrenia, PTSD… all kinds of mental health problems are associated with sleep problems, too. It’s now recognised that the relationship is circular, with mental illness and insomnia exacerbating each other. It’s not as simple, then, as a lack of sleep causing symptoms. And certainly, there’s evidence that stress early in life can set you up for insomnia much later. One study found that children who grew up in families with high levels of conflict went on to be more likely to have insomnia as adults. This held even when any sleep problems or depression during childhood were controlled for in the analysis — so it wasn’t a case of participants who’d had trouble sleeping as kids still having these difficulties as adults. And when it comes to depression, the links between sleep and symptoms can be surprising…

A surprising therapy

Depriving depressed people of sleep works as an effective treatment. This was shown in series of studies starting almost 50 years ago. But it has become a standard therapy only recently. Healthy people deprived of sleep will generally find that their mood worsens. But for people with depression, staying awake for at least a night can do the opposite (temporarily, anyway). The impacts are rapid, and work on most patients, as a study in Denmark, for example, has found. Exactly how the treatment works is still debated, but it’s thought to shock a sluggish biological clock.

Sleep doesn’t always improve memory

The evidence that sleep is important for memory is pretty overwhelming. But, recently, at least one study has challenged the idea that sleep always brings memory benefits. Given the experimental record, the researchers had expected to find that eye-witnesses who were given the chance to sleep would be better at identifying suspects the following day. But they weren’t…

This was a big study: 2000 participants watched a brief video of a man stealing a laptop from an office. Twelve hours later, they were asked to identify him from a line-up. Half had slept during this time, but, contrary to expectations, they were no more accurate than the others at picking out the perpetrator. More work is needed to try to clarify why not.

Effects can be indirect

No doubt you’ve heard that a lack of sleep isn’t just bad for your mental but your physical health. Women who get less sleep are indeed more likely to develop obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease, for example. But the major reason for these effects seems to be indirect: women who sleep poorly tend to make poorer food choices, going for higher-calorie, energy-dense foods. These choices are certainly related to a lack of quality sleep, but they aren’t an inevitable result of it. The same team behind this finding suspect, meanwhile, that a poor diet can cause poor sleep: “It’s also possible that poor diet has a negative impact on women’s sleep quality”, notes lead author Faris Zuraikat, at Columbia University. “Eating more could also cause gastrointestinal discomfort, for instance, making it harder to fall asleep or remain asleep.”

Some poor sleepers don’t suffer at all

Just how bad is insomnia anyway…? There are a lot of people out there who technically do suffer from insomnia, but who don’t believe, or realise, that they do, and these people experience no distress or anxiety, and are no more impaired in terms of daily fatigue than those who get good sleep. What’s more, a massive increase in hypertension (high blood pressure) was observed among those who regarded themselves as having insomnia, but not among the “non-complaining poor sleepers”. The same review found that 37% of people who think they have insomnia actually sleep normally, and having an “insomnia identity” was more predictive of daytime impairment than poor sleep. Other research has found, meanwhile, that worrying about not getting enough sleep can itself lead to prolonged insomnia.

Headlines that make people worry that they’re not getting enough sleep could themselves, then, cause some of the problems they’re describing. Which brings me back to the start of this feature…. There’s plenty of evidence that a good quantity of regular quality sleep is important. But how we think about the way we sleep is important, too.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/05/19/feeling-sleepy-six-findings-that-reveal-the-nuanced-effects-of-poor-sleep/#more-39623(accessed 25.5.20)

Memory Complaints Are More Common Among Older Adults With Particular Personality Traits

By Emma Young

Memory complaints are fairly common among elderly people. Together with low participation in cognitively demanding activities, such as reading or doing crosswords, they can predict future declines — including the risk of developing dementia.

It might seem likely, then, that people with poorer cognitive functioning may report more problems, and may be less able to engage in (and so benefit from) reading or other stimulating activities. However, a new paper, published in Psychology and Aging, suggests that another factor is more important in predicting both these complaints and engagement in stimulating activities: personality.

The researchers, led by Patrick Hill at Washington University in St Louis, analysed data from 136 Swiss older adults, with an average age of about 70. (The data came from a bigger study into how the everyday behaviour of older people is linked to maintaining or improving wellbeing and health). The participants first completed a series of lab-based cognitive tasks, including memory tests, and self-report questionnaires, which included an assessment of the “Big Five” personality traits. Then, at the end of each of the next ten days, they used smartphones to report on any cognitive complaints during that day (e.g. “I misplaced or lost an object such as keys or glasses”), and also instances of cognitive engagement (e.g. “I enjoyed thinking about a complicated problem”).

Taking into account each participant’s age, education level and subjective health, the team then looked at how initial cognitive task results and personality trait scores might relate to the subsequent smartphone data.

They found that the number of daily cognitive complaints was significantly correlated with scores on all of the personality traits, but just one of the measures of cognitive performance (processing speed). Strikingly, scores on the two initial specific memory tests did not correlate with daily cognitive complaints. (This somewhat surprising observation is in fact supported by recent work that suggests our cognitive self-perceptions are relatively distinct from our actual performance).

When all of these variables were put into a model, however, only one factor emerged as being key. This was openness to experience, a personality trait that entails a liking for intellectual and artistic pursuits, and a willingness to try new things. Participants who initially scored higher for openness went on to report, on average, fewer cognitive complaints each day, and also more, and more varied, cognitive engagement.

There may be two reasons for this, the researchers suggest. Firstly, measures of openness tap into a person’s self-perceptions of their intellectual ability and creativity. People with a stronger belief in their intellectual capacities may perceive fewer cognitive issues in daily life. Secondly, people who are more open are of course more willing to engage in varied novel experiences. Because they enjoy intellectual activities, they may be driven to think more, and in more different ways — and this could protect against cognitive decline. In fact, there are other recent findings that diversity in cognitive activity, rather than total time spent in these kinds of tasks, may be more beneficial for cognitive performance in older age.

The work also suggests that in understanding why some interventions work better for some older people than others, personality traits should be taken into account. Also, interventions that encourage openness may potentially be more effective.

However, as the researchers themselves add, all of the personality traits, demographic variables and initial cognitive performance measures only account for a small amount of the differences in the level of cognitive complaints and engagement between people. The team would like to see more work to drill into potential links with personality in finer detail. But other factors that are yet to be well-characterised — levels of stress, perhaps — may well turn out to be far more important.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/05/20/memory-complaints-are-more-common-among-older-adults-with-particular-personality-traits/(accessed 22.5.20)

Children Can “Catch” Their Mother’s Stress — Particularly If She Tries To Hide It

By Emily Reynolds

The way parents feel and behave often rubs off on their children. Kids’ own life paths can be influenced by the strength of their parents’ romantic relationship, for example, or how often their parents lie to them.

We may also pick things up as our parents try to hide them, as new research published in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests. Even when parents try to hide their stress, the team finds, they can still pass on those feelings to their children anyway.

To examine how stress is passed on from parent to child, Sara Waters from Washington State University Vancouver and colleagues looked at the physiological responses that occur when parents suppressed their anxiety. A total of 107 parents and their children aged between 7 and 11 were first fitted with ECG sensors to measure the heart’s “pre-ejection period” (PEP), a measure of sympathetic nervous system activation, before spending five minutes listening to soothing music through headphones.

Parents were then separated from their children and completed a stress test, in which they were asked to give a five minute speech about themselves and then answer five minutes of questions in front of two evaluators. During the test, evaluators provided negative, non-verbal feedback, shaking their heads, crossing their arms and frowning.

The stressed-out parents were then assigned to either a “suppression” or control condition, before being reunited with their children. Those in the suppression condition were asked to mask their emotion, behaving in such a way that their child would not be able to know they were feeling anything at all, while those in the control condition were told to act naturally, as they would at home. Parent and child were then asked to engage in a six minute conversation about a source of conflict in their relationship, a six minute cooperation task in which they built with blocks, and six minutes of free play.

Trained observers who rated these interactions found that parents and children were less warm and engaged with each other in the suppression condition. There was also a significant link between a mother’s physiological stress and that of her child: mothers’ PEP reactivity at one time point was related to children’s reactivity shortly thereafter. In the control group, however, stress was not transmitted from mother to child.

Interestingly enough, stress wasn’t transmitted from fathers to their children, which the team believes is down to how men deal with stress outside of laboratory conditions. Because men are more likely to say they’re fine when they’re not, while women are more likely to show how they’re feeling, the team argues that children were more used to emotional suppression in their male caretakers and were therefore less affected. However, fathers in the suppression condition did become linked to their children’s physiology in the opposite direction: they picked up stress from their children, not the other way around.

As the study focused purely on pairings between a single child and parent, future research could focus on emotional suppression and stress in larger groups or family systems, exploring how a second parent, sibling or other family member affects this physiological link, for instance. Researchers could also examine the techniques that parents use in the control condition: their warm and engaging interactions may stem from specific, positive emotion regulation strategies rather than simply being the result of not suppressing their emotions.

Hiding stress from your children is entirely understandable — you may wish to protect them from negative feelings and see emotional suppression as the best way to do that. But, as Waters says, it may be more comforting for children “to have their feelings honoured” — listening to them honestly, rather than brushing over them altogether.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/05/12/children-can-catch-their-mothers-stress-particularly-if-she-tries-to-hide-it/#more-39598(accessed 16.5.20)

Επιστημονικά δεδομένα για την συσχέτιση μεταξύ σεξουαλικής επαφής και Covid-19 (NYC-Health,Sex and Coronavirus Disease)

ΠΗΓΗ:

https://www.askitis.gr/latest/view/%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B9%CF%83%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BC%CE%BF%CE%BD%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AC-%CE%B4%CE%B5%CE%B4%CE%BF%CE%BC%CE%AD%CE%BD%CE%B1-%CE%B3%CE%B9%CE%B1-%CF%84%CE%B7%CE%BD-%CF%83%CF%85%CF%83%CF%87%CE%AD%CF%84%CE%B9%CF%83%CE%B7-%CE%BC%CE%B5%CF%84%CE%B1%CE%BE%CF%8D-%CF%83%CE%B5%CE%BE%CE%BF%CF%85%CE%B1%CE%BB%CE%B9%CE%BA%CE%AE%CF%82-%CE%B5%CF%80%CE%B1%CF%86%CE%AE%CF%82-%CE%BA%CE%B1%CE%B9-covid-19-nyc-health-sex-and-coronavirus-disease(accessed 11.5.20)

People Who Have Lost Their Religion Show “Residues” Of Religious Past In Their Thoughts And Behaviours, Study Claims

By Emma Young

What happens to people when they lose their religion? Do they start to think and act just like people who have never believed — or do they keep some psychological and behavioural traces of their past?

Given the number of people worldwide who report no current religious affiliation (more than 1 billion) and predictions that this will expand into the future, it’s important to explore just how homogenous, or otherwise, this group is, argue the researchers behind a new paper, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology: Personality Processes and Individual Differences.

Daryl R. Van Tongeren at Hope College, US, and his colleagues conclude from their studies that there is in fact a “religious residue” that clings to people who cease to identify as religious. “Formerly religious individuals differed from never religious and currently religious individuals in cognitive, emotional and behavioural processes,” the team reports.

Why might such a residue exist? Because for people who are religious, the kinds of attitudes and behaviours that go along with religion are likely to be important to the way those individuals see themselves. Picture someone who grew up in a strongly Christian household, for example, with parents who promoted Christian morals, and who volunteered their time through the church. Even if that person later no longer identifies as Christian, these experiences may have enduring psychological impacts. Our social identities can change, the researchers note, but this usually only happens slowly.

For their first study, the team recruited just over 3,000 nationally representative online participants from the US, the Netherlands and Hong Kong. These people were asked about their religious identity, beliefs and practices, and the extent to which they were exposed to religious behaviours during childhood. Then they completed a (very brief) measure of their subjective prosociality (their perception of their helpfulness towards other people, for example), a scale that measured their social values, and also a test that assessed their attitudes towards God.

The team found that a sizeable proportion — 20.94% — of the participants reported being formerly religious. And, they argue, their data revealed evidence for a religious residue effect. On various measures, including religiosity, self-reported prosociality and prosocial orientation (such as wanting everyone in a group to do well, rather than aiming for individual success), currently religious participants scored the highest, followed by formerly religious and finally never religious people. This was true for each of the three nationalities sampled.

To explore this further, the team ran a second study on 1,626 men and women from the same countries. This time, there were equivalent numbers of never-religious, formerly religious and currently religious participants. And as well as repeating the steps in the first study, these people were given the option of donating a percentage of their participation payment to Save the Children, and also of volunteering to complete another short survey (they could offer anything between 5 and 15 minutes of their time).

Among those who agreed to volunteer for the extra survey, the currently religious gave up more time than both the other groups. Currently religious people also donated more of their money to charity than formerly religious people — but this group in turn donated more than the never religious. This shows that formerly religious people don’t just say they are more prosocial but act in a more prosocial way than never-religious types, the team says.

Well, this particular study seems to show that. But, remember, the participants in both these studies were all first asked about their religious identity. If, as the researchers argue, being prosocial is an important element of being religious, then currently religious, and even previously religious, participants had all just been primed to think of religion, and (whether consciously or not) everything that goes with that. Van Tongeren maintains that as the participants were asked a host of different questions, this is unlikely to be an issue. But I don’t think they can rule out the possibility that this inflated these groups’ prosociality scores.

For the final study, the team shifted to data from New Zealand collected between 2009 and 2017 as part of an annual, longitudinal national sample of registered voters. This revealed that volunteering was about twice as common among religious vs non-religious people. It also showed that the annual chance of a participant losing their religion but still spending time in voluntary or charitable work was much higher than the chance of someone losing their religion and stopping volunteering. This supports the religious residue hypothesis, the researchers argue.

But plenty of non-religious people also volunteered their time. Being the kind of person who volunteers could constitute an important aspect of anyone’s social identity, in and of itself, and so be resistant to change, whether you are religious or not. However, Van Tongeren maintains that the data provides evidence for the “lingering effects of prosociality, even after people stop identifying as religious”.

SOURCE:

https://digest.bps.org.uk/2020/05/07/people-who-have-lost-their-religion-show-residues-of-religious-past-in-their-thoughts-and-behaviours-study-claims/#more-39578(accessed 10.5.20)

Robert Waldinger: What makes a good life? Lessons from the longest study on happiness | TED Talk

What keeps us happy and healthy as we go through life? If you think it's fame and money, you're not alone – but, according to psychiatrist Robert Waldinger, you're mistaken. As the director of a 75-year-old study on adult development, Waldinger has unprecedented access to data on true happiness and satisfaction. In this talk, he shares three important lessons learned from the study as well as some practical, old-as-the-hills wisdom on how to build a fulfilling, long life.

https://www.ted.com/talks/robert_waldinger_what_makes_a_good_life_lessons_from_the_longest_study_on_happiness

Κλονίστηκε η ψυχική υγεία των Ελλήνων

Πάνω από 40% των Ελλήνων δηλώνουν ότι η ψυχική τους υγεία έχει επιδεινωθεί εξαιτίας της πανδημίας του κορωνοϊού, ενώ το 45% αναφέρει ότι το φοβίζει η αβεβαιότητα για το μέλλον. Η χαμηλή παραγωγικότητα και το αυξημένο στρες κυριαρχούν. Αυτά είναι ορισμένα από τα σημαντικότερα ευρήματα έρευνας της Sentio Solutions, της ελληνικής healthtech startup, με έδρα το Σαν Φρανσίσκο, που ιδρύθηκε το 2015 από τον Γιώργο Ελευθερίου και τον Χάρη Τσίρμπα και συνδυάζει τεχνητή νοημοσύνη και ψυχοθεραπεία για να αλλάξει τον τρόπο που γίνεται η πρόληψη, διάγνωση και θεραπεία ήπιων ψυχικών διαταραχών.

Πρόσφατα, σε συνεργασία με την Α΄ Πανεπιστημιακή Ψυχιατρική Κλινική της Ιατρικής Σχολής του ΕΚΠΑ, δημιούργησε έναν οδηγό με πρακτικές συμβουλές και οδηγίες για τη διαχείριση του στρες και της ανασφάλειας στην περίοδο της κρίσης (ο οδηγός έχει αναρτηθεί στην ιστοσελίδα της Α΄ Ψυχιατρικής Κλινικής και διατίθεται δωρεάν), ενώ τις επόμενες εβδομάδες θα λανσάρει και στην Ελλάδα το Feel Relief, ένα νέο πρόγραμμα τηλεψυχιατρικής το οποίο έχει σχεδιαστεί ειδικά για να βοηθήσει κάθε άνθρωπο να αντεπεξέλθει στο έντονο άγχος την εποχή της COVID-19 πανδημίας (προς το παρόν είναι διαθέσιμο στην Αμερική). Θυμίζεται ότι το πρώτο προϊόν της εταιρείας υπήρξε το πρωτοποριακό πρόγραμμα Feel, το οποίο περιλαμβάνει ένα «βραχιολάκι», το Feel Emotion Sensor, το οποίο συλλέγει βιοσήματα που σχετίζονται με τον καρδιακό ρυθμό, την αγωγιμότητα και τη θερμοκρασία του δέρματος και έτσι παρακολουθεί τις συναισθηματικές αλλαγές σε πραγματικό χρόνο παρέχοντας 24ωρη υποστήριξη.




Πίσω στην έρευνα της Sentio Solutions, οι μεγαλύτεροι παράγοντες ανησυχίας για τους Ελληνες είναι μια μακροχρόνια οικονομική ύφεση (45%) και ο φόβος να αρρωστήσει κάποιο μέλος της οικογένειάς τους (39%). Ενα ποσοστό ανθρώπων που δεν έχουν παιδιά εκφράζουν την ανησυχία ότι οι διαπροσωπικές σχέσεις θα αλλάξουν προς το χειρότερο και ότι θα εξαφανιστεί η κοινωνική συνοχή.

Ομως, το 95% θεωρεί ότι η κατάσταση θα έχει και θετικά αποτελέσματα. Οι περισσότεροι (30,08%) βλέπουν ως θετικό το γεγονός ότι θα έχουμε περιβαλλοντικά οφέλη όπως τη μείωση της ατμοσφαιρικής ρύπανσης, ενώ το 21,54% θεωρεί ότι η καραντίνα ήταν ευκαιρία να ξεφύγει από τη ρουτίνα της καθημερινότητας και να ανασυγκροτηθούν. Το 14,63% δήλωσε ότι ήταν ευκαιρία να περάσει περισσότερη ώρα με τα παιδιά και την οικογένειά του.

Οπως αναμενόταν, για το 63% η μεγαλύτερη δυσκολία ήταν η αδυναμία να δει φίλους και οικογένεια, ενώ ειδικά για τις μητέρες η μεγαλύτερη δυσκολία ήταν να συνδυάσουν εργασία με τις δουλειές του σπιτιού, χωρίς εξωτερική βοήθεια. Το ελληνικό κοινό, πάντως, προσπαθεί να διατηρήσει την ψυχική του υγεία με τη συχνή επικοινωνία με φίλους και οικογένεια. Αρκετοί είναι αυτοί που αποφεύγουν την ενημέρωση από πολλαπλές πηγές ειδήσεων και προτιμούν πηγές που θεωρούν έγκυρες, ενώ ένα 6,83% έχει ξεκινήσει online ψυχοθεραπεία.

ΠΗΓΗ:

https://www.kathimerini.gr/1076329/gallery/epikairothta/ellada/klonisthke-h-yyxikh-ygeia-twn-ellhnwn(accessed 8.5.20)