Sleep Study

  • Sleep Apnea, Sleep Health

    Link Between Sleep Apnea and Depression

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    New research has explored the link between sleep apnea and depression and suggests that the former may be one reason that depression treatments fail.

    Around 20–30%Trusted Source of people with depression and other mood disorders do not get the help they need from existing therapies.

    Depression is the “leading cause of disabilityTrusted Source worldwide.”

    For this reason, coming up with effective therapies is paramount.

    New research points to obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) as a potential culprit for treatment resistant depression and suggests that screening for and treating the sleep condition may alleviate symptoms of depression.

    Dr. William V. McCall — chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Health Behavior at the Medical College of Georgia at Augusta University — is the first and corresponding author of the study.

    He says, “No one is talking about evaluating for [OSA] as a potential cause of treatment resistant depression, which occurs in about 50% of [people] with major depressive disorder.”

    He hopes that the team’s new paper — appearing in The Journal of Psychiatric Research — will remedy this.

    14% of those with depression had OSA

    Dr. McCall and team examined the rate of undiagnosed OSA in a randomized clinical trial of people with major depressive disorder and suicidal tendencies.

    They recruited 125 people with depression, originally for the purpose of determining if treating their insomnia would improve their depression symptoms.

    The original trial excluded people at risk of OSA, such as those taking sleeping pills, or people with obesity or restless legs syndrome.

    The scientists tested the participants with a sleep study and found that 17 out of the 125 (nearly 14%) had OSA.

    Dr. McCall and colleagues note that people who had OSA did not present with the usual indicators of OSA severity, such as daytime sleepiness. Also, 6 of the 17 people were non-obese women.

    This is contrast with the demographic group usually at risk of OSA: overweight men.

    “We were completely caught by surprise,” says Dr. McCall, “that people did not fit the picture of what [OSA] is supposed to look like.”

    Also, 52 of the 125 participants had treatment resistant depression; 8 of those with treatment resistant depression also had OSA.

    Future treatment options

    The researchers point out that underlying conditions — such as hypothyroidism, cancer, and carotid artery disease — may often be the cause of treatment resistant depression.

    Therefore, many people with depression undergo a series of invasive and costly tests in an attempt to figure out the cause of depression treatment failure.

    Such tests may include an MRI scan or even a spinal tap — but Dr. McCall and team urge for sleep tests first. “I am thinking before we do a spinal tap for treatment resistant depression, we might need to do a sleep test first,” he says.

    “We know that [people] with sleep apnea talk about depression symptoms,” he goes on. “We know that if you have [OSA], you are not going to respond well to an antidepressant.”

    “We know that if you have sleep apnea and get [a CPAP machine], it gets better and now we know that there are hidden cases of sleep apnea in people who are depressed and [have] suicidal [tendencies].”

    Dr. William V. McCall

    However, the study authors also acknowledge that other factors — such as the side effects of other medications, including beta-blockers and corticosteroids — may cause treatment resistant depression.

    They also point out that suicidal tendencies are also a key factor, and the researchers suggest that a further area of investigation should be the question of whether or not treating sleep apnea will also reduce suicide ideation.

    In the United States, suicide is the 10th leading cause of deathTrusted Source among people of all ages.

  • Sleep Health, Sleep Study

    Marijuana may make sleep worse, especially for regular users, study finds

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    By Sandee LaMotte, CNN | Original Article

    (CNN)It’s a common assumption among marijuana users: Using weed will help you fall asleep and stay asleep. Scientists, however, aren’t so sure that’s true.

    This is an understudied but important area, as many people are increasingly turning to cannabis products as sleep aids,” said sleep specialist Wendy Troxel, a senior behavioral scientist at RAND Corporation, who was not involved in the study.

    “But we really lack solid evidence demonstrating whether cannabis helps or hurts sleep,” Troxel added.

    Use of weed may actually harm sleep, a new study has found. The research, published Monday in a BMJ journal, revealed adults who use weed 20 or more days during the last month were 64% more likely to sleep less than six hours a night and 76% more likely to sleep longer than nine hours a night.

    Optimal sleep for adults is defined by the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as seven to eight hours a night.Moderate consumption — using weed less than 20 days during the past month — didn’t create short sleep problems, but people were 47% more likely to snooze nine or more hours a night, the study also found.

    No clear evidence either way

    The study analyzed use of marijuana for sleep among 21,729 adults between the ages of 20 and 59. The data was gathered by the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey, and is considered representative of over 146 million Americans.

    Young adult cannabis consumers nearly twice as likely to suffer from a heart attack, research showsIn addition to issues with short and long sleep, people in the study who used weed within the last 30 days were also more likely to say they have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, and were more likely to say they have discussed sleep problems with a health care provider, Diep said.”The problem with our study is that we can’t really say that it’s causal, meaning we can’t know for sure whether this was simply individuals who were having difficulty sleeping, and that’s why they use the cannabis or the cannabis caused it,” he added.Prior studies have also found a connection between the two components of marijuana, CBD and THC, and poor sleep. CBD, or cannabidiol, is a key component of medical marijuana, while THC, or tetrahydrocannabinol, is the main psychoactive compound in cannabis that produces the high sensation.A 2018 randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled study — the gold standard — found no benefit from CBD on sleep in healthy volunteers. Other studies have also found high rates of insomnia when withdrawing from nightly use of marijuana.”At this time there still isn’t any clear evidence that cannabis is helping sleep,” said Dr. Bhanu Prakash Kolla, a sleep medicine specialist in the Center for Sleep Medicine at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, who was not involved in any of the studies.”We know that when people initiate use there is some benefit in the immediate short term but there is quick tolerance to this effect,” Kolla said. “There currently is no good quality evidence to suggest that cannabis will help improve sleep quality or duration.”

    Confounding factors

    Still, people continue to believe that weed is helping their sleep. Surveys of marijuana users show they do indeed rely on the drug for better sleep.”The issue is that there’s a disconnect between these anecdotal reports of people reporting therapeutic benefits and the evidence behind it in terms of the data,” Diep said.

    Sleep training for adults prevents depression, study finds One possible reason, Kolla said, is that when people stop using cannabis after a period of regular use, the withdrawal effects from weed can cause sleep disruptions. That leads people to believe “the cannabis was in fact helping (sleep), while what they are actually experiencing are withdrawal symptoms.” Another factor to consider is the increased potency of weed today as compared to when many of the studies on cannabis and sleep were conducted, said Dr. Karim Ladha, staff anesthesiologist and clinician-scientist in the department of anesthesiology and pain medicine at the University of Toronto.” A lot of the older data related to cannabis is based on lower doses of THC than what patients are using now, and there’s very little research related to CBD,” Ladha said.” Studies tell us about what happens at a population level, but on an individual level that discussion is much more personal,” he said. “The studies just give us the possibilities that (marijuana) could hurt your sleep, but it may help and so we just don’t know until you try it.”

    That’s why additional studies need to be done, he added.”Patients are spending money and time and resources to obtain cannabis right now to help with sleep,” Ladha said. “I think as the medical community, we need to do everything we can to make sure that we enable our patients to make the best possible decisions for their health.”

  • Sleep Apnea, Sleep Study

    A Sleep Study’s Eye-Opening Findings

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    Posted by Sleep Review Staff | Aug 4, 2021 

    A new MIT study looks at how the length of time a person sleeps may impact their sense of well-being.

    Subjectively, getting more sleep seems to provide big benefits: Many people find it gives them increased energy, emotional control, and an improved sense of well-being. But a new study co-authored by MIT economists complicates this picture, suggesting that more sleep, by itself, isn’t necessarily sufficient to bring about those kinds of appealing improvements.

    The study is based on a distinctive field experiment of low-income workers in Chennai, India, where the researchers studied residents at home during their normal everyday routines — and managed to increase participants’ sleep by about half an hour per night, a very substantial gain. And yet, sleeping more at night did not improve people’s work productivity, earnings, financial choices, sense of well-being, or even their blood pressure. The only thing it did, apparently, was to lower the number of hours they worked.

    “To our surprise, these night-sleep interventions had no positive effects whatsoever on any of the outcomes we measured,” says Frank Schilbach, an MIT economist and co-author of a new paper detailing the study’s findings.

    Get the full story at news.mit.edu.

  • Sleep Health, Sleep Study

    Short Sleep May Harm Bone Health

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    Written by Catharine Paddock, Ph.D. on November 20, 2019 – Fact checked by Jasmin Collier

    Can insufficient sleep be harmful to bone health? New research in postmenopausal women has found that those who slept for no longer than 5 hours per night were most likely to have lower bone mineral density (BMD) and osteoporosis.

    A team from the University at Buffalo, NY, led the study of 11,084 postmenopausal women, all of whom were participants in the Women’s Health Initiative.

    A recent paper in the Journal of Bone and Mineral Research gives a full account of the findings.

    The investigation follows an earlier one in which the team had linked short sleep to a higher likelihood of bone fracture in women.

    Our study suggests that sleep may negatively impact bone health, adding to the list of the negative health impacts of poor sleep. I hope that it can also serve as a reminder to strive for the recommended 7 or more hours of sleep per night for our physical and mental health.

    Heather M. Ochs-Balcom, Ph.D. Lead Study Coordinator

    Bone remodeling and osteoporosis

    Bone is living tissue that undergoes continuous formation and resorption. The process, known as bone remodeling, removes old bone tissue and replaces it with new bone tissue.

    If you are sleeping less, one possible explanation is that bone remodeling isn’t happening properly.

    Ochs-Balcom

    The term osteoporosis means porous bone and refers to a condition that develops when the quality and density of bone are greatly reduced. Osteoporosis is more common in older adults, with older women having the highest risk of developing it.

    In most people, bone strength and density peak when they are in their late 20s. After that, as they continue to age, the rate of bone resorption gradually overtakes that of formation. The bone density of women reduces more rapidly during the first few years after menopause.

    Worldwide, around 1 in 3 women and 1 in 5 men in their 50s and older are at risk of experiencing bone fracture due to osteoporosis, according to the International Osteoporosis Foundation.

    The most common sites of fracture in people with osteoporosis are the hips, wrists, and spine.

    Spinal fractures can be serious, resulting in severe back pain, structural irregularities, and loss of height. Hip fractures are also of concern, as they often require surgery and can lead to loss of independence. They also carry a raised risk of death.

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