At this point, chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to chronic depression, other chronic disease, and pretty much every bad thing in life.
And yet, in our arrogant workaholic culture, we still treat a lack of sleep as some badge of honor. Well, United States of America, enjoy our proinflammatory cytokines, then. Have fun with our increased expression of tnf-alpha.
Well, there’s a great new presentation, delivered at the 2021 Interdisciplinary Autoimmune Summit, showing sleep is “intimately tied” to the proinflammatory markers that make autoimmune disease worse.
Autoimmune dysfunction is tied to unhealthy neuropsychiatric symptoms, and not just because it’s awful living with an autoimmune disease, and “of course you’d feel blue”. The disease itself can attack normal neuronal cell signaling.
Further, a compelling study showed that depression was a massive risk factor in women developing lupus. Even greater than smoking, for example.
Why? Once again, a lack of sleep promotes inflammatory markers that can turn into autoimmune disease.
And then, not surprisingly, those with lupus who didn’t even have depression, pre-lupus, were more likely to develop it once they were diagnosed with lupus.
Healio has a good review on autoimmune disease and sleep, with a presentation of studies and evidence by Aric Prather, an associate professor of psychiatry and behavior sciences.
Basically, sleep disruptions are “rampant” in patients with autoimmune diseases, and the relationship is bidirectional.
Get less sleep, your disease gets worse. Your disease gets worse, you get less sleep.
And the same goes for depression, of course — whether it’s associated with an autoimmune disease or not.
Get less sleep, your depression gets worse. Your depression gets worse, you get less sleep.
You can read about all this in a tremendous review at Harvard Medical School’s readable Health Publishing.
But the money quote is this: ” sleep disruption — which affects levels of neurotransmitters and stress hormones, among other things — wreaks havoc in the brain, impairing thinking and emotional regulation. In this way, insomnia may amplify the effects of psychiatric disorders, and vice versa.”
This is a really tough thing.
How many times have you read something like, “If you struggle with sleep…..” and then an article lists things that are practically impossible for many of us.
“Plan for 8 hours.” Have you ever been a new parent?
“Be less stressed.” Have you ever lived with an anxiety disorder?
“Eat a healthy diet with tons of things that cost a ton and take 10 hours to prepare.”
But the fact is that we’ll probably make precious little improvement in our mental health until we take care of our sleep.
It’s incredibly important for psychiatrists (I’m of course not one) to start talking about sleep. So says a recent article in the American Journal of Psychiatry.
Researchers gave one group of patients with suicidal thoughts and severe insomnia a sleep aid (zolpidem, i.e. Ambien) and the other, a placebo. Both were given antidepressants, as well.
After two months, the patients on Ambien got better sleeps, had fewer suicidal thoughts, better thinking patterns, and more hopeful thoughts about the future.
In other words, in designing a treatment plan for suicidal patients, it’s incredibly important to address insomnia.
Now here comes the concern you were probably already thinking of — what about dependence on sleep aids?
After all, people can get hooked on Ambien and it can lose its efficacy over time.
Well, researchers only gave the patients Ambien for 8 weeks, then stopped, and followed up, two weeks later.
The patients who had taken the Ambien were, after two weeks, still less suicidal and more hopeful about the future.
So if you’re struggling with sleep and severe depression, it might be time to talk with your doctor about this acronym the researchers came up with: REST-IT. “Reducing Suicidal Ideation Through Insomnia Treatment.”
And GET MORE SLEEP! (caps-locking never helps), but still, GET MORE SLEEP!
[Free photo: Pexels]
