Insomnia Linked To Abnormal Brain Connections

New Sleep Study:

Insomnia Linked To Abnormal Brain Connections

Insomnia is thought to affect one in three people in the UK.

07/04/2016

Natasha Hinde Lifestyle Writer


People who suffer from insomnia are more likely to have damaged brain connections, a new study has revealed.

Published in the journal Radiology, the study identified abnormalities in the brain’s white matter tracts in insomnia patients.

White matter tracts are “mainly involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, cognitive function and sensorimotor function”.

Researchers now want to conduct larger studies to clarify the relationship between white matter abnormalities and insomnia.

Primary insomnia is where individuals experience difficulty sleeping. It is associated with daytime fatigue, mood disruption and cognitive impairment, and can also lead to depression and anxiety disorders.

Insomnia is thought to regularly affect around one in every three people in the UK, and is particularly common in elderly people.

Shumei Li and a team of researchers, from the Department of Medical Imaging in Guangdong No. 2 Provincial People’s Hospital, China, set out to analyse the white matter tracts in insomnia patients and the relationship between abnormal white matter integrity and the level of insomnia.

According to Li, white matter tracts are “bundle of axons - or long fibers of nerve cells - that connect one part of the brain to another”.

“If white matter tracts are impaired, communication between brain regions is disrupted,” she explained.

The study analysed the brains of 23 patients with primary insomnia and 30 healthy control volunteers.

To evaluate mental status and sleep patterns, all participants completed questionnaires about sleep quality, insomnia severity, anxiety and depression.

Each participant also underwent brain MRI scans, which used a specialised technique called diffusion tensor imaging (DTI). This allows researchers to analyse the pattern of water movement along white matter tracts to identify whether they are damaged or not.

The results showed that, compared to participants from the healthy control group, insomnia patients had significantly reduced white matter integrity in several right-brain regions as well as the thalamus, which regulates consciousness, sleep and alertness.

Li said: “These impaired white matter tracts are mainly involved in the regulation of sleep and wakefulness, cognitive function and sensorimotor function.”

Additionally, abnormalities in the thalamus and body corpus callosum - the largest white matter structure in the brain - were associated with the duration of patients’ insomnia and how depressed they felt.

“The involvement of the thalamus in the pathology of insomnia is particularly critical, since the thalamus houses important constituents of the body’s biological clock,” Li added.

Researchers believe abnormalities of white matter integrity in insomnia patients may be due to loss of myelin, the protective coating around nerve fibers.

They added that larger studies are needed to clarify the relationship between altered white matter integrity and insomnia.




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Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/entry/people-with-insomnia-might-have-damaged-brain-connections-mri-scans-show_uk_57065bfee4b01e4956fd18ac

‘Extreme Sitting’

‘Extreme Sitting’ For More Than 10 Hours A Day Linked To Heart Disease

A moderate amount of sitting, however, doesn’t seem to have much of an effect.

07/21/2016  

Ryan McVay via Getty Images

By Kathryn Doyle



(Reuters Health) – Being sedentary, at least in moderation, is unlikely to cause heart disease, according to a new review of past research.

Based on their analysis, researchers conclude that only very high levels of sedentary time ― more than 10 hours per day ― are linked to an increased risk of heart attack, stroke or heart disease-related death.

Compared to sitting for less than three of one’s waking hours each day, more than 10 hours of sedentary time was tied to an 8 percent increase in risk for developing heart disease.

“Our findings suggest that sedentary time is associated with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, independent of other potential risk factors such as body mass index and physical activity, only at very high levels,” said lead author Dr. Ambarish Pandey of the University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center in Dallas.

It hadn’t been clear exactly how much sedentary time should be avoided to lower cardiovascular disease risk, Pandey told Reuters Health by email.

The researchers analyzed data from nine long-term studies that had followed more than 700,000 adults and calculated the association between their inactive time and their incidence of events like heart attack and stroke. “Sedentary time” included any low-activity periods, like sitting, watching TV or driving.

Half of the studies followed people for more than 11 years. In total there were 25,769 unique cardiovascular events.

People who were the most sedentary, about 12 hours per day, were 14 percent more likely than those who were sedentary only 2.5 hours per day to develop cardiovascular disease. But more moderate sedentary times were not tied to increased risk.

Risk only started to increase after more than 10 hours of sedentary time per day, according to the results in JAMA Cardiology.

“The types of relationship between sedentary time and cardiovascular disease (CVD) events will provide different kind of recommendations for the restriction of sedentary time to prevent CVD events in the future,” said Yeonju Kim, a research specialist at the University of Hawaii Cancer Center in Honolulu, who was not part of the new study.

But we’ll need more studies in addition to this review before implementing a guideline, like limiting sedentary time to less than 10 hours per day, Kim told Reuters Health by email.

“There is previous literature to suggest that lower sedentary time is associated with higher cardiorespiratory fitness levels, which may underlie some of the observed association,” Pandey said.

Staying active and getting regular exercise can help lower cardiovascular disease risk, he said.

“Increasing physical activity, avoiding prolonged sitting time, workplace interventions such as sit-stand work stations and activity-permissive desks may be useful to lower sedentary time,” he added.

SOURCE: http://bit.ly/29JyZNp JAMA Cardiology, online July 13, 2016.

 

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Link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/sitting-this-many-hours-a-day-could-increase-your-risk-of-heart-disease_us_5790ee3fe4b00c9876ce544b?