Lack of Sleep Alters Human Gene Activity

[Morgan Engel]

http://surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2013/98567_lack_of_sleep_alters_human_gene_activity.htm

[puredoxyk]

While this is interesting, posting it without comment seems to be suggesting that polyphasic sleep = inadequate sleep, and there's no evidence that that's true (and lots of anecdotal evidence that it isn't).

Lack of good sleep is awful for you!  So for the gods' sakes, if you can't get a solid 8 (or howevermany you need) hours' sleep per night, consider being polyphasic instead!  ;)

<3,

PD

On Thursday, 28 February 2013 12:54:12 UTC-5, Morgan Engel wrote:

http://surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2013/98567_lack_of_sleep_alters_human_gene_activity.htm

[Wout Mertens]

Yeah I'm no longer polyphasic although I often take a nap. I just didn't manage to ever feel optimally healthy. Naps help make me feel awesome but I don't limit my core sleep.

Note that all this study says is that there is a shift in gene expression, not necessarily that that's a problem. (although I suspect it might be)

Wout.

On Feb 28, 2013, at 18:54 , Morgan Engel <mrpo...@gmail.com> wrote:

http://surrey.ac.uk/mediacentre/press/2013/98567_lack_of_sleep_alters_human_gene_activity.htm

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[Morgan Engel]

Fair enough, I could have provided my own opinions on the importance of the article. Personally, I feel like my mental faculties are high-quality when I'm polyphasic, and I suffer little to no detriment, physically, but the question of what constitues sleep deprivation from a purely physical standpoint is still unknown, which means more information is good. It'd be extremely interesting to do a similar gene reaction test on someone polyphasic and see if it's related to volume, quality, or some other aspect of sleep in general. This could be a less-subjective measure of whether polyphasic actually does produce deprivation in some way. 

[Oki]

This kind of data provides a wonderful opportunity to test the hypothesis that polyphasic sleep does not equal sleep deprivation. If you can measure a bunch of biomarkers of sleep deprivation and then compare them between the three groups (poly, mono, and deprived) then you have a lot of data supporting one hypothesis or the other. For me, this is a critically important question that is definitely up in the air.

Oki

[Stenemo]

I agree read you Oki, that is a great thing to study To understand more about the differences between normal sleep, deprivation, and polyphasic sleep.

[Chiara Buffon]

Unless you become a very cool  X man.

2013/3/1 Wout Mertens <wout.m...@gmail.com>

[Alvaro F. Boirac]

One problem with the "media release" is that it provides no link to the actual article, and no detail of the research.

Searching for the publications of the researcher, http://www.surrey.ac.uk/biochemistry/People/dijk_dj/

it shows studies where they tracked multiple metabolic and endocrine markers , 

Or also Melatonine, but nothing about "gene activity".  In their latest paper:

Nineteen healthy, young, normal-weight men were randomised to either sleep restriction (habitual bedtime minus 1.5h) or a control condition (habitual bedtime) for three weeks. Weekly assessments of insulin sensitivity by hyperinsulinaemic–euglycaemic clamp, anthropometry, vascular function, leptin and adiponectin were made.

You could hardly expect the subjects to have adapted to a new pattern of sleep in that time. It's not clear how many control individuals there were, or if people who already sleep say 5h were used.

The part about gene activity seems absent ... unless it's a different paper, or the insuline sensitivity / vascular function is taken as a proxy ... but that's unlikely.

Anyway, not much can be inferred from the press release. 

On 3 March 2013 08:57, Stenemo <sten...@gmail.com> wrote:

I agree read you Oki, that is a great thing to study To understand more about the differences between normal sleep, deprivation, and polyphasic sleep.