According to a new study, having a weekend on the weekend when you are used to getting up early all week can affect your mood and increase your risk of depression.
Experts from Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center, used sleep and mood data from 2,1000 first-degree physicians who were more than a year old.
An irregular sleep schedule can increase the risk of depression as much as sleeping fewer hours in general or staying awake until regularly, they found.
Sleeping on a Sunday can even affect your Monday morning mood, they found, and can make you as grumpy as you would be if you woke up late on a Sunday night.
Researchers have not studied the effect of mixed sleep schedules on the wider population, but believe it could be applied to anyone with irregular sleep patterns.
According to one study, having a weekend on the weekend when you are used to getting up early all week can affect your mood and increase your risk of depression.
The medical interns in this study were in their first year of residency training after medical school and experienced intense, long work days and irregular schedules, which change from day to day without a real structure.
These changes altered their ability to have regular sleep schedules and made them the perfect test subjects for a study of irregular sleep patterns and mood.
Data was collected by tracking sleep and other activities through wrist devices and having them record their mood in a smartphone app.
They also did quarterly depression tests throughout the one-year study.
The new article, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, explores the impact on the mind of this unusual mixture of broken and irregular sleep.
The study authors found that devices that showed variable sleep programs were more likely to score higher on standardized depressive symptom questionnaires and to have lower daily mood scores.
Those who stayed up late or slept fewer hours also scored higher on symptoms of depression and less on a daily mood.
The findings add to what is already known about the association between sleep, daily mood and long-term risk of depression.
“Advanced portable technology allows us to study the behavioral and physiological factors of mental health, including sleep, on a much larger scale and more accurately than before,” says Yu Fang, lead author of the new article.
“Our findings not only aim to guide self-management on sleep habits, but also to inform institutional programming structures,” the research specialist added.
Fang is part of the Internal Health Study team, led by Srijan Sen, MD, Ph.D., who has been studying the mood and risk of depression of first-year medical residents for years. more than a decade.
The study collected an average of two weeks of data before beginning doctors ’internship years and an average of four months of follow-up throughout the year.
Cathy Goldstein, MD, MS, associate professor of neurology and physician at the Michigan Medicine Center for Sleep Disorders, said millions of people around the world use portable devices that they love to sleep on.
Experts from Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan Academic Medical Center, used sleep and mood data from 2,1000 first-degree physicians who were more than a year old.
This includes the Fitbit devices used in the studio, other activity trackers and smart watches like the Apple Watch.
“These devices, for the first time, allow us to record sleep for extended periods of time effortlessly on behalf of the user,” Goldstein says.
“We still have questions about the accuracy of sleep predictions made by consumer trackers, although initial work suggests performance similar to FDA-authorized clinical and research-grade acigraphy devices.”
Sen said the new findings are based on what his team’s work has already shown about the high risk of depression among new doctors.
“These findings highlight sleep consistency as an underappreciated factor in addressing depression and well-being,” he says.
“The work also highlights the potential of portable devices to understand important health-relevant constructions that we previously could not study at scale.”
The team notes that the relatively young group of people in the study – with an average age of 27 and university and medical degrees – are not representative of the wider population.
However, because they all experience similar workloads and schedules, they are a good group to test hypotheses and get a “broad” view of the general population.
The researchers hope that other groups will study other populations using similar devices and approaches, to see if the conclusions about the variation in the sleep schedule support them, and therefore can be applied to the population more broadly.
Fang, for example, points out that parents of young children could be another important group to study.
“I would also like my one-year-old son to be able to know about these findings and wake me up at 8:21 a.m. every day,” he jokes.
The findings have been published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.
Exposure to blue phones and computer screens “makes it harder to fall asleep”
Dhruvin Patel, a leading optometrist, is a specialist in the impact of blue light on eye health, that is, the light produced by telephone and computer screens.
Blue light can make it difficult to fall asleep and affect eye health
Researchers say exposure to blue light can increase the risk of eye damage and make it difficult to fall asleep.
Patel shared his tips for minimizing the impact of blue light while working from home or using screens.
1. Work one arm from the screen
Fully extend your arm and work from a distance, looking from your eyes to the end of your fingertips.
Use this as the minimum distance to reduce stress on the eyeballs.
2. 20/20/20
Simply put, every 20 minutes, deflect the screen view for at least 20 seconds at a minimum distance of 20 feet.
This will help you reset your visual systems and eyes during any long period of screen work.
3. Screen height
The height and level of the work screen can have a big impact on eye fatigue.
Research has shown that it is better for the screen to be located higher than the users ‘viewing level: the midpoint should be 5 to 6 inches below the users’ line of sight.
This makes the space between the upper and lower eyelid more open, which often causes dryness in the eyes.
4. Lighting
Position the computer screen to prevent glare, especially from aerial lighting or windows.
Use blinds or curtains on windows and replace desk lamp bulbs with lower power and intensity bulbs.
If there is no way to minimize glare from light sources, consider using an anti-glare filter.
5. Put a post-it note on the screen titled “BLINK.”
Normally, in a minute, we blink up to 20 times. This is automatically controlled by our central nervous system, so we are not aware of blinking.
While it is on the screens, it is actually reduced to 3-5 times per minute, which means that our tear films cannot be maintained and the eye is not lubricated.
A post-it-on note on the monitor that says “Blinking” will help you make a conscious effort to blink. It’s simple, but it definitely works.
6) Think about your device
Usually the older, newer phone is the best, but not for your eyes. An iPhone X is 20% brighter than an iPhone 6 and emits higher levels of blue light.
This is the difference of a 100% increase in harmful exposure to blue light.
7. Remember to turn it off
I would not suggest digital devices or artificial lighting after sunset. If you’re like most people, you’ll probably send this last-minute email or finish your favorite show on Netflix before you go to bed.
Try reading a book or start the meditation you promised yourself you would do in the new year.
Dhruvin Patel says you shouldn’t assume that the “night mode” or “blue shadow” of the devices is enough to counteract the impact of blue light.
He said this “has been shown not to help you sleep compared to the normal output of a screen” and therefore even with this feature you should avoid the screen after sunset if is possible.
Patel founded a company called Ocushield that produces screen protectors to filter blue light based on his research on the impact of the light source.
Source: Dhruvin Patel (Ocushield)