According to a new study, resting on the weekend when you are used to waking up early all week can affect your mood and increase your risk of depression.
Experts from Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center at the University of Michigan, used sleep and mood data from 2,1000 early-career doctors performed in one year.
They found that an irregular sleep routine can increase the risk of depression as much as sleeping less hours overall or staying up late regularly.
Sleeping on a Sunday may even affect your mood on Monday mornings, they found, and make you as moody as you would have been if you had stayed up late on Sunday night.
The researchers have not studied the effect of mixed sleep schedules on the general population, but believe it can apply to anyone with irregular sleep patterns.
According to a new study, resting on the weekend, when you’re used to waking up early during the week, can affect your mood and increase your risk of depression.
The inpatients in this study were in their first year of residency after medical school and lived long, intense workdays and irregular hours – changing 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.
The data was collected by monitoring their sleep and other activities through wrist devices and making them record their mood on a smartphone application.
They also did quarterly tests for depression over the course of the year-long study.
The new article, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, explores the impact that this unusual mix of interrupted and irregular sleep has on the mind.
Those whose devices were found to have varying sleep times were more likely to score higher on standardized depression symptom questionnaires and to have lower daily mood assessments, the study authors found.
Those who regularly stayed up late, or slept less hours, also scored more on symptoms of depression and less on daily mood.
The findings add to what is already known about the association between sleep, daily mood and long-term risk of depression.
“Advanced wearable technology allows us to study the behavioral and physiological factors of mental health, including sleep, on a much larger scale and with more precision than before,” says Yu Fang, lead author of the new article.
“Our findings are aimed not only at guiding self-management of sleep habits, but also at informing institutional programming structures,” added the research expert.
Fang has been a member of the Intern Health Study team, led by Srijan Sen, MD, Ph.D., who has been studying the mood and risk of depression in first-year medical residents for more than a decade.
The study collected an average of two weeks of data prior to the beginning of the doctors’ hospitalization years and an average of four months of monitoring during the year.
Cathy Goldstein, MD, MS, associate professor of neurology and medical at the Sleep Disorders Center at Michigan Medicine, said that wearable devices that estimate sleep are being used by millions of people around the world.
Experts from Michigan Medicine, the academic medical center at the University of Michigan used sleep and mood data from 2,000 early-stage doctors performed in one year
This includes the Fitbit devices used in the study, other activity trackers and smart watches like the Apple Watch.
“These devices, for the first time, allow us to record sleep for long periods of time without effort on the part of the user,” says Goldstein.
“We still have doubts about the accuracy of the sleep predictions that consumer trackers make, although the initial work suggests a performance similar to the clinical grade and research actigraphy devices that are released by the FDA.”
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 the consistency of sleep as an underestimated factor to be achieved in depression and well-being,” he says.
“The work also highlights the potential of wearable devices in understanding important constructs relevant to health 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 graduated in medicine and college – is not representative of the general population.
However, as 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 whether the findings about the variation in sleep time remain and whether they can be applied to the population more broadly.
Fang, for example, notes that parents of young children can be another important group to study.
“I would also like my 1 year old son to be able to learn about these discoveries and only wake me up at 8:21 am every day,” she jokes.
The results were published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.
Blue light exposure from phones and computer screens ‘makes it harder to fall asleep’
Leading optometrist, Dhruvin Patel is an expert on the impact of blue light on eye health – which is the light produced by phone and computer screens.
Blue light can make it difficult to fall asleep and have an impact on eye health
The researchers say that exposure to blue light can increase the risk of damage to vision and make it difficult to fall asleep.
Patel shared his tips for minimizing the impact of blue light when working at home or using screens.
1. Work an arm’s distance from the screen
Fully extend your arm and work from a distance – looking from your eyes to your fingertips.
Use this as a minimum distance to reduce stress in your eyes.
2. 20/20/20
Simply put, every 20 minutes, look away from the screen for at least 20 seconds at least 6 meters away.
This will help to redefine your visual systems and eyes during long periods of work on the screen.
3. Screen height
The height and level of the work screen can have a major impact on eye strain.
Research has shown that it is better for the screen to be located higher than the users ‘viewing level – the middle point should be 5-6 inches below the users’ straight line of sight.
This makes the space between the upper and lower eyelids more open, usually resulting in dry eyes.
4. Lighting
Position the computer screen to avoid reflections, especially from lights or windows.
Use blinds or curtains on the windows and replace the lamps of the table lamps with lamps of less power and intensity.
If there is no way to minimize the glare from light sources, consider using an anti-glare filter.
5. Place a post-it on the screen with the title ‘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.
On screens, this is reduced to 3-5 times per minute, which means that our tear films cannot be maintained and the eye does not remain lubricated.
A post-it on the monitor saying ‘Blink’ should help you make a conscious effort to blink. It’s simple, but it definitely works.
6) Consider your device
Usually, the biggest and newest 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 from a 100 percent increase in exposure to harmful blue light!
7. Remember to hang up
I would not suggest digital devices or artificial lighting after sunset. If you’re like most people, you’re probably sending that last-minute email or ending your favorite show on Netflix before bed.
Try reading a book or start that meditation you promised yourself you would do for the new year.
Dhruvin Patel says you shouldn’t assume that the ‘night mode’ or ‘blue tone’ on devices is sufficient to contain the impact of blue light.
He said that “it has been proven that this” does not help sleep compared to normal screen output “and therefore, even with it activated, you should still avoid the screen after sunset, if 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)