While factors entirely, such as brain inflammation or genetic changes, might cause both cognitive decline and sleep disturbance at the same time, but the fact that when you are woken up from sleep in the middle of the night, it may leave you thinking less clearly, has great implications. This is very applicable to many categories of people, including medical doctors on call, emergency personnel and even parents. According to the expert in a study, published in the August issue of the Journal of Biological Rhythms, sleep inertia, the period of grogginess and impaired cognitive performance experienced upon awakening, was nearly four times stronger when people were awoken during the middle of their “biological night” (a period of normal night of sleep) compared to their biological day.
The feeling was almost twice as strong during the person’s biological morning, the wake-up period following a normal night of sleep. People also showed the least thinking impairment after awakening during the middle of the biological day. The lead author, Frank A.J.L. Scheer, a neuroscientist in Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Sleep Medicine, in a release from the hospital declared also that, “This is especially important, considering that already following awakening during the morning, the cognitive impairment can be more detrimental than staying awake all night. This has been shown to be comparable to the effects of alcoholic intoxication.”
Similarly, the amount of oxygen supplied to the brain may play a role in the relationship between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB such as snoring) and cognitive problems in children some experts also submitted in an American Thoracic Society news release. Dr. Raouf Amin, a professor of paediatrics and director of the division of pulmonary medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, said in the news release that a history of snoring is a predictor for cognitive deficit in children with SDB. “However, the frequency of snoring(apnea) events during sleep does not predict cognitive deficit and does not correlate with the degree of cognitive deficit. Such a paradox raised the question of whether there are some variables that we do not traditionally measure in the sleep laboratory that might modify the effect of SDB on cognition,” Amin said
For this study, which included children aged between seven and 13, the results showed that children that snore had lower regional cerebral oxygen concentration than healthy children. However, children with sleep apnea (usually considered a more severe type of SDB) had higher regional cerebral oxygen concentration than children with just snoring, said the study published in the first issue for November of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. However, Dr Stephen Oluwole, a neurologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said that it is true that one’s quality of sleep can affect one’s cognitive skills, adding that studies have shown that those that have enough sleep are better in school than those who either sleep too much or too little. He said that the body has an optimal number of hours of sleep that it needs. If it is too long, the individual wakes up drowsy and if it is too short, you wake up not feeling fresh.
According to the expert, very few people have uninterrupted sleep because most people experience micro awaking. Some individuals wake up and goes back to sleep and would not even remember waking up, some to go and urinate, check for the time, kill a disturbing mosquito and some to pray. However, he declared that the mere fact that you have your sleep interrupted because of a big noise or to read in the night, might not really affect your ability to regain your cognitive function. However, the situation may be different in the case of people, who because of their shift work, have to interrupt their sleep. He said that this would affect their whole body system and not only the cognitive aspect
Dr. Mayowa Owolabi, a consultant neurologist also with UCH, Ibadan, also raised the fact that one’s ability to recollect one’s memeory can be affected in persons that have their sleep cycle interrupted by snoring. According to him, in people that snore, the respiratory tract is blocked during certain periods and so leading to a reduction in amount of oxygen available to the brain. This may lead to the function of the brain getting impaired. This might manifest in different ways, such as the individual feeling drowsy during the day, experience reduced reaction time and memory impairment.
The feeling was almost twice as strong during the person’s biological morning, the wake-up period following a normal night of sleep. People also showed the least thinking impairment after awakening during the middle of the biological day. The lead author, Frank A.J.L. Scheer, a neuroscientist in Brigham and Women’s Hospital Division of Sleep Medicine, in a release from the hospital declared also that, “This is especially important, considering that already following awakening during the morning, the cognitive impairment can be more detrimental than staying awake all night. This has been shown to be comparable to the effects of alcoholic intoxication.”
Similarly, the amount of oxygen supplied to the brain may play a role in the relationship between sleep-disordered breathing (SDB such as snoring) and cognitive problems in children some experts also submitted in an American Thoracic Society news release. Dr. Raouf Amin, a professor of paediatrics and director of the division of pulmonary medicine at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Centre, said in the news release that a history of snoring is a predictor for cognitive deficit in children with SDB. “However, the frequency of snoring(apnea) events during sleep does not predict cognitive deficit and does not correlate with the degree of cognitive deficit. Such a paradox raised the question of whether there are some variables that we do not traditionally measure in the sleep laboratory that might modify the effect of SDB on cognition,” Amin said
For this study, which included children aged between seven and 13, the results showed that children that snore had lower regional cerebral oxygen concentration than healthy children. However, children with sleep apnea (usually considered a more severe type of SDB) had higher regional cerebral oxygen concentration than children with just snoring, said the study published in the first issue for November of the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine. However, Dr Stephen Oluwole, a neurologist at the University College Hospital (UCH), Ibadan, said that it is true that one’s quality of sleep can affect one’s cognitive skills, adding that studies have shown that those that have enough sleep are better in school than those who either sleep too much or too little. He said that the body has an optimal number of hours of sleep that it needs. If it is too long, the individual wakes up drowsy and if it is too short, you wake up not feeling fresh.
According to the expert, very few people have uninterrupted sleep because most people experience micro awaking. Some individuals wake up and goes back to sleep and would not even remember waking up, some to go and urinate, check for the time, kill a disturbing mosquito and some to pray. However, he declared that the mere fact that you have your sleep interrupted because of a big noise or to read in the night, might not really affect your ability to regain your cognitive function. However, the situation may be different in the case of people, who because of their shift work, have to interrupt their sleep. He said that this would affect their whole body system and not only the cognitive aspect
Dr. Mayowa Owolabi, a consultant neurologist also with UCH, Ibadan, also raised the fact that one’s ability to recollect one’s memeory can be affected in persons that have their sleep cycle interrupted by snoring. According to him, in people that snore, the respiratory tract is blocked during certain periods and so leading to a reduction in amount of oxygen available to the brain. This may lead to the function of the brain getting impaired. This might manifest in different ways, such as the individual feeling drowsy during the day, experience reduced reaction time and memory impairment.
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