According to a new study, taking place on weekends when you usually wake up early all week can affect your mood and increase your risk of depression.
Experts at Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan’s academic medical center, used sleep and mood data from 2,100 early-career physicians taken over a year.
An irregular sleep schedule can increase the risk of depression as much as sleeping less in general or staying awake on a regular basis, they found.
Sleeping on a Sunday can even affect your mood on Monday morning, they discovered, and can make you as grumpy as you would be if you stayed up until Sunday night.
Researchers have not studied the effect of mixed sleep programs on the wider population, but I think it could be applied to anyone with irregular sleep patterns.
According to a new study, going to bed on the weekends, when you are used to waking 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 preparation for residency after medical school and were facing long, intense workdays and irregular schedules – changing from day to day, without a real structure.
These changes altered their ability to have regular sleep schedules and made them perfect subjects for a study of irregular sleep patterns and mood.
The data was collected by tracking their sleep and other activities through wrist devices and getting them to record their mood on a smartphone app.
They also took quarterly tests for depression throughout the one-year study.
The new paper, published in the journal npj Digital Medicine, explores the impact that this unusual mixture of broken and irregular sleep has on the mind.
Those whose devices showed that they had variable sleep schedules were more likely to score higher on standardized depression questionnaires and have lower daily mood ratings, the study authors found.
Those who stood up late or slept the fewest hours also scored higher on symptoms of depression and less on a daily basis.
The findings add to what is already known about the association between sleep, daily mood and the risk of long-term depression.
“Advanced wearable technology allows us to study the behavioral and physiological factors of mental health, including sleep, on a much larger and more accurate scale than before,” says Yu Fang, lead author of the new paper.
“Our findings aim not only to guide self-management on sleep habits, but also to inform institutional programming structures,” the research specialist added.
Fang is part of the Intern 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 more than a decade.
The study collected an average of two weeks of data before the start of the years of hospitalization of doctors and an average of four months of monitoring throughout the year.
Cathy Goldstein, MD, MS, associate professor of neurology and physician at the Center for Sleep Disorders at Michigan Medicine, said that wearable devices that estimate sleep are now used by millions of people around the world.
Experts at Michigan Medicine, the University of Michigan Academic Medical Center, used sleep and mood data from 2,100 early career physicians taken over a year
This includes the Fitbit devices used in the study, other activity trackers and smart watches, such as the Apple Watch.
“These devices, for the first time, allow us to record sleep for extended periods of time, without effort on behalf of the user,” says Goldstein.
“We still have questions about the accuracy of sleep predictions made by consumer trackers, although initial work suggests similar performance to FDA-approved clinical actigraphy and research devices.
Sen said the new findings are based on what his team’s work on the high risk of depression among new doctors has already demonstrated.
“These findings highlight the consistency of sleep as an underestimated factor to target in depression and well-being,” he says.
“The paper also highlights the potential of wearable devices in understanding important health-relevant constructs that we have not been able to study at scale before.”
The team notes that the relatively young group of people in the study – with an average age of 27 and holding both college and medical degrees – are not representative of the wider population.
However, because they all experience similar tasks and programs, they are a good group to test hypotheses and get a “broad” view of the wider population.
The researchers hope that other groups will study other populations using similar devices and approaches to see if the results about the variation of the sleep program keep them and thus can be applied to the wider population.
Fang, for example, notes that the parents of young children could be another important group to study.
“I would also like my 1-year-old to be able to find out about these findings and only wake me up at 8:21 every day,” she jokes.
The findings were published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.
Exposure of phones and computer screens to blue light “makes it difficult to fall asleep”
An optometrist, Dhruvin Patel is a specialist in the impact of blue light on eye health – the light produced by phone and computer screens.
Blue light can make it difficult to fall asleep and can have an impact on eye health
Researchers say that exposure to blue light could increase the risk of impaired vision and make it harder to fall asleep.
Patel shared his tips for minimizing the impact of blue light while working from home or using screens.
1. Take an arm’s length from the screen
Fully extend your arm and work from a distance – looking from the eyes to the tips of your fingers.
Use this as a minimum distance to reduce stress on the eyeballs.
2. 20/20/20
Simply, every 20 minutes, look away from the screen for at least 20 seconds at least 20 meters away.
This will help you reset your visual systems and eyes through any long periods of on-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 above the user’s viewing level – the midpoint should be 5-6 inches below the user’s line of sight.
This makes the space between the upper and lower eyelids more open, often resulting in dry eyes.
4. Lighting
Position the computer screen to avoid glare, especially from top lighting or windows.
Use blinds or curtains on windows and replace office light bulbs with lower power and intensity bulbs.
If there is no way to minimize the brightness of the light sources, consider using an anti-glare filter.
5. Put a post-it note titled “BLINK” on the screen.
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 the blink.
On the screen, it is actually 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 note on the monitor that says “Blink” should consciously help you make an 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 between a 100% increase in harmful exposure to blue light!
7. Don’t forget to stop
I would suggest not having 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 Netflix show before bed.
Try reading a book or start the meditation you promised to do in the new year.
Dhruvin Patel says you shouldn’t assume that the “night mode” or “shade of blue” on devices is enough to counteract the impact of blue light.
He said that “it turned out not to help sleep compared to the normal output of a screen” and therefore, even if it is activated, you should 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)