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Volume 1 Issue 5

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New Clues Link Sleep and Health D Scientists Check To See How Genes React During Deprivation octors know that being chronically sleep-deprived can be hazardous to your health. Night-shift workers, college crammers and all the rest of us who get less than our fair share of zzz's are more likely to be obese and to suffer cardiovascular woes than people who get a consistent eight hours. Now scientists have some new clues about how lack of sleep translates into disease. After subjecting 26 volunteers to seven nights of insufficient shut-eye followed by a marathon all-nighter, researchers detected changes in the way hundreds of genes were expressed in their bodies. Some genes, including damage-inducing ones involved in stress reactions, were amplified. Others, including many that nurture and renew cells and tissues, were turned down. average of only 5.7 hours of sleep. At the end of each week of controlled sleep, the researchers kept subjects awake for 39 to 41 hours, drawing blood every three hours for a total of 10 samples. Then they analyzed cells in the blood, looking at changes in RNA, the molecule that carries out DNA instructions, creating the proteins that drive processes in the body. They found that losing sleep changed rhythmic patterns in the way genes turn on and off, disrupting the genes' circadian clock. Also, overall, 711 genes were expressed differently when people were sleep-deprived: 444 were turned down, and 267 were amped up. Further analysis revealed that genes involved in inflammation, immunity and protein damage were activated, suggesting that tissue harm was occurring after sleep deprivation. Many of the suppressed genes, in contrast, were involved in producing new proteins, cells and tissues. The balanced process of tissue renewal seemed to be disrupted by insufficient sleep. "It's possible to see how that contributes to poor health," said Colin Smith, a genomics researcher at the University of Surrey in England and one of the senior authors of a report detailing the findings in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. In one test condition, the subjects – all healthy adults who did not suffer from sleep disorders – were allowed to stay in bed for 10 hours on seven consecutive nights. Brain wave scans showed that they slept for an average of 8.5 hours each night, an amount considered sufficient. In the other test, subjects were allowed to stay in bed just six hours a night for seven nights, and they got an Page 18 | Abby's Magazine - www.AbbysMag.com

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