Humans spend one-third of their lives asleep. While adults need seven to nine hours of sleep, infants require fourteen to seventeen. For years, people have often wondered why humans need to sleep. While the average person experiences the side effects of sleep the following day, researchers have started to find pieces of the scientific answer by studying the impact of sleep on the human body.

There is no denying how valuable sleep is to our health. It is the most common remedy for any sickness and is advised in other wellness habits like fitness and mood regulation. The lack of good sleep is very harsh. Feelings of grogginess, fatigue, and general irritability emphasize the importance of sleep for our daily functions. In the last few decades, sleep researchers have found that it impacts our organs and organ systems, solidifying it as a habit we should not take for granted.

Researchers have found a connection between sleep disorders, like insomnia and sleep apnea, and inflammatory bowel disease, showing the impact of sleep on the immune system. If someone suffers from long-term sleep problems, it can lead to endocrine disorders, which affect hormone regulation, and they could develop a weakened immune system. Despite these associations, the most common impact of sleep deprivation is on the cardiovascular system. Sleep deprivation and sleep disorders are involved in conditions like high blood pressure and other cardiovascular diseases and increase their risks. It gets worse, though, because these cardiovascular problems can lead to aneurysms in the brain.

Aneurysms are medically defined as blood vessels in the brain that swell with backed-up blood due to an obstruction. Despite this deformation, there are no obvious symptoms of an aneurysm until it ruptures. When a rupture occurs, it leads to bleeding within the brain, which lowers the person’s survival significantly to within the week or even the day it happens. The lack of apparent symptoms and the lethality of ruptures make aneurysms hard to predict, so researchers have been looking at risks that are associated with aneurysms to provide more accurate predictions and prognoses. With the rise in sleep research and its implications for cardiovascular disease, it has been hypothesized that sleep deprivation could be connected to aneurysms. Still, no one has proven it until this year by a research team from China.

The research team performed a complex analysis known as Mendelian randomization. It’s named after Gregor Mendel, the monk who worked with peas and discovered genes and the rules of genetic inheritance. Like Mendel, Mendelian randomization looks at the genetic information from large patient databases and determines if there is a connection to disease outcomes. In other words, it can identify risk factors for a disease based on genetic information. The benefit of this method is that it removes biases and confirms that X can cause Y. With this nifty method, the research team looked at public genetic databases and analyzed the data of patients with snoring, insomnia, narcolepsy, and napping during the day, as these conditions had unique genetic markers.

Of the four conditions they analyzed, insomnia had the strongest connection to aneurysms. So, they looked at other factors that could influence sleep and aneurysms: high blood pressure, smoking, and obesity. Adding this additional analysis allowed them to form the bridge to explain how sleep could influence aneurysms. After this consideration, the team found that high blood pressure was the method by which sleep deprivation could cause an aneurysm. While others hypothesized this, it has now been proven with advanced and accurate analytical techniques.

Sleep is valuable to us. When we get good sleep, we feel refreshed, energized, and ready for the day. When we get inadequate sleep, however, we feel exhausted, irritable, and uncomfortable. Researchers are now finding sleep's biological effects and its impact on health and have discovered that inadequate sleep disrupts organ systems like the immune and cardiovascular systems, leading to diseases and increasing the risk of others. However, there has never been a connection between sleep deprivation and a lethal condition. The results of this analysis provided that connection by identifying sleep deprivation as a risk for aneurysms. With this knowledge, sleep clinicians can better monitor patients and respond to changes in their bodies before anything serious happens.

References

1 Choi, Y., Son, B., Shin, W. C., Nam, S. U., Lee, J., Lim, J., & Lee, H. ''Association of dietary behaviors with poor sleep quality and increased risk of obstructive sleep apnea in Korean military service members.'' Nature and Science of Sleep (2022).
2 Xu, Y., Li, X., Man, D., & Su, X. ''iTRAQ-based proteomics analysis on insomnia rats treated with Mongolian medical warm acupuncture.'' Bioscience reports (2020).
3 Tang, Y., Preuss, F., Turek, F. W., Jakate, S., & Keshavarzian, A. ''Sleep deprivation worsens inflammation and delays recovery in a mouse model of colitis.'' Sleep medicine (2009).
4 Jarasvaraparn, C., Zlomke, K., Vann, N. C., Wang, B., Crissinger, K. D., & Gremse, D. A. ''The relationship between sleep disturbance and disease activity in pediatric patients with inflammatory bowel disease.'' Journal of pediatric gastroenterology and nutrition (2019).
5 Gerashchenko, D., Pasumarthi, R. K., & Kilduff, T. S. ''Plasticity-related gene expression during eszopiclone-induced sleep.'' Sleep (2017).
6 Spies, J., & Bringmann, H. ''Automated detection and manipulation of sleep in C. elegans reveals depolarization of a sleep-active neuron during mechanical stimulation-induced sleep deprivation.'' Scientific reports (2018).