Postpartum Sleep Deprivation Associated with Accelerated Biological Aging

AHA Publisher — Fri, 06 Aug 2021 07:00:36 +0000

University of California – Los Angeles via News-Medical – When new mothers complain that all those sleepless nights caring for their newborns are taking years off their life, they just might be right, UCLA research published this summer in the journal Sleep Health suggests. Scientists studied 33 mothers during their pregnancies and the first year of their babies’ lives, analyzing the women’s DNA from blood samples to determine their “biological age,” which can differ from chronological age. They found that a year after giving birth, the biological age of mothers who slept less than seven hours a night at the six-month mark was three to seven years older than those who logged seven hours or more. Mothers who slept less than seven hours also had shorter telomeres in their white blood cells. These small pieces of DNA at the ends of chromosomes act as protective caps, like the plastic tips on the ends of shoelaces. Shortened telomeres have been linked to a higher risk of cancers, cardiovascular and other diseases, and earlier death. “The early months of postpartum sleep deprivation could have a lasting effect on physical health. We know from a large body of research that sleeping less than seven hours a night is detrimental to health and increases the risk of age-related diseases.” Judith Carroll, study’s first author, UCLA’s George F. Solomon Professor of Psychobiology While participants’ nightly sleep ranged from five to nine hours, more than half were getting less than seven hours, both six months and one year after giving birth, the researchers report. “We found that with every hour of additional sleep, the mother’s biological age was younger,” said Carroll, a member of the Cousins Center for Psychoneuroimmunology at UCLA’s Jane and Terry Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior. “I, and many other sleep scientists, consider sleep health to be just as vital to overall health as diet and exercise.” Carroll urged new mothers take advantage of opportunities to get a little extra sleep, like taking naps during the day when their baby is asleep, accepting offers of assistance from family and friends, and, when possible, asking their partner to help with the baby during the night or early morning. “Taking care of your sleep needs will help you and your baby in the long run,” she said. Co-author Christine Dunkel Schetter, a distinguished professor of psychology and psychiatry at UCLA, said the study results “and other findings on maternal postpartum mental health provide impetus for better supporting mothers of young infants so that they can get sufficient sleep -; possibly through parental leave so that both parents can bear some of the burden of care, and through programs for families and fathers.” Dunkel Schetter added that while accelerated biological aging linked to sleep loss may increase women’s health risks, it doesn’t automatically cause harm to their bodies. “We don’t want the message to be that mothers are permanently damaged by infant care and loss of sleep,” she emphasized. “We don’t know if these effects are long lasting.” ‘This Aisle Is Closed’: Using Epigenetics to Determine Biological Age The study used the latest scientific methods of analyzing changes in DNA to assess biological aging -; also known as epigenetic aging, Dunkel Schetter said. DNA provides the code for making proteins, which carry out many functions in the cells of our body, and epigenetics focuses on whether regions of this code are “open” or “closed.” “You can think of DNA as a grocery store,” Carroll said, “with lots of basic ingredients to build a meal. If there is a spill in one aisle, it may be closed, and you can’t get an item from that aisle, which might prevent you from making a recipe. When access to DNA code is ‘closed,’ then those genes that code for specific proteins cannot be expressed and are therefore turned off.” Because specific sites within DNA are turned on or off with aging, the process acts as a sort of clock, Carroll said, allowing scientists to estimate individuals’ biological age. The greater an individual’s biological, or epigenetic, age, the greater their risk of disease and earlier death. The study’s cohort -; which included women who ranged in age from 23 to 45 six months after giving birth -; is not a large representative sample of women, the authors said, and more studies are needed to better understand the long-term impact of sleep loss on new mothers, what other factors might contribute to sleep loss and whether the biological aging effects are permanent or reversible. Carroll and Dunkel Schetter reported last year that a mother’s stress prior to giving birth may accelerate her child’s biological aging, which is a form of “intergenerational transfer of health risk,” Dunkel Schetter said. Co-authors of the new study included researchers from the department of psychology, the department of psychiatry and biobehavioral sciences, and the department of human genetics and biostatistics at UCLA and from the psychology department at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs. To read the original article click here.

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Neuronal Connections That Trigger Insomnia Tied to Stress-Induced Changes in the Immune System

AHA Publisher — Wed, 16 Sep 2020 07:00:44 +0000

Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory via News-Medical Net – Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) and Stanford University have pinpointed the circuit in the brain that is responsible for sleepless nights in times of stress–and it turns out that circuit does more than make you toss and turn. Their study, done in mice, ties the same neuronal connections that trigger insomnia to stress-induced changes in the immune system, which weaken the body’s defenses against a host of threats. The study, reported September 9, 2020, in the journal Science Advances, connects and explains two familiar problems, says CSHL Assistant Professor Jeremy Borniger. “This sort of stress-induced insomnia is well known among anybody that’s tried to get to sleep with a looming deadline or something the next day. And in the clinical world, it’s been known for a long time that chronically stressed patients typically do worse on a variety of different treatments and across a variety of different diseases.” (Jeremy Borniger, Assistant Professor, Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory) Like many aspects of the body’s stress response, these effects are thought to be driven by the stress hormone cortisol. Working in the Stanford lab of Luis de Lecea, where Borniger completed a postdoctoral fellowship prior to joining CSHL, the research team found a direct connection between stress-sensitive neurons in the brain that trigger cortisol’s release and nearby neurons that promote insomnia. In mice, they found that signals from the hormone-releasing brain cells have a strong effect on the insomnia-inducing neurons. Interfering with that connection enabled mice to sleep peacefully even after being exposed to a stressful situation, whereas artificial simulation of the stress-sensitive cells instantly roused slumbering animals. “It seems like it’s a pretty sensitive switch, in that even very weak stimulation of the circuit can drive insomnia,” says Borniger. The same connection, they found, also has a potent effect on the immune system. Stress significantly disrupts the abundance of certain immune cells in the blood, as well signaling pathways inside them, and the team was able to recreate these changes simply by stimulating the same neurons that link stress to insomnia. Understanding this circuitry opens the door to a deeper understanding of the consequences of stress, not just in healthy individuals but also in disease, Borniger says: “I’m really interested in how we can manipulate distinct circuits in the brain to control not just the immune system at baseline, but in disease states like inflammatory bowel disease or in cancer or in psoriasis–things that are associated with systemic inflammation.” “Because if we can understand and manipulate the immune system using the natural circuitry in the body rather than using a drug that hits certain targets within the system, I think that would be much more effective in the long run, because it just co-opts the natural circuits in the body.” To read the original article click here.

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Postpartum Sleep Deprivation Associated with Accelerated Biological Aging

Neuronal Connections That Trigger Insomnia Tied to Stress-Induced Changes in the Immune System