Pulling an all-nighter before a big exam may seem harmless, but missing that much sleep may take a heavier toll on your body than you might think.
Typically, students who do not get the suggested eight to eight-and-a-half hours of sleep will suffer from what the National Institutes of Health calls "problem sleepiness." As research has shown and students can attest, this causes a loss of focus and concentration, impairs memory, affects work and school performance and can even lead to illness.
Students may be able to tolerate these temporary effects, but a recent US News & World Report article also said in the latest sleep studies that obesity and diabetes can be blamed on a lack of sleep.
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Sleep loss also could be caused by sleeping disorders. That's where the University Sleep Lab comes in. Each year, the lab diagnoses and treats over 1,000 patients with sleeping disorders.
On a typical visit, a patient who complains of daytime sleepiness is evaluated by one of the pulmonary and sleep specialists, said Head Technician Ruth Guchu of the sleep lab. If the specialists believe the problem is a sleeping disorder, patients are sent for a night at the sleep lab, during which their sleep is closely monitored and analyzed. From this analysis, doctors can then diagnose and treat the patient's sleeping disorder.
Inside the lab, there are four separate rooms which contain a bed and equipment used to measure the sleep patterns of the patient. Two technicians watch the data screens for the four rooms. Each patient is monitored during the eight-hour session for changes in the brain waves to detect sleep, oxygen levels in the body and eye movement. Technicians search for data that may detect apnea events, which occur when the patient stops breathing for more than 10 seconds.
When analyzing studi es, the doctors look for four main disorders. They include sleep apnea, narcolepsy, restless legs syndrome and abnormalities in brain waves.
Sleep apnea, the most common sleeping disorder, is caused by the collapse of the airway during sleep. Breathing stops and oxygen levels drop until levels become dangerously low enough to cause the brain to automatically awake the person.
While not common, the former two disorders are still diagnosed in the lab. Sufferers of restless legs syndrome will constantly flail their legs around in ther sleep until it wakes them. And abnormalities in brain waves may also be a symptom of another serious sleep disorder.
"Twenty-three percent of men and 10 percent of women stop breathing over five times an hour," said Dr. Paul Suratt, medical director for the sleep lab. "80 percent of those who have it have not been diagnosed or treated."
The continual reawakening throughout the night leads to problem sleepiness and a lower quality of life.
The sleep lab also diagnoses narcolepsy, which is marked by excessive and uncontrollable attacks of daytime deep sleepiness. But sleep deprivation is not the cause of this. Narcoleptics who get a decent eight or nine hours of rest may suddenly fall asleep in the middle of class, at lunch or even on the highway.
Sleep lab technicians put possible narcoleptics to a nap test, in which a person has five two-hour naps spaced two hours apart during the day. Normal sleepers will take 13 minutes to fall asleep and never experience REM sleep in these naps. Narcoleptics, on the other hand, take zero to two minutes to sleep and two or more of these naps go through REM. Because this uncontrollable deep sleep can happen any time, the sleep lab treats narcolepsy by prescribing stimulants such as Ritalin.
Although consequences of sleep apnea still are unknown, studies suggest people can die from it. It also can cause high blood pressure, heart attacks and stroke.
Proper diagnosis and treatment drastically can improve the life of the patient. To relieve sleep apnea, surgery is available, but is often ineffective or invasive. An alternative solution is nasal continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, which works by pushing air under the obstruction in the lungs, thus keeping the airway free. The patient wears a sealed mask over the nose that is connected to a machine that pumps air through the nasal passages. Though cumbersome, the CPAP is non-invasive and usually is effective. It is the most common relief prescribed by the University's sleep lab, because it easily and effectively improves the patient's sleep.
"One of the greatest things [about working in the sleep lab] is being able to help people and give them a better quality of life," Suratt said.
The experts at the lab currently are searching for easier treatments and sleep studies, Suratt said. The goal is the least amount of inconvenience possible. The main research being done at the sleep lab is in the second year of a four-year grant from National Institutes of Health. It studies sleep apnea in children and its associations with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). So far, only 180 children have been tested. The link they are studying is between ADHD and sleep apnea. They are looking for evidence that sleep deprivation caused by sleep apnea also will cause the hyperactivity in ADHD.
In the meantime, CPAP is restoring a high quality of life for many people. After his first night using the device, Howard Beierle, a patient treated for sleep apnea at the University's sleep lab, "got up, [and] felt completely refreshed." The improvement in sleep quantity and sleep quality is so dramatic, a patient's "whole lifestyle changes," he said.
Although the CPAP may be cumbersome, its effects are a marked improvement.
"Just to be able to be awake ... all these other things are immaterial. The end result is what is important," Beierle said.
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