Swiss neurobiologist Anna Wirz-Justice, an 80-year-old woman who previously treated a severely depressed patient, was the first to prescribe “no sleep at night” prescription.
Anna said, “She used to sit there all day, feeling like she was going to kill herself, barely talking and moving very little.”
The prescription worked, and the next morning, the old woman talked and walked around, as if she had really changed. “
Anna said, “She told me that around 2 or 3 in the morning, she felt like a dark cloud was rising over her shoulders.”
Has Anna succeeded? She and other researchers initially thought so, and there’s no denying that sleep deprivation temporarily relieves depression.
A January 1990 review article in the American Journal of Psychiatry stated that as many as 60 percent of people with depression experience a 30 percent improvement after a sleepless night.
Those who feel most depressed in the morning and get better later seem to benefit the most from a sleepless night.
But there’s a problem: Once you get a good night’s sleep, you can go back into depression, and habitual sleep deprivation can lead to long-term health problems like high blood pressure and diabetes.
Then find ways to relieve depression by adjusting the sleep-wake cycle.
One, harness the power of hormones
Today, researchers are experimenting with how to use the body’s biological clock, the circadian rhythm (or 24-hour rhythm), without letting patients give up rest entirely. The solution may lie in choosing when to sleep, benefiting from The rise and fall of certain hormones throughout the day.
For example, Thyroid Stimulating Hormone (TSH) helps control the body’s metabolism, which indirectly controls our energy levels, and it is estimated that 25%-35% of people with depression have higher levels of TSH than Low.
In recent years, researchers at the National Institute of Mental Health have found that sleep suppresses TSH release, while staying awake at night and early in the morning promotes TSH release.
Some researchers are trying to control the surge of hormones in the body by keeping patients awake in the morning for about a week.
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Second, specific experiments
Doctors at the University Hospital in Freiburg, Germany, conducted the experiment on a group of depressed patients who felt better after a sleepless night.
They put the patient to bed at 5 p.m. and rested until midnight on the second night for a total of 31 hours, after which the patient gradually returned to a normal sleep cycle over the course of a week.
One night they sleep from 6pm to 2am, the next day from 7pm to 3am, until finally their sleep cycle goes back to 11pm to morning 6 o’clock.
Notably, according to findings published in the European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience in the fall of 1999, the majority of patients (75%) experienced no relapse of their depression.
However, would such a solution work?
Admittedly, such a regimen is difficult to follow, says Dr. Edward DeMet, who studies sleep deprivation at the Long Beach Veterans Affairs Medical Center, where patients attempt this sleep manipulation only under supervision, Maybe being in a group makes the experience more enjoyable.
He said, “Obviously, if you need to drive on day 2, well, you can’t do that.”
There are other ways to manage sleep to improve depressive symptoms, for example, patients who do not sleep at night and are exposed to bright light in the morning seem to prolong the emotional benefit of this sleepless night.
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
Third, sleep deprivation may be the most effective temporary way to relieve symptoms
A study by Anna and colleagues published in the August 1999 issue of Biological Psychiatry showed that patients who tried sleep deprivation while taking antidepressants were also less likely to Depression recurrence may occur.
Because antidepressants such as fluoxetine or lithium usually take several weeks to work, sleep deprivation may be the most effective way to help patients relieve symptoms until the drug starts to work. Temporary method.
Anna, a professor in the Chronobiology and Sleep Laboratory at the University Clinic of Psychiatry in Basel, Switzerland, said: “It is much easier to take medicine in the morning than to stay up late, but sleep deprivation is very cheap, and The onset is very fast, and for severely depressed patients, this day’s experience shows that improvement is possible and that they finally have hope.”
Image source: Zhanku Hailuo
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