Sleep deprivation helps ease depression

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jrjones9933
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22 Sep 2017, 10:11 am

http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/sleep-deprivat ... ts-1640170

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The analysis, published in the Journal of Clinical Psychiatry, considered a total of 66 studies from 1974 to 2016. It found that sleeping for just 3-4 hours and then being kept awake for 20-21 hours was just as effective as staying up for 36 hours straight.

"These studies in our analysis show that sleep deprivation is effective for many populations," said study author Elaine Boland,


I noticed that I tended to get depressed if I slept too much many years ago. I assumed it had something to do with the serotonin/melatonin balance. Cutting back to six hours of sleep a night usually improves my symptoms if I get depressed.


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ASPartOfMe
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22 Sep 2017, 11:31 am

Is it not the other way around, that excessive sleep is a symptom of depression?


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Aristophanes
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22 Sep 2017, 11:36 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Is it not the other way around, that excessive sleep is a symptom of depression?

That's what I always heard, but it's 2nd hand 'commonplace' knowledge I never researched so I can't make a claim on it's veracity. It's probably as with most other biological things: too much or too little is harmful, there's a happy medium of health between the two.



jrjones9933
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22 Sep 2017, 11:49 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Is it not the other way around, that excessive sleep is a symptom of depression?


I'd posit that it looks like part of a cycle. The depression makes it hard to get out of bed, and the excessive sleep feeds the chemical imbalance. That's my best guess.


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naturalplastic
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22 Sep 2017, 12:18 pm

Working long hours with little sleep for little pay at one my jobs for days on end didn't exactly elevate my mood. So that sounds like a load of crap to me.



jrjones9933
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22 Sep 2017, 12:57 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
Working long hours with little sleep for little pay at one my jobs for days on end didn't exactly elevate my mood. So that sounds like a load of crap to me.


That would be a confound.


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marshall
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22 Sep 2017, 1:20 pm

I say horses**t. Being sleep deprived makes everything much much worse for me. I will feel like garbage and want to choke the hell out of anyone who so much as rubs me the wrong way. I'd probably shoot the author of the article for making me deprive myself of sleep for that study. Not everyone is a wimpy passive depressive who just takes being pushed around. Some of us get angry when pushed the wrong way.



jrjones9933
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22 Sep 2017, 1:25 pm

marshall wrote:
I say horses**t. Being sleep deprived makes everything much much worse for me. I will feel like garbage and want to choke the hell out of anyone who so much as rubs me the wrong way. I'd probably shoot the author of the article for making me deprive myself of sleep for that study. Not everyone is a wimpy passive depressive who just takes being pushed around. Some of us get angry when pushed the wrong way.


Dude, chill. You don't sound like you suffer from depression, so your opinion doesn't matter.

Sleep deprivation makes anger worse. Get some sleep! ;-)


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marshall
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22 Sep 2017, 5:09 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
marshall wrote:
I say horses**t. Being sleep deprived makes everything much much worse for me. I will feel like garbage and want to choke the hell out of anyone who so much as rubs me the wrong way. I'd probably shoot the author of the article for making me deprive myself of sleep for that study. Not everyone is a wimpy passive depressive who just takes being pushed around. Some of us get angry when pushed the wrong way.


Dude, chill. You don't sound like you suffer from depression, so your opinion doesn't matter.

Sleep deprivation makes anger worse. Get some sleep! ;-)


I was being facetious, but I do have depression. Feeling very irritable is a symptom of depression for many people. In my experience, sleep deprivation seems to make just about every negative feeling I can experience 10 times worse. It also makes motivating myself to do anything constructive 10 times harder.



marshall
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22 Sep 2017, 5:21 pm

ASPartOfMe wrote:
Is it not the other way around, that excessive sleep is a symptom of depression?

Insomnia can also be a symptom of depression. Insomnia can even look like excessive sleep because one spends long amounts of time in bed feeling tired yet not sleeping.



marshall
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22 Sep 2017, 5:27 pm

I'm guessing that being required to do some kind of mental or physical activity in order to stay awake helps depression. If that is the case, then it's being busy that helps, not sleep deprivation.



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22 Sep 2017, 5:35 pm

I've noticed that sleeping too little makes me more emotional the next day, and sometimes I feel especially good the following day. But sleep deprivation isn't worth the trouble for me. Feeling emotionally better, but fatigued like jet lag, isn't necessarily a good thing.



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22 Sep 2017, 6:06 pm

Sleep deprivation just annoys me. I have some depression as a result of prolonged/untreated anxiety, but I don't know if sleep deprivation really eases my depression. It just make me more worried and concerned, which in turn creates more depression :roll: .


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22 Sep 2017, 6:59 pm

marshall wrote:
Insomnia can also be a symptom of depression. Insomnia can even look like excessive sleep because one spends long amounts of time in bed feeling tired yet not sleeping.


That's what I do. I'm usually in bed for ten to twelve hours or so, but I'm lucky to even get eight hours of sleep during that time, and I wake up at least every 2-3 hours I do sleep, so even if I did get eight hours, it wasn't eight solid hours. I can't remember ever having awakened feeling rested in my entire life - I always wake up feeling like I need more sleep.

I haven't really paid attention to whether sleep deprivation seems to affect my depression or not. I have noticed that on nights when I get half an hour or no sleep due to insomnia, I don't feel especially tired until the day after the next, when I've gotten some more sleep - kind of like it reminds my body that yes, it actually does like sleep. I've also noticed that my depression tends to be worse later in the day - I can get through the day all right, but then my depression will be really bad during the evening/night.


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jrjones9933
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22 Sep 2017, 8:17 pm

Insomnia also seems associated with depression.

For the record, sleep studies have compared the amount of sleep that insomniacs believe that they got with how much the researchers observed. You can at least feel good that however bad it seems, you almost certainly got more sleep than you think you did.

I have family members who regularly have trouble sleeping, and have seen how much they suffer. I rarely have trouble sleeping, usually when under extreme stress.

You may want to consider sleep apnea, dragons. That sounds like a real possibility, given what you describe. You don't sleep nearly as well if you don't breathe.


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dragonsanddemons
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22 Sep 2017, 9:08 pm

jrjones9933 wrote:
Insomnia also seems associated with depression.

For the record, sleep studies have compared the amount of sleep that insomniacs believe that they got with how much the researchers observed. You can at least feel good that however bad it seems, you almost certainly got more sleep than you think you did.

I have family members who regularly have trouble sleeping, and have seen how much they suffer. I rarely have trouble sleeping, usually when under extreme stress.

You may want to consider sleep apnea, dragons. That sounds like a real possibility, given what you describe. You don't sleep nearly as well if you don't breathe.


Yeah, my mom has mentioned the possibility of having me do a sleep study to see if they can find the cause of my insomnia issues. She's also said she thinks my dad has mild sleep apnea, so it's entirely possible that I might, too. If that's the case, treating it probably wouldn't help me get to sleep any faster, but it might make the sleep I do get more restful, which would probably be a vast improvement. I'm also capable of what I call resting, where I'm almost asleep but still conscious - I can usually do some of that even on nights when I can't get any actual sleep at all, and it helps a lot. And now that I think about it, I think my insomnia issues started getting really bad about the same time my depression did, so it's entirely possible the two are connected for me, at least.


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