This week in sleep news:
40% of long COVID patients have sleep issues
Three years into the COVID-19 pandemic, health experts are still figuring out many basic elements of how to deal with long COVID. A new report shows that 40% of people with long COVID (long-term effects from their COVID-19 infection) struggle with sleep. Published Tuesday in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, the study focused on the sleep patterns of 962 patients battling long COVID. They found that 58% of the patients reported normal to mild disturbances; however, 41.3% indicated moderate to severe sleep disturbances. They also found that Black patients were three times more likely to have sleep disturbances.
The scientists who worked on analyzing this data hope this brings awareness to not only the importance of sleep in our day-to-day lives, but also the issues of sleep inequalities that were pronounced throughout the pandemic.
Sleep apnea is linked to cognitive problems in men
Sleep apnea, if left untreated, usually leads to heart disease, and researchers have assumed that’s also what leads to cognitive problems. However, in a small new study published in Frontiers in Sleep, researchers found that obstructive sleep apnea itself is harming the brain. This study gives a new urgency to recognizing and treating the disorder. The study compared data from men with sleep apnea and without sleep apnea and saw that otherwise healthy middle-aged men newly diagnosed with obstructive sleep apnea showed poorer mental function in areas such as judgment, impulse control, and recognizing other people’s feelings compared to men without the condition.
Poor sleep habits could double your asthma risk
A study published in BMJ Open Respiratory Research suggests that poor-quality sleep may increase your risk of developing asthma, potentially as much as doubling the risk of diagnosis. The study included 455,405 participants ages 38 to 73, whose sleep patterns and genetic asthma risk scores were analyzed. Researchers found that those with a high genetic risk as well as poor sleep patterns were about 122% more likely to be diagnosed with asthma than those with a low genetic risk and a healthy sleep pattern. The researchers hope these findings show that early detection and treatment of sleep disorders could help reduce asthma risks.
In sleep-centric celebrity news...
Sleeping with your contacts in every so often may not seem like a big deal, but Tori Spelling now knows better. The former TV star and host of the 90210MG podcast shared that the reason she’s recently sported a bedazzled eyepatch is that she developed an eye ulcer from sleeping with her contacts in.
In sleep-centric social media...
Working the night shift can be hard on your body since it disrupts your circadian rhythm. Since Sleep Experts™ know that cool, dark, and quiet is the best setup for sleep, TikTok creator Ryann has inspired us with the idea of a night-shift sleep dungeon.
