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Biotech / Medical : Steroidogenesis Inhibitors (STGI) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: SCOOBEY-DO who wrote (134)	10/22/1999 4:04:00 PM
From: Jim Burnham	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 294

Losing Sleep Mimics Aging, Study Says CHICAGO (Reuters) - Cutting back on sleep upsets the body's metabolism similar to the effects of aging, and may hasten the onset of ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, and memory loss, researchers said Friday. Previous studies have shown the harm to mental functioning caused by a loss of sleep, but a team of University of Chicago researchers found the body reacts adversely as well. ``We found that the metabolic and endocrine (hormonal system) changes resulting from a significant sleep debt mimic many of the hallmarks of aging,' said Eve Van Cauter, who directed the study published in the Lancet, a medical journal. ``We suspect that chronic sleep loss may not only hasten the onset but could also increase the severity of age-related ailments such as diabetes, hypertension, obesity and memory loss,' she said. The sleep debt can be made up by spending longer than the normal eight hours in bed, which returned the body's chemical balance to normal, or better, the study found. The researchers examined 11 healthy young male subjects for 16 nights. The first three nights the subjects were allowed to sleep eight hours, the next six nights they slept just four hours, and the final seven nights they spent 12 hours in bed. After several nights racking up sleep debt, the men had heightened levels of blood glucose and their ability to secrete insulin and respond to insulin both decreased by 30 percent. Their symptoms were similar to those who suffer from diabetes. The sleep-deprived men also had increased blood levels of cortisol, which are typical of much older men and thought to be related to problems such as insulin resistance and memory loss. The results indicated young men may need more than eight hours of sleep nightly -- which is unlikely given the current trend toward getting less sleep. The researchers said the average night's sleep decreased from about nine hours in 1910 to roughly 7.5 hours in 1975, and millions of shift workers average less than five hours of sleep on work days.