While you sleep

SLEEP

Sleep is the best medicine we can prescribe ourselves. Yet many of us sleep too little. Because modern life puts pressure on sleep, health and our most precious organ, the brain - and we feel it quickly if our sleep is challenged. Humans and mammals thrive better, are more awake, and are better at keeping diseases at bay when we sleep well.

But why do we actually sleep? What happens in the brain and what is the secret behind good sleep? And how can we help ourselves to a night of better sleep?

Dive into the fascinating universe of sleep with sleep experts and researchers right here in our theme about sleep, While you sleep.

WHILE YOU SLEEP

The theme “While You Sleep” focuses on sleep and health and provides the Lundbeck Foundation with an opportunity to feature fascinating stories from the world of research and the realm of sleep.

One of the articles (see below) is about sleep and Parkinson’s disease, more specifically about REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD). RBD is a sleep condition in which sufferers physically enact dreams but do not have the slightest clue about it – for example, they might attack their better half sleeping on the other side of the bed.

REM disorders are scientifically interesting in their own right, but they often serve as an early warning of Parkinson’s disease. In the article below, scientists from Aarhus University Hospital explain how they hope diagnosing RBD will help Parkinson’s patients in the long term.

However, there are many other fascinating links between sleeping states and health, some of which are explored in this series of articles, along with stories about new sleep research, another area in which interesting results are flooding in.

‘That’s why it’s so relevant to focus on the topic and spread knowledge about sleep,’ says Professor Poul Jennum, one of Denmark’s leading sleep scientists.

‘As a topic, sleep covers a colossally wide range and plays a role in a really large number of conditions related to health and disease from the cradle to the grave. The textbook on sleep is over 5,000 pages long,’ says Jennum, a professor of clinical neurophysiology and sleep disorders at the University of Copenhagen and chief physician at the Danish Center for Sleep Medicine at Rigshospitalet, Glostrup.

MULTIPLE TYPES OF SLEEP

If you want to talk about sleep and hint in brief at the considerable range covered by the subject, then the gentle end – quality sleep – is a good place to start.

For most people, quality sleep is probably associated with the sense of well-being, vitality and mental balance that we feel when we wake up feeling good after a solid night’s sleep that has been harmonious in every respect. But refreshing naps count, too, like the classic Saturday afternoon post-prandial on the sofa.

In cases like those, sleep really shows what good it does. But there is a diametrically opposite end of the spectrum – sleep types from hell, you might say, all of which are awful for different reasons.

Sleep that isn’t really sleep, when you spend ages trying in vain to fall into a prolonged slumber and end up not feeling physically or mentally refreshed and ready to face a new day when the sun rises. It’s horrible. And life isn’t exactly a bundle of laughs for the many mature men who have to get up regularly during the night to urinate.

Usually over 60, they are unable to sleep soundly because a benign prostate enlargement forces them to urinate at all hours of the day and night, which – for obvious reasons – means a lot of night-time trips to the bathroom.

Copyright/photographer

University of Copenhagen

Wake up during the night? Oscillatory sleep states are actually best for your brain

Danish researchers have identified oscillations crucial to memory, suggesting novel targets for improving sleep.

As if this regularly interrupted, stop-start night’s sleep isn’t bad enough, over a 10-year period, this group of men runs a 21% higher risk of developing dementia than their peers without prostrate problems. Scientists at Aarhus University discovered this last year when they analysed health data from 1.4 million Danish men as part of a research project funded by the Lundbeck Foundation. However, the details of how sleep patterns and the increased risk of dementia are linked have still to be fully investigated.

SLEEP RESEARCH A PRIORITY

‘The Lundbeck Foundation focuses on sleep-related health research for a number of good reasons, not least the fact that a sizable proportion of the population regularly struggles with sleep problems,’ says Jan Egebjerg, Director of Research at the Lundbeck Foundation.

‘We still don't know why we sleep. But we do know that in addition to the familiar fatigue and listlessness felt after a poor night’s sleep, insomnia is associated with several mental disorders. We also know that it can exacerbate conditions such as anxiety and depression. And with up to a third of the population suffering from insomnia, it’s essential that we identify the mechanisms related to sleep that can lead to mental disorders. Poor sleep can also be a consequence of neurological conditions such as Parkinson’s disease, both as an early indicator and as a sign of the cognitive symptoms associated with it,’ Egebjerg explains.

One of the latest findings in sleep research funded by the Lundbeck Foundation was the discovery of a tiny molecule that regulates the production of the hormone hypocretin. It was discovered by an international research team led by Associate Professor Birgitte Kornum of the Department of Neuroscience at the University of Copenhagen and Assistant Professor Anja Holm from the Center for RNA Medicine at Aalborg University.

Hypocretin acts a bit like an alarm clock. It is produced in the brain and is involved in both our waking state and our sleep. When awake, we produce lots of it, but when we sleep, production falls considerably.

Until the new discovery, nobody knew exactly how the gene responsible for producing hypocretin was regulated. That is where the tiny molecule miRNA-137 comes in, according to the Danish-led research project, which published its findings in an article in the scientific journal PNAS.

What happens is that miRNA-137 accumulates in the brain as the day draws to a close, at which point it has ample opportunity to influence the gene that controls hypocretin production. The message to the gene is: Turn down the hypocretin production! As the hypocretin level in the brain falls, fatigue begins to set in. Bedtime is approaching.

One of the opportunities offered by the discovery of this tiny molecule is to gain a better understanding of conditions under which sleep regulation does not function as intended, e.g. in patients with narcolepsy who just can’t stop themselves from falling asleep during the day.

Events about the brain:

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