Importance of sleep highlighted

A RECENT study has found that insufficient and disturbed sleep during the teenage years may heighten the risk of multiple sclerosis (MS).

Genetic and environmental factors such as smoking, Epstein-Barr infection, sun exposure and shift work can influence MS. However, whether sleep patterns affect this risk hasn’t been fully assessed yet.

In response, researchers drew on the Epidemiological Investigation of Multiple Sclerosis (EIMS), a population-based casecontrol study that compromised Swedish residents aged 16-70.

People with MS were recruited and matched for age, sex, and residential area with two healthy people randomly selected from the national population register between 2005 and 2013, and 2015 and 2018.

Researchers focused on sleep patterns during the ages 15-19, analysing 2,075 people with MS and 3,164 without.

Compared with sleeping 7-9 hours per night, sleep under 7 hours was associated with a 40% heightened risk of developing MS. Subjective assessment of poor sleep quality during this was associated with a 50% risk increase.

The researchers caution that their findings should be interpreted cautiously on account of potential reverse causation - whereby poor sleep could be a consequence of neurological damage rather than the other way round - but stress that poor quality or too little sleeps can compromise immune systems.

Insufficient and disturbed sleep is common among teens, often caused by physiological, psychological, and social changes during this age period.

“Availability of technology and internet access at any time contributes to insufficient sleep among adolescents and represents an important public health issue,” researchers added.

To conclude, researchers stress the importance of educating adolescents and their parents on the negative health consequences of insufficient sleep.

Obesity now linked to frailty Climate has us under weather

RECENT research found that carrying far too much weight in mid-life onwards can heighten the risk of physical frailty in older age.

Frailty is characterised by the following criteria: unintentional weight loss, exhaustion, weak grip strength, slow walking speed and low physical activity levels.

Mounting evidence suggests obese elders may be at increased risk because obesity aggravates age-related decline in muscular strength, aerobic capacity and physical function, leading to researchers studying the link between weight changes and frailty risk over the long term.

Researchers drew on participants in the population based Tromsø Study to discern whether general (BMI) and abdominal (waist circumference) obesity separately and jointly, might affect the risk of prefrailty/frailty.

The Tromsø Study carried out between 1974 and 2016, drew on data from seven survey waves of 45,000 residents from Tromsø, Norway.

A NEW poll by the Climate Council, has highlighted the severe impact that more frequent and intense natural disasters are having on the mental health of Australians. The survey of 2,032 Australians found that since 2019, the majority (80 per cent) reported they had experienced at least one of the following: heatwaves (63 per cent), flooding (47 per cent), bushfires (42 per cent), droughts (36 per cent), cyclones or destructive storms (29 per cent). Half of the survey participants said their mental health had been negatively affected by the extreme weather event they experienced, with one in five reporting a major or moderate impact. A follow-up community-level survey with people who had experienced a disaster found that the most common mental health symptoms were anxiety, followed by symptoms of depression and PTSD. Some 37 per cent of survey participants said that there was too little mental health support available to them. Climate Councillor, Dr Joelle Gergis, said the results of the poll were “confronting”.