Dehydration from sleep deprivation
A new research suggests that insufficient sleep may cause dehydration by disrupting the release of a hormone that is regulates hydration. Researchers examined the records of over 20,000 healthy young adults, who had provided urine samples and completed questionnaires concerning their sleeping habits. They found that people who regularly got 6 or fewer hours of sleep each night had more concentrated urine than those who got about 8 hours per night. Besides, people who reported that they regularly slept for 6 hours or less each night were 16–59 percent more likely to be dehydrated than those who slept for 8 hours a night. Researchers’ advice those who are not getting enough sleep and are feeling tired the next day, to drink extra water.
Potential biomarker for depression
Brain activity monitoring has revealed a potential biological marker for depression. There search involved monitoring the brain activity of volunteers for 7 to 10 days.The subjects were epilepsy sufferers who had 40 to 70 electrodes implanted in their brains as part of the routine preparation for surgery to remove scar tissue that triggers seizures. Researchers compared the brain activity of all the subjects with their reported mood data and found that 13 of the 21 participants exhibited one common pattern of activity in the brain’s hippocampus and amygdala regions, which highly correlated with daily bouts of bad mood or a depressed state throughout the duration of the study. All the volunteers had scored highly on a psychological analysis of baseline anxiety ahead of the experiments.
