Pulling an All-Nighter Could Be Making Your Pants Tighter

            We’ve all been in a situation where we’ve had to pull an all-nighter or two. Caffeine is flowing, blood is pumping, and sweat is dripping, all in the hopes that it’s worth it after the exam. But the underlying question is whether or not getting a grade is worth stressing your body and disrupting your internal clock is worth it? Would it be smarter to study a few days prior rather than cramming the night before? This ensures that you are sleeping when its time to sleep and working when its time to work. We’ve always used night and day to distinguish when we should sleep, that’s the way we were taught, and this is because light and dark cues are one of the biggest factors in terms of regulating our circadian rhythms in our bodies.

Our body is all synched up to one central clock, the Superchiasmatic  Nucles(SCN), which is found in the hypothalamus near the crossing of the optic nerves. The mere fact that it is so close to the optic nerves explains why these light and dark cues are so prevalent in determining the clock in which all of our body’s clocks are synched with.  Yes, there is not just one clock in the body, different parts on our body need to function at different times and therefore have molecular timing mechanisms of their own, but in the end they all report to the SCN. Some clocks are regulated by external stimulus, whereas others are due to a constant internal time keeping mechanism.

In the morning, the body is physically preparing itself to metabolize nutrients to have enough energy to meet the demands of the day and so it is a good idea to eat a decent breakfast. At night the body is preparing itself for sleep so it starts shutting off these energy expensive processes a few hours before you usually sleep in anticipation. Allison Andrews explains, “the clock in the pancreas, for instance, has to start releasing insulin to deal with the meal. And, research suggests, this late-night munching may start to reset the clock in the organ. The result? Competing time cues.” The competition in these cues leads homeostatic irregularities that can lead to obesity or even Type 2 Diabetes if these irregularities happen often enough.

In our Neuroscience 300 seminar, Dr. Cavanaugh explained a paper that stated, “During sleep, flies exhibit reduced activity/movement and reduced responsiveness to sensory stimulation. In addition, sleep deprivation results in a subsequent increase in sleep amount and intensity, indicating homeostatic regulation. Pharmacological and genetic evidence suggests that the underlying mechanisms of Drosophila sleep are similar to those in mammals.” His work on the circadian rhythm is moving us towards a greater understanding of the mechanisms under circadian control in flies, which in turn could lead to some insight on how our circadian control works. If he wants to keep doing this for a long time, he should realize its just as important to get a good nights sleep and eat a healthy breakfast in the morning as it is to crunch numbers.

Works Cited:

Aubrey, Allison. "Circadian Surprise: How Our Body Clocks Help Shape Our Waistlines." NPR. NPR, 10 Mar. 2015. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.

http://www.npr.org/sections/thesalt/2015/03/10/389596946/circadian-surprise-how-our-body-clocks-help-shape-our-waistlines