Circadian Rhythms and Alzheimer’s Disease

       People make excuses every day. Usually these excuses are connected to the notion that there isn’t enough time for certain tasks, but in reality it’s because they aren’t prioritized. We make time for the things we prioritize. We make time to brush our teeth and cleanse ourselves, because we realize that it is a necessity. We feed ourselves, because we realize we can’t go on without replenishing our bodies. However, a disconnect can be seen when it comes to the importance of getting a full night’s sleep. Sometimes people are guilty of compromising a full night’s rest for other tasks that they prioritize above sleep. We can see in recent literature, that sleep regulation is organized by a complex set of genes, neurons, and environmental conditions. Furthermore, we can see that offsetting this balance and throwing off the body’s circadian rhythm can lead to more adverse effects and diseases than we might expect.

            In Christine Dubowy and Amita Sehgal’s article, “Circadian Rhythms and Sleep in Drosophila melanogaster”, one of the conclusions they make is that circadian and homeostatic regulation of sleep are important for “establishing similarities between Drosophila sleep and sleep in mammals (Dubowy et al., 2017).” It is observed in the experiment that when flies are deprived of sleep, they exhibit unusual behavior and this can be attributed to humans as well. There are a lot of neurons and genes involved in this process. We have a core molecular clock and abiding by it provides us with the best outcomes. The scientists make it very clear that sleep plays a huge role in our lives and that environmental factors such as stress, temperature, or starvation for example disrupt this process. A phone can’t work unless it is charged. We are the phones in this scenario, and by depriving ourselves of a full charge we aren’t only taking away from our maximum potential, but actually hurting our odds of living a long full life.

In an article posted to Science Daily, named “Body clock disruptions occur years before memory loss in Alzheimer’s”, based on research done at Washington University in St. Louis, the importance of sleep is once again explored. This article focuses on how “similar circadian disruptions accelerate the development of amyloid plaques in the brain, which are linked to Alzheimer's (Washington University, 2018).” By not getting a full night’s rest or breaking up hours of sleep and not going fully into a REM sleeping cycle, humans are truly neglecting their health to a larger magnitude then they think. If amyloid plaque development fluctuates in terms of how much sleep a person gets, then it’s safe to say that it is very important that people should get enough sleep every night. The chaos of our busy days and the environments we surround ourselves in are slowly chipping away at the homeostasis that our body is constantly trying to reach. Regardless of if this is a subconscious or conscious action, a lack of sleep will eventually catch up to everyone who doesn’t prioritize this vital practice. There is so much pressure put on all of us to stay awake and excel in our every day lives, but the fragmentations seen in our sleep cycles due to outside factors from the environment are truly putting us at risk for much bigger issues.

References

Dubowy, C., & Sehgal, A. (2017). Circadian rhythms and sleep in Drosophila melanogaster. Genetics, 205(4), 1373–1397. https://doi.org/10.1534/genetics.115.185157

Washington University in St. Louis. (2018, January 29). Body clock disruptions occur years before memory loss in Alzheimer’s. ScienceDaily. Retrieved February 28, 2018 from www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/01/180129150033.htm