Very early on into the year of 2019, the entire world changed. Coronavirus (COVID-19) hit the world very unexpectedly. It shut down businesses, move schools and jobs online, caused civilians to act inhumane by ravaging for everyday household items, and changed how everyone looked at world, but no one know what the effects of this virus would be. Would it be long-term? Would this be over in the next 2-3 weeks? What kind of effects on us as humans would this have? Would there be mental effects alongside the physical health effects? No one knew. This pandemic led to the entirety of the human population to be in isolation because of the numerous stay-at-home orders in place because of the government. Being stuck at home all day restricted the daily activities we could do. Unexpectedly, being indoors all day had a negative effect on our sleep.
Sleep is a necessity for humans, like eating and breathing, without sleep humans cannot function. Sleep in a fundamental process that “is involved in healing and repair of [one’s] heart and blood vessels” (“Sleep Deprivation…”, 2021). Because of the pandemic, it caused many of us to be out-of-tune with our body’s natural clock, or also known as our circadian rhythm. There are two different types of sleep that we get each night and discrepancies with our sleep patterns can arise when we don’t get enough total sleep or enough sleep of each sleep type. There is non-REM and REM sleep that regularly occur in a pattern of ~3-5 cycles of each at night. Non-REM sleep can be identified as the deep sleep that we get, while REM (rapid eye movement) sleep is normally when we experience dreams. Again, if one were to not get the proper sleep at night can affect the way we function during the day at school, work, etc. Therefore, with COVID-19 affecting and altering what we were able to do on the day-to-day, it did ultimately negatively affect our sleep patterns or our circadian rhythms.
According to Dr. Fariha Abbasi-Feinberg, a sleep medicine specialist, “‘A lot of people thought that our sleep should be getting better…but it’s worse now than it was last year,’” (O’Connor, 2021). These worsened sleep patterns can be accredited to the stay-at-home orders put on the world because of COVID-19. By staying home for many of our daily lives, it caused us to go to bed later causing us to sleep longer affecting our circadian rhythms.
From this reduction in sleep, it caused prolonged effects, especially in medical workers during the outbreak of COVID-19. Many medical workers reported to have repeating nightmares during this period. These nightmares can be seen and identified as a form of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). According to the research study presented in an article titled, “Reduced Sleep Duration and Sleep Efficiency Were Independently Associated with Frequent Nightmares in Chinese Frontline Medical Workers During the Coronavirus 2019 Outbreak”, ~27.3% of subjects experienced frequent nightmares (Yi-Qi, Ze-Xin, Yong-Xi, Lin, Zhao-Nan, Qiu-Yang, Ling, Xiao-Liang, and Shi-Chao, 2021). Furthermore, there were 2 groups in this research study: a frequent nightmare group and a non-frequent nightmare group. Between these two groups, the frequent nightmare group exhibited “a higher score of PSQI-sleep duration and PSQI-sleep duration” (Yi-Qi et al., 2021). In other words, this group had less total sleep and lower quality sleep which were identified to be the two main factors in whether these medical workers experienced nightmares or not. This idea that an alteration in one’s circadian rhythm can have effects other than that of poor sleep is similar to an idea within the research done on flies.
Dr. Fulgham, Dr. Cavanaugh, and their colleagues were interested in how changing certain internal clocks within Drosophila flies would affect the flies’ circadian feeding rhythms. In comparison to the circadian rhythms within humans, internal clock neurons produce animals’ circadian rhythms. In their research article titled, “Central and Peripheral Clock Control of Circadian Feeding Rhythms”, discover that two specific clock genes, period (per) and timeless (tim), control Drosophila flies’ circadian rhythms and therefore their feeding behavior. Similar to the idea in the aforementioned paragraph, a change in one’s circadian rhythms affects more than just the type and the amount of sleep we get.
Between all three of the research studies presented, they all encompass one common idea: an alteration in circadian rhythms due to outside sources cause mental effects alongside physical effects. Both on a micro level and macro level this can be seen. That being said, the global pandemic did have an unforeseen effect on individuals’ sleep patterns. Obviously as time as gone on and we have gotten used to the effect of COVID-19 on everything, we have improved and we are getting back to “normal”, but it still begs the question: what other long-term or unexpected effects have there been due to this pandemic?
Works Cited
Fulgham, C., Dreyer, A., Nasseri, A., Miller, A., Love, J., Martin, M., Jabr, D., Saurabh, S., and
Cavanaugh, D. (2021). “Central and Peripheral Clock Control of Circadian Feeding Rhythms”. Retrieved on February 29, 2022 from https://loyolauniversitychicago-my.sharepoint.com/personal/rmorrison_luc_edu/_layouts/15/onedrive.aspx?id=%2Fpersonal%2Frmorrison%5Fluc%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FTeaching%2FNEUR%20300%20%2D%20Neuroscience%20Seminar%2FNEUR%20300%20%2D%20Spring%2022%2FNEUR%2F%2802%2E01%2E22%29%20%2D%20Dan%20Cavanaugh%2Ffulgham%5Fcavanaugh%5Fcentral%5Fperipheral%5Fclock%5Ffeeding%5Frhythms%5Fjbr%5F2021%2Epdf&parent=%2Fpersonal%2Frmorrison%5Fluc%5Fedu%2FDocuments%2FTeaching%2FNEUR%20300%20%2D%20Neuroscience%20Seminar%2FNEUR%20300%20%2D%20Spring%2022%2FNEUR%2F%2802%2E01%2E22%29%20%2D%20Dan%20Cavanaugh
O’Connor, A. (2021, June 9). “More thana year into the pandemic, may Americans are still
getting terrible sleep”. Retrieved January 25, 2022 from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/06/09/world/more-than-a-year-into-the-pandemic-many-americans-are-still-getting-terrible-sleep.html?searchResultPosition=1
“Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency”. (2021, September 10). Retrieved February 28, 2022 from
https://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/health-topics/sleep-deprivation-and-deficiency
Yi-Qi, L., Ze-Xin, L., Yong-Xi, W., Lin, W., Zhao-Nan, Z., Qiu-Yang, C., Ling, W.,
Xiao-Liang, X., and Shi-Chao, W. (2021, January 20). “Reduced Sleep Duration and Sleep Efficiency Were Independently Associated With Frequent Nightmares in Chinese Frontline Medical Workers During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Outbreak”. Retrieved January 25, 2022 from https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fnins.2020.631025/full.
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