Tuesday, February 01, 2005

Work Burnout Linked to Poor Sleep

Worker burnout is triggered by a drastic resetting of sleep patterns. Burnout is not recognized in the classic manuals of mental health disorders. But the main symptoms are taken to be long-term, excessive fatigue and cognitive impairment.

It usually affects people who are very committed to work. One day they wake up and they just can’t get out of bed. Then they take a few weeks sick leave, but they don’t improve. Researchers took regular sleep EEG readings of 35 patients who had been off work for a minimum of three months. The tests consistently showed extreme sleep fragmentation and disruption. These patients were living on as little as four or five hours of sleep each night, with a 40% reduction in slow-wave sleep compared with healthy people. If you experience stress for a long period of time, you establish a new high baseline of physiological activation - and this interferes with sleep.

The strongest predictor of burnout is personality. People who score high on emotionality scales experience more distress as a result of workplace pressures and stress.

Chinese medicine has been shown to improve or eliminate the symptoms of burnout and insomnia.

Meridian Harmonics

Low Fat vs. Low Carb Diets

Regardless of how they shed pounds in the first place, big losers stayed that way by limiting fat rather than carbohydrates, according to new research that could add fuel to the backlash against low-carb diets.

Researchers studied 2,700 people who entered the National Weight Control Registry from 1995 through 2003. Their average age was 47, most were women, and they had lost an average of 72 pounds initially. Doctors compared their diets to see whether one type or another made a difference in how much weight they had lost and how much they had regained a year later.

All reported eating only about 1,400 calories a day, but the portion that came from fat rose -- from 24 percent in 1995 to more than 29 percent in 2003 -- while the part from carbohydrates fell, from 56 percent to 49 percent.

The number on low-carb diets (less than 90 grams a day) rose from 6 percent to 17 percent during the same period. The type of diet -- low-fat, low-carb or in between -- made no difference in how people lost weight initially. But those who increased their fat intake over a year regained the most weight. That meant they ate less carbohydrates, because the amount of protein in their diets stayed the same. People who are keeping the weight off are eating a low-fat, high-carb diet.

Though patients want to believe in a magic treatment, common dietary sense seems to prevail.

Meridian Harmonics