Author Archives: Anna Han

Does Sleep Affect Your Hydration?

We have been consistently educated about drinking enough water being vital to our health. We have been told to drink about two litres of water per day to keep hydrated, but what about sleep? A new study from Pennsylvania State University examined how a good night’s sleep is associated with hydration.

Source: Flickr By: Navy_NADAP

The study looked urine samples from over 20,000 U.S. and Chinese adults, and each participant was surveyed regarding their sleeping habits. From these urine samples, researchers were able to analyze the level of hydration in each participant. It was found that across both country’s populations, participants who were sleeping six hours at night were 16-59% more likely to be dehydrated and had significantly more concentrated urine than participants who slept eight hours on a regular basis.

To understand this phenomenon, researchers linked the association to a hormone called vasopressin. Vasopressin is released in our bodies to help regulate hydration status in the body. While vasopressin is released throughout the day and night, it is released more quickly and later on in the sleep cycle. Therefore, waking up earlier can decrease the amount of this hormone being released and lead to dehydration.

Source: Youtube By: TED-ed

 

It is important to stay properly hydrated so our bodies can perform its everyday functions. The brain, heart, and muscles all require enough fluids or else it can negatively affect your mood, physical performance, and cognition. If the dehydration continues for a long period of time, it can lead to more serious consequences such as higher susceptibility to certain infections and kidney stones.

Since the study only includes observational data from a particular population, the results are an association and cannot be viewed as causal. However, it provides an interesting insight as to how sleeping patterns may affect our hydration levels.

Written by: Anna Han

Foreign Accent Syndrome: Waking Up With A Different Tongue

Imagine one day waking up with a Russian accent, having neither been to Russia nor heard a Russian accent before. This is the reported case of an American woman whose fall in a stairwell gave her Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS) that stayed with her for years.

FAS is a speech disorder that causes a person to speak in their native language with speech changes, such as excess stress, consonant substitution, and vowel distortion. This causes the speaker’s accent to sound non-native. As speech is a key part of a person’s identity, and this syndrome can cause a person to feel like an outsider in their own hometown.

Source: Flickr Commons By: studio tdes https://flic.kr/p/raukoq

The first described case of FAS was in 1907 by French neurologist Pierre Marie, where a French man began to speak in an Alsatian accent after a stroke. The syndrome is rare, with only about 60 cases reported in literature. Due to this, FAS is not well studied or understood and can appear as a joke to others.

“Speech is one of the most complicated things we do, and there are a lot of brain centers involved in coordinating a lot of moving parts. If one or more of them are damaged, that can affect the timing, melody and tension of their speech.” – Dr. Karen Croot, cognitive neuropsychologist,  University of Sydney

The sound of the “foreign accent” is actually a motor impairment arising from neurological damage, including brain trauma and multiple sclerosis. The areas of the brain affected by FAS are scattered, with no clear damaged area that can explain the syndrome consistently. It is also associated with psychological issues, in cases where the structural damage found through CT or MRI images was not proportional to the speech problems. In this typified FAS, the patient has identifiable psychological issues such as depression.

MRI of brain damage of FAS patient (Source: https://www.utdallas.edu/research/FAS/diagnosis.html)

According to the University of Texas, Dallas, the effectiveness of speech-language treatment for FAS patients is under research. The complete reversal of FAS is rare. In this case presentation, a 55-year-old American male showed a day history of FAS. Following a seizure, there was a sudden reversal of the syndrome. This is the first reported case of a transient FAS reversed by seizure.

With no standardized diagnosis or treatment of Foreign Accent Syndrome available for patients, there is still much to be researched about the cause and range of effects from FAS.

Anna Han