sleep
clock | October 18, 2006I tend to rant about sleep in adolescents for various reasons, but other people focus on other age groups. Infants are one such group, interesting because it takes a while for their circadian rhythms to consolidate resulting in "sleeping through the night".
For years, the only serious book on the topic was Ferber, much maligned for its advice to "let them cry it out", though the rest of the book is correct and informative. Apparently, there is a good new book on the topic - The No-Cry Sleep Solution: Gentle Ways to Help Your Baby Sleep Through the Night (as well as The No-Cry Sleep…
clock | October 16, 2006Nothing too complicated today, but something you should all know (from March 13, 2006).
I have mentioned this in my very first post here: in a natural state, humans do not sleep a long consecutive bout throughout the night. The natural condition is bimodal - two bouts of sleep interrupted by a short episode of waking in the middle of the night.
In today's New York Times, there is an article about this:
Sleep Disorder? Wake Up and Smell the Savanna by RICHARD A. FRIEDMAN, M.D.:
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Many patients tell me they have a sleep problem because they wake up in the middle of…
clock | October 5, 2006Study says no video games on school nights:
According to Dr. Iman Sharif, the results were clear-cut. "On weekdays, the more they watched, the worse they did," said Dr. Sharif. Weekends were another matter, with gaming and TV watching habits showing little or no effect on academic performance, as long as the kids spent no more than four hours per day in front of the console or TV. "They could watch a lot on weekends, and it didn't seem to correlate with doing worse in school," noted Dr. Sharif.
The study was using self-reporting by kids, which has its problems, but is OK in this case, I…
clock | October 4, 2006From November 01, 2005, a review of a review...
Here is a nice article in Washington Post - Ecological Niche May Dictate Sleep Habits - about the adaptive function of sleep.
It addresses some of the themes I am interested in.
First, the unfortunate fact is that sleep was initially defined by researchers of humans, i.e., medical researchers. Inevitably, the (electrophysiological) definition of sleep was thus saddled with unneccessary anthropocentric elements that for decades hampered the study of evolution of sleep.
I was present at the meeting (here in Biotechnology Center in RTP) several…
clock | October 4, 2006Since every chemical induces a different response in the body dependent on the time of day when it is administered, I am not surprised that this also applies to caffeine:
A new study at the Université de Montréal has concluded that people drinking coffee to get through a night shift or a night of studying will strongly hurt their recovery sleep the next day. The study published in the current issue of Neuropsychopharmacology was conducted by Dr. Julie Carrier from the Department of Psychology at the Université de Montréal. Dr. Carrier runs the Chronobiology Laboratory at the Hôpital du…
clock | October 3, 2006No, not (just) that part - your brain. A new study shows that a single dose of Viagra makes symptoms of sleep apnea worse. And sleep deprivation resulting from sleep apnea may be one of the reasons why you may need Viagra in the first place. What a vicious circle! What a conundrum! Sleepdoctor has the goods.
clock | September 20, 2006Over 1.6 Million Americans Use Alternative Medicine For Insomnia Or Trouble Sleeping:
A recent analysis of national survey data reveals that over 1.6 million American adults use some form of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping according to scientists at the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM), part of the National Institutes of Health.
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Those using CAM to treat insomnia or trouble sleeping were more likely to use biologically based therapies (nearly 65 percent), such as herbal…
clock | September 19, 2006The latest issue of Archives of Internal Medicine is devoted to sleep. The articles are freely available. Here is the press release:
Incorporate Sleep Evaluation Into Routine Medical Care, Expert Says
Sleep is an integral part of health, and assessment of sleep habits should be a standard part of medical care, according to an editorial in the September 18 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. The issue is devoted to studies of sleep and health.
"The theme that emerges throughout this issue is that sleep serves as an indicator of health and quality of…
clock | September 15, 2006I feel a professional duty to watch - once it is available - and review this movie about sleep deprivation and insomnia. Sounds pretty good and informed, as well as entertaining, at least according to the article:
Night after night for some 40 years, the US independent filmmaker, Alan Berliner, has battled with his sleep demons.
He has tried everything to defeat them, including meditation, acupuncture, herbal remedies, "lots of sex" and earplugs.
Recently, he made Wide Awake, a film investigating both insomnia in general, and his affliction in particular. In the film, we watch as night…
clock | September 15, 2006Students not getting enough sleep:
College students may believe they are being more productive when they sleep less, but in reality it is causing harm to their bodies. The National Sleep Foundation points out that receiving less than six hours of sleep a night is associated with 1.7 times greater risk of disease, according to www.sleepfoundation.org. The chance of decreased academic performance, driving accidents, colds and flu and mental illnesses are all increased.
Workplace fatigue risky business at 30,000 ft.:
Fatigue is worsened when lack of sleep is coupled with a disruption to the body…
clock | September 12, 2006I've heard of this before, but now I see an actual study has been published:
There's more to a good night's rest than going to bed early. Sleeping comes easiest and lasts longest for the wealthy, white, and female. Reporting her findings in the June 1 American Journal of Epidemiology, health-studies associate professor Diane Lauderdale, AM'78, AM'81, followed the sleep habits of 669 Americans aged 35 to 50 and found that those with a yearly income of less than $16,000 spend longer in bed than those making $100,000 or more, but they sleep less because their "sleep latency," the amount of time…
clock | September 11, 2006The fourth part of a four-part series on the topic, this one from April 02, 2006....
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and on the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have written about it recently several times. I present some science and some opinion here and add a little more science and much more opinion here.
You can look at media coverage here and listen to an excellent podcast linked here. Some basic underlying science is covered here.
All of this targets highschoolers…
clock | September 11, 2006This is the third part of the series on the topic, from April 01, 2006...
This being the National Sleep Awareness Week and in the heels of the recent study on sleep of adolescents, it is not surprising that this issue is all over the media, including blogs, these days.
I have covered this issue a couple of times last week, e.g., here, here and here. Recently, Lance Mannion wrote an interesting post on the topic, which reminded me also of an older post by Ezra Klein in which the commenters voiced all the usual arguments heard in this debate.
There are a couple of more details that I have not…
clock | September 11, 2006
Here is the second post on the topic, from March 28, 2006. A couple of links are broken due to medieval understanding of permalinks by newspapers, but you will not miss too much, I hope....
Health Journal: Doctors probe why it's hard for many kids to get up (also Night Owls: Disorder may cause teens to sleep less):
"The parents get stigmatized as not having control over their kids when they can't get them to school in time," says James Wyatt, co-director of the sleep-disorders center at Rush University Medical Center in Chicago who is conducting research looking for ways to better diagnose…
clock | September 11, 2006
Earlier this year, during the National Sleep Awareness Week, I wrote a series of posts about the changes in sleep schedules in adolescents. Over the next 3-4 hours, I will repost them all, starting with this one from March 26, 2006. Also check my more recent posts on the subject here and here...
I am glad to see that there is more and more interest in and awareness of sleep research. Just watch Sanjay Gupta on CNN or listen to the recent segment on Weekend America on NPR.
At the same time, I am often alarmed at the levels of ignorance still rampant in the general population, and even more…
clock | September 10, 2006This kind of ignorant bleating makes me froth at the mouth every time - I guess it is because this is my own blogging "turf".
One of the recurring themes of my blog is the disdain I have for people who equate sleep with laziness out of their Puritan core of understanding of the world, their "work ethic" which is a smokescreen for power-play, their vicious disrespect for everyone who is not like them, and the nasty feeling of superiority they have towards the teenagers just because they are older, bigger, stronger and more powerful than the kids. Not to forget the idiotic notions that kids…
clock | September 10, 2006Do pilots get enough rest?:
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The federal rules on pilot duty hours and rest periods aren't the most comprehensible of reads.
One rule allows airlines to schedule pilots to fly for eight hours or less during a 24-hour period without a "rest period during those eight hours." Another gives pilots who fly for more than eight hours in a 24-hour stretch a break of at least twice the number of hours flown, either "at or before the end of" the eight hours. Pilots who fly more than eight hours during a 24-hour period must receive 18 hours of rest…
clock | September 7, 2006This is a good article about changes in sleep patterns that occur with old age.
clock | August 26, 2006As we age, our sleep gets less well consolidated: we take more naps during the day and wake up more oftenduring the night. This happens to other mammals as their age. Now we know that it also happens in Drosophila:
"As humans age, so I'm told, they tend not to sleep as well. There are all sorts of reasons -- aches and pains, worries about work and lifelong accumulations of sins that pretty much rule out the sweet sleep of innocence.
But what about fruit flies? Not as a cause of insomnia. What about the problems fruit flies have sleeping?
Yes, Drosophila melanogaster also suffer sleep…