http://sleep.health.am/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/genetic-factors-related-to-weight-gain/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/genetic-factors-related-to-weight-gain/ Toss out another old wives’ tale: Sleeping too much does not make you fat. Quite the opposite, according to a new study examining sleep and body mass index (BMI) in twins, which found that sleeping more than nine hours a night may actually suppress genetic influences on body weight. The study looked at 1,088 pairs of twins and found that sleeping less than seven hours a night was associated with both increased BMI and greater genetic influences on BMI. Previous research has shown that genetic influences include things like glucose metabolism, energy use, fatty acid storage and satiety. In this study, the heritability of BMI was twice as high for the short sleepers than for twins who slept longer than nine hours a night. “The results suggest that shorter sleep provides a more permissive environment for the expression of obesity related genes,” said principal investigator Nathaniel Watson, MD, MSc, of the University of Washington. “Or it may be that extended sleep is protective by suppressing expression of obesity genes.” Healthy Sleep News 2012-05-01T13:14:01-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/lack-of-sleep-may-raise-risk-of-diabetes1/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/lack-of-sleep-may-raise-risk-of-diabetes1/ Your mother was right: regular bedtimes and a good night’s sleep are good for you - or at least, researchers reported, irregular bedtimes and not enough sleep are bad for you. In a 39-day experiment with healthy volunteers, shortened sleep time and varying bedtimes - meant to mimic shift work - led to impaired glucose regulation and metabolism, according to Orfeu Buxton, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues. Over time, the observed changes could increase the risk of obesity and diabetes, Buxton and colleagues reported online in Science Translational Medicine. The findings support epidemiological studies linking disrupted sleep with an increased risk of metabolic syndrome and diabetes, the researchers noted - especially in workers on the night shift. Healthy Sleep News 2012-04-20T23:41:01-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/insomnia-takes-toll-on-tinnitus/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/insomnia-takes-toll-on-tinnitus/ For the more than 36 million people plagued by tinnitus, insomnia can have a negative effect on the condition, worsening the functional and emotional toll of chronic ringing, buzzing, hissing or clicking in the head and ears, according to a new study from Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit. The study shows a significant association between insomnia and the severity of perceived tinnitus symptoms, with patients with insomnia reporting greater emotional distress from tinnitus. “Tinnitus involves cognitive, emotional, and psycho-physiological processes, which can result in an increase in a patient’s distress,” says study co-author Kathleen L. Yaremchuk, M.D., Chair, Department of Otolaryngology-Head & Neck Surgery at Henry Ford. “Sleep complaints, including insomnia, in these patients may result in a decrease in their tolerance to tinnitus.” The study will be presented this week at the Combined Otolaryngological Spring Meetings in San Diego.  Healthy Sleep News 2012-04-19T13:33:05-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/wired-to-cut-healthcare-costs/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/wired-to-cut-healthcare-costs/ Baby boomers wired to their iPads and smart phones are giving U.S. health experts some new ideas about ways to cut the soaring costs of medical care in graying America. Some of the ideas might sound like “Robo-Granny”. An astronautical engineer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has made a skin-tight undersuit equipped with sensors that can constantly monitor the vital signs of its elderly wearer and feed the data into a computer that fires off health alerts. It was first designed for a landing on Mars. There’s also Paro, the robotic seal which has fur, big eyes and responds to voice commands, a low-cost companion that the AgeLab at MIT is testing to help calm elderly people with dementia. Then there is the magic carpet with a built-in sensor that monitors gait to check for risk of falling. Healthy Sleep News 2012-04-13T12:42:04-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/lack-of-sleep-may-raise-risk-of-diabetes/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/lack-of-sleep-may-raise-risk-of-diabetes/ Your mother was right: regular bedtimes and a good night’s sleep are good for you - or at least, researchers reported, irregular bedtimes and not enough sleep are bad for you. In a 39-day experiment with healthy volunteers, shortened sleep time and varying bedtimes - meant to mimic shift work - led to impaired glucose regulation and metabolism, according to Orfeu Buxton, PhD, of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, and colleagues. Over time, the observed changes could increase the risk of obesity and diabetes, Buxton and colleagues reported online in Science Translational Medicine. Healthy Sleep News 2012-04-12T13:14:01-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/when-snoring-is-more-than-a-bad-soundtrack/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/when-snoring-is-more-than-a-bad-soundtrack/ Roaring snores that rumble a room or violent snorts for breath during sleep could be sounds of obstructive sleep apnea. While a true diagnosis is only possible with a sleep study, if left untreated, the sleep disorder could be fatal. Typical symptoms include shallow breathing or stoppage in breathing while asleep. Sufferers can stop breathing for periods of seconds or minutes - upward of hundreds of times a night in some cases. Though everyone is susceptible, overweight people are 70 percent more likely to suffer from it, says Dr. Philip Alapat, medical director, Sleep Disorders Center, Harris County Hospital District, and assistant professor, Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine. As head of the Harris County Hospital District Sleep Disorders Center, a nationally certified facility by the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Alapat sees hundreds of overweight and obese patients suffering from the deadly sleep disorder. Annually, the center performs about 1,200 studies to evaluate patients for a variety of sleep disorders, including apnea, insomnia, restless legs syndrome, narcolepsy and chronic fatigue syndrome. Healthy Sleep News 2012-03-28T17:40:00-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/less-than-six-hours-sleep/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/less-than-six-hours-sleep/ A study has found that early death can be caused by regularly sleeping less than six hours each night, according to The Guardian. The study also found that too much sleep could cause health problems, however sleeping for six to eight hours each night is optimal for good health. Conducted by academics in the UK and Italy, the research found absolute evidence that abnormal sleep patterns can potentially harm health. People looking to get their full eight hours in order to optimise the health benefits of a good night’s sleep should consult a hypnotherapist if they find it hard to get a healthy amount of sleep. Healthy Sleep News 2012-03-26T21:42:00-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-linked-to-heart-woes/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-linked-to-heart-woes/ People who sleep less than six hours a night or more than eight are more likely to suffer heart problems than people who sleep between six and eight hours. A US study confirms the conclusions of previous, smaller studies, and is based on what researchers describe as a nationally representative sample of 3000 people covering five separate heart ailments and their links to sleep duration. The subjects for the study were people over age 45 who participated in a survey of health issues in US households known as the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey. Healthy Sleep News 2012-03-26T21:33:01-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/why-do-we-sleep/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/why-do-we-sleep/ All animals, including humans, sleep. When animals are prevented from sleeping they eventually die. Despite the thousands of experiments that have been done to study sleep, none has been able to declare with assurance the reason why all animals sleep. It is possible that in different species sleep serves a different function. For instance, most animals spend their time looking for food when they are awake and then find a safe place to sleep and hide from predators. Animals near the top of their food chain, such as lions, seem to sleep when and where they want. We do not know why we sleep, just as we don’t know why we are awake. Reasons typically given for why we sleep include conservation of energy, the restoration of important bodily functions, and the repair of damaged tissues. For example, some hormones are secreted mainly during sleep. Such theories are attractive, but all of these functions could be met by simply resting and having whatever hormones are secreted during sleep secreted during rest, not necessarily having the brain go into an unconscious state. We do know this for sure: if people do not sleep the right amount, they feel rotten the next day, their brains do not work properly, and they might be quite mentally impaired and unable to perform complex tasks. You certainly do not want a sleepdeprived pilot to be flying you across the Pacific. Even the medical profession now admits that sleep-deprived doctors might be a hazard to their patients. Healthy Sleep News 2012-03-01T07:52:00-08:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleeping-pill-death-toll/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleeping-pill-death-toll/ The use of hypnotic sleep aids was associated with a three- to five-fold higher mortality risk compared with the risk for nonusers, even when the prescription was for a small number of pills, investigators reported. A prescription for 0.4 to 18 doses per year was associated with a mortality hazard ratio of 3.60 compared with patients who had no prescriptions for hypnotics. The hazard jumped to 5.32 for patients prescribed more than 132 doses a year, investigators reported online in BMJ Open. “Rough order-of-magnitude estimates ... suggest that in 2010, hypnotics may have been associated with 320,000 to 507,000 excess deaths in the U.S. alone,” Daniel F. Kripke, MD, of the Scripps Clinic in La Jolla, Calif., and co-authors wrote. “From this nonrandomized study, we cannot be certain what portion of the mortality associated with hypnotics may have been attributable to these drugs, but the consistency of our estimates across a spectrum of health and disease suggests that the mortality effect of hypnotics was substantial.” Healthy Sleep News 2012-02-28T19:35:00-08:00