Archive for August, 2008

Teenagers are notorious for having bad sleep habits. New research suggests that having trouble staying awake the next day might not be the only consequence they face.

In the first study to look at the relationship between not getting enough sleep and blood pressure in healthy adolescents, researchers found that healthy teens (ages 13 to 16 years old) who slept less than 6.5 hours a night were 2.5 times more likely to have elevated blood pressure compared to those who slept longer.

In addition, those with poor sleep, or low sleep efficiency – having trouble falling asleep or staying asleep – had, on average, 4 mm Hg higher systolic blood pressure (the top number) and were 3.5 times more likely to have prehypertension or hypertension than their peers who slept well.

Untreated high blood pressure can increase the risk for stroke and other cardiovascular diseases later in life.

The findings are from a cross-sectional analysis of 238 adolescents ages 13 to 16 years old (average age of 14) enrolled in the Cleveland Children’s Sleep and Health Study.

Sleep efficiency and duration was evaluated at home for three to seven nights, where teens completed a daily sleep log and wore a wrist device that measures movement to determine sleep and wake cycles.

Sleep Deprivation In Adolescents!

Are you concerned about sleeping habits of your adolescent children? Most of the parents who have adolescent children are worried with the sleeping habits of their children.

Of course, it must be a major concern for you, since healthy and enough sleep is very essential for every one, particularly adolescents to maintain better health in future.

In a study, based on sleep deprivation in adolescents, it was found that almost 5% of all adolescents meet the criteria of chronic insomnia.

Sleep deprivation can have many negative side effects on the physical and psychological health of your adolescent. It also interrupts the interpersonal interactions and their ability to perform regular activities.

The consequences of sleep deprivation in adolescents are particularly crucial to understand because the symptoms are closely related to the growth of your adolescent.

So, there are many things that you can incorporate in your children’s lifestyle to alleviate the sleep deprivation problem. Certain most important things that you have to consider mainly include:

Adjust the lighting in their bed room!

Dim lights can mainly help to get good sleep at night. So, at bed time dim the lights in your child’s room and turn off them completely when they fall asleep.

With more than half of all U.S. households affected by snoring, there is new hope for the enormous number of sleep-deprived snorers and their loved ones.

Coming from Australia in the unexpected form of a sterling silver ring called the “Therapeutic Snore Ring.”

As an alternative to surgery and other invasive, uncomfortable or burdensome treatments, the Snore Ring has been proven to work for the vast majority who try it in Australia - and is making its long-awaited formal US launch this month.

The human body requires about 7-8 hours of undisturbed sleep each night to allow optimal alertness and the physical and mental regeneration required for general good health.

Those awakened continually by snoring can suffer from unnatural drowsiness, irritability, lack of focus or attentiveness, low libido, dry or sore throat, and a number of other maladies.

The Snore Ring requires no medicines or sprays, no surgery, and no large uncomfortable devices placed into the mouth.

It’s a sterling silver ring carefully designed to apply firm but gentle pressure to a specific area of the little finger which, through principles of acupressure, create a relaxed, calming effect to areas of the nose and throat.

The latest research suggests that while we are peacefully asleep our brain is busily processing the day’s information.

It combs through recently formed memories, stabilizing, copying and filing them, so that they will be more useful the next day.

A night of sleep can make memories resistant to interference from other information and allow us to recall them for use more effectively the next morning.

And sleep not only strengthens memories, it also lets the brain sift through newly formed memories, possibly even identifying what is worth keeping and selectively maintaining or enhancing these aspects of a memory.

When a picture contains both emotional and unemotional elements, sleep can save the important emotional parts and let the less relevant background drift away.

It can analyze collections of memories to discover relations among them or identify the gist of a memory while the unnecessary details fade—perhaps even helping us find the meaning in what we have learned.

As exciting findings such as these come in more and more rapidly, we are becoming sure of one thing: while we sleep, our brain is anything but inactive.

Sleep apnea is very dangerous and even fatal condition for adults.

But, if it takes place in infants, it creates a whole set of other problems.

Sleep apnea in infants not only restricts the flow of oxygen from the brain and potentially causes damage to the brain, but also leads to death.

Sleep apnea in adults can be detected and treated easily.

When it comes to sleep apnea in children, it is split into two categories, apnea of prematurity and apnea of infancy.

It is often difficult to detect the symptoms of sleep apnea in children and also makes the treatment much more difficult for you as well as for your doctor.

Is there any clue to identify the problem?

Actually, it is quite normal for all newborns to have pauses in breathing. But if your baby has apnea of prematurity, the heart rate drops below 80 per minute.

As a result, your kid’s skin color turns to pale bluish color. So, when this kind of abnormal breathing occurs in your infant, either he may start to breathe by himself, or needs someone’s help to restart his breathing.

Studies have shown that children and teens who fail to get the proper amount of sleep each night are more prone to obesity, and researchers now think it may be linked to a particular stage of sleep.

They said not spending enough time in rapid eye movement, or REM, sleep — the type that is normally associated with dreaming — significantly increased the odds of obesity in children and teens.

“Our results demonstrated that the short sleep-obesity association may be attributed to reduced REM sleep,” said Dr. Xianchen Liu of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic in Pittsburgh reported on Monday in the Archives of General Psychiatry.

Ultimately, obesity is the byproduct of taking in more calories than the body needs. But Liu and colleagues wanted to see if they could identify any stage of sleep that appeared especially important.

The researchers studied 335 children and adolescents aged 7 to 17 for three consecutive nights. Their sleep was monitored through polysomnography, which measures sleep cycles and stages by recording brain waves, electrical activity of muscles, eye movement, breathing rate, blood pressure, and other variables.

Do you know how important it is to get enough sleep at night? Most of you actually ignore to get enough sleep thinking that it is not that important for your life.

But, in fact it plays a vital role to maintain better health.

If you get proper amount of sleep at night, you can feel refresh and can work effectively through out your day.

If you get good sleep at night, it helps you effectively to reduce your stress levels by dropping the stress hormones in your body.

If you want to know the importance of sleep, here are a couple of good reasons to get enough sleep at nights.

Regulates body functions better!

Sleep plays a crucial role to regulate your body functions normally. It mainly helps in the regulation of your body temperature and also enables your nervous system to function properly.

So, if at all you are suffering with any health problems related to nervous system, get enough rest with sound sleep at night.

Crucial for muscle growth!

Your body needs good sleep for good muscle growth. It also helps in the recovery of muscles after regular body workout.

Aging impairs the consolidation of memories during sleep, a process important in converting new memories into long-term ones, according to new animal research in the July 30 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience.

The findings shed light on normal memory mechanisms and how they are disrupted by aging.

During sleep, the hippocampus, a brain region important in learning and memory, repeatedly “replays” brain activity from recent awake experiences.

This replay process is believed to be important for memory consolidation. In the new study, Carol Barnes, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Arizona found reduced replay activity during sleep in old compared to young rats, and rats with the least replay activity performed the worst in tests of spatial memory.

Barnes and colleagues recorded hippocampal activity in 11 young and 11 old rats as they navigated several mazes for food rewards. Later, when the animals were asleep, the researchers recorded their hippocampal activity again.

In the young animals, the sequence of neural activity recorded while the animals navigated the mazes was repeated when they slept. However, in most of the old animals, the sequence of neural activity recorded during sleep did not reflect the sequence of brain activity recorded in the maze.