Archive for the 'Sleep Disorder News' Category

Growing evidence indicates that exposure to irregular patterns of light and darkness can cause the human circadian system to fall out of synchrony with the 24-hour solar day, negatively affecting human health - but scientists have been unable to effectively study the relationship between circadian disruptions and human maladies.

A study by researchers in Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Lighting Research Center (LRC) provides a new framework for studying the effects of circadian disruption on breast cancer, obesity [Effects of Obesity], sleep disorders, and other health problems.

Light and dark patterns are the major synchronizer of circadian rhythms - the biological cycles that repeat approximately every 24 hours - to the solar day.

Inadequate or irregular light exposure can cause circadian rhythm disruptions that are believed to manifest into a variety of health ailments.

However, ecological studies to measure human light exposure are virtually nonexistent, making it difficult to determine if, in fact, light-induced circadian disruption directly affects human health.

LRC researchers have created a small, head-mounted device to measure an individual’s daily rest and activity patterns, as well as exposure to circadian light - short-wavelength light, particularly natural light from the blue sky, that stimulates the circadian system.

According to the researchers, postmenopausal women who regularly sleep more than nine hours a night may have an increased risk of ischemic stroke.

Compared to women sleeping seven hours, the risk of ischemic stroke was 60-70 percent higher for those sleeping nine hours or more, said lead author Jiu-Chiuan Chen, M.D., Sc.D., assistant professor of epidemiology at the University of North Carolina’s School of Public Health in Chapel Hill.

“After accounting for all common clinical conditions predictive of stroke, we found this increase was statistically significant: sleeping nine hours or more is strongly associated with increased risk of ischemic stroke,” he said.

Researchers also found that women who slept six hours or less [Less sleep] were at 14 percent greater stroke risk than those who slept seven hours a night.

Nearly twice as many women reported sleeping less than six hours (8.3 percent) than those who reported sleeping nine hours or more (4.6 percent).

“The prevalence in women of having long sleep duration is much lower than having sleep duration less than six hours. So the overall public health impact of short sleep is probably larger than long sleep,” Chen said.

Girls moving through adolescence may experience unhealthy levels of weight gain, but the reasons for this are not always clear.

In fact, many potential causes of weight gain are easily overlooked.

A new study analyzes the effect of Internet usage, sleep, and alcohol and coffee consumption on weight gain in adolescent girls.

Dr. Catherine Berkey and colleagues from Harvard Medical School, Brigham & Women’s Hospital, and Washington University led the Growing Up Today Study (GUTS), which surveyed more than 5000 girls between the ages of 14 and 21 years from all 50 states.

They asked the girls to reflect on their weekly habits over the past year and report the following: 1) hours of sleep per night; 2) time spent on the Internet (excluding time for work or school); 3) number of alcoholic beverages consumed;[Effects of alcohol on sleep] and 4) number of coffee beverages consumed.

The girls also reported their height and weight at the beginning and end of the one-year study.

The researchers found that more Internet time, more alcohol consumption, and less sleep resulted in extra weight gain during the study year.

According to new study by Australian researchers, a lack of sleep can have a bad affect on the ability of children to both learn and interact at school.

The new study by researchers from the Centre for Community Child Health at the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, Melbourne, has revealed that nearly a quarter of children aged six and seven have poor sleeping habits, which has a major effect on their health, behaviour and learning ability.

The researchers said that almost 25% of six and seven year olds have trouble sleeping and those with the most persistent sleep issues suffer the most serious health, behavior and learning problems according to their parents and teachers.

According to the researchers, a lack of sleep affects concentration and how children interact with peers and teachers.

They say previous research had shown children are more likely to drop out of school if they had a poor early transition to formal education and if they have enough sleep children are able to make the transition and take on the workload while their brains are still growing and taking in a lot of information.

Read more information at News Medical

Regular practice of tai chi chih, a Westernized version of the ancient Chinese martial art of tai chi, can help older people rest easier at night[good night sleep], according to a study in the journal Sleep.

Studies show that more than half of older adults experience sleeping problems at least a few times a week, Irwin and his team note in their report.

Nearly two-thirds of people who learned the slow, gentle tai chi chih moves experienced significant improvements in sleep quality, compared to about one-third of those who participated in health education sessions that included information on how to get a better night’s rest.

In fact, the benefits of tai chi chih were similar to those seen with drugs or cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), study chief Dr. Michael R. Irwin of the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA told Reuters Health.

To investigate whether tai chi chih might be an option, Irwin and his team analyzed sleep quality in 112 people aged 59 to 86 participating in a randomized, controlled trial of the martial art for preventing shingles. Tai chi chih instruction was given in 45-minute sessions, three times a week.

According to research by Rush University Medical Center, difficulty falling asleep and staying asleep increase as women go through menopause .

Waking up earlier than planned also increases through late perimenopause but decreases when women become postmenopausal.

“Sleep difficulties, especially problems staying asleep[sleep problems], are relatively prevalent concerns among women going through the menopausal transition,” said Dr. Howard Kravitz, associate professor of psychiatry and preventive medicine at Rush University Medical Center and a principal investigator of the study.

“Approximately 16% of postmenopausal women report having difficulty falling asleep and 41% report waking up frequently during the night.”

Compared with other ethnic groups, Caucasian women were more likely to report difficulty staying asleep, while Hispanic women were less likely than other ethnic groups to wake several times during the night.

Hispanic women were also significantly less likely to report waking early than other ethnic group. Compared with Hispanic, Caucasian, African American and Japanese women, Chinese women were more likely to report early morning awakening.

In naturally postmenopausal women, women who were on hormone therapy had less trouble falling asleep and waking several times during the night than naturally postmenopausal women not on hormone therapy.

Lack of both the fragile X syndrome gene and one that is related could account for sleep problems associated with the disorder, which is the common cause of inherited mental impairment, said a consortium of researchers led by scientists at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston.

Mice deficient in the fragile X mental retardation 1 gene (FMR1) and a similar gene called fragile X-related gene 2 (FXR2) have no rhythm to their wake and sleep pattern, said Dr. David Nelson, professor of molecular and human genetics.

Normal mice have a sleep-wake cycle of just under 12 hours awake and 12 hours asleep. Exposed to light and dark, they are awake in the dark and asleep during the light because they are nocturnal animals.

If they are kept in the dark, their cycle reduces by about 10 minutes per sleep-wake period but remains fairly normal. When mice do not have either FMR1 or FXR2, they have a slightly shorter cycle but the difference is not dramatic.

Fragile X is the most common known cause of autism.The finding is important because parents whose children have autism or fragile X report problems getting their children to go to sleep and stay asleep.

Sleep-related breathing disorders (SRBD) are very common in children, occurring in up to 30 percent of children. SRBD ranges in severity from primary snoring to OSA.

In adults, SRBD is associated with hypertension and increased risk for cardiovascular disease. These findings highlight the importance of considering the long-term cardiovascular effects of any severity of SRBD in children

The 22nd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) finds that all severities of SRBD in children are associated with elevated blood pressure during sleep compared with non-snoring control children.

The study focused on 88 children between seven and 13 years of age, including 68 referred for the assessment of SRBD and 20 non-snoring controls. Routine polysomnography, or an overnight sleep test, was performed, and mean arterial pressure was continuously recorded.

Children were divided into groups according to obstructive apnea/hypopnea index: control children, primary snoring, mild obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and moderate/severe OSA.

According to the results, compared with the non-snoring controls, SRBDs of any severity elevate the blood pressure of children during sleep.

It is important to make sure that your child gets enough sleep and sleeps well. The value of sleep can be measured by your child’s smiling face, happy nature and natural energy. A tired child may have development or behavior problems.