Archive for the 'Sleep Related Disorders' Category

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 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.

If you choose alcohol as your sleep aid, then it is very essential for you to realize that alcoholism, which is used as source to get good sleep, can lead to certain sleep disorders.

Therefore, in order to understand how these two things are interrelated to each other, you must look into the depths of these two different topics, alcohol and sleep.

Alcoholism and sleep!

Alcoholism is an illness in which you can become addicted to excessive alcohol consumption. Identical to consciousness, sleep is an active process that is controlled by your nerve centers in brain stem. These nerve centers usually produce certain chemicals that controls the regulation of REM (rapid eye moment) state of your sleep, where your eyes move more rapidly.

So, whenever you consume excess amounts of alcohol, the functioning of these chemical messengers mainly affects your sleep and causes various sleep disorders.

Sleep disorders related to alcoholism!

If you are already suffering with any kind of sleep disorders, particularly sleep apnea, then extreme consumption of alcohol can certainly make the condition much worse. It is believed that excessive alcohol consumption in addition to sleep apnea can certainly kill the person.

Being overweight will certainly develop sleep problems. Many factors are responsible to obtain sleep problems in overweight people.

Obesity can cause sleep apnea, sluggishness and even high blood pressure.

The sleep patterns of too obese people will be always disruptive and they don’t even able to sleep continuously for 5 to 6 hours a day.

People who don’t sleep for required time will also become overweight.

Usually, people without proper rest at night time will look always disturbed and their mind also works in such a way that they will not be able to perform their work correctly.

Among the various other tasks which are performed in their daily routine, eating is also one of the essential things.

People who don’t obtain good sleep at night times eat more food when compared to people who achieve good sleep at night.

The main reason for this is people who get good sleep at night will be stable in their work of action, which will be performed in their daily routine, where as people who don’t get good sleep at night will be unstable and they don’t even able to take right decision in their daily routine, including the food they consume.

People who are suffering with RSI (Repetitive Strain Injury) will face the problem more during their sleeping time.

According to the view of experts, pain or inconvenience experienced by you will become more at your sleeping time.

This is proved both in psychological as well as in the physical way.

Other than the physical disturbance, the psychological feeling plays the major role here because your mind acts much in your problem during the sleep time.

Generally during the sleeping time, most of the people think on several aspects before going to sleep because it takes sometime for them to sleep or sleep cannot be achieved by them immediately after going to the bed.

In that time, other than the various aspects, health comes in your mind first and your psychological feeling develops in such a way that you feel inconvenience due to that problem.

Other than the psychological feeling, some of the people face the problem physically. You cannot obtain the solution for your physical problem of RSI within seconds. Your sleeping patterns and the actions which have performed with your hand will have much impact psychologically.

According to the recent studies, it is proved that, out of 100%, 49% of the students are sleeping less than eight hours on weeknights. This situation is arising because at the weekend time most of the students feel free and stress relieved from various burdens obtained in that week.

In order to make themselves feel enjoy with various tasks, they tend to sleep less and spends more time on other lovable tasks.

Reported snoring or sleep apnea and pediatric daytime sleepiness scale (PDSS) are the independent predictors which are responsible for the poor academic performances.

Students who are suffering with different sleep disorders or obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) looks disturbed and they will not be able to concentrate much on their studies. So, most of the snorers or sufferers of sleep apnea will be obtaining lower means of grades in languages and mathematics.