Naps Can Boost Brain Learning Power
February 22, 2010
BBC News
Volunteers who slept for 90 minutes during the day did better at cognitive tests than those who were kept awake.
Results of the University of California at Berkeley study involving 39 healthy adults were presented at a conference.
A UK-based sleep expert said it was hard to separate the pure “memory boosting” effects of sleep from those of simply being less tired.
The wealth of study into the science of sleep in recent years has so far failed to come up with conclusive evidence as to the value of a quick “siesta” during the day.
The latest study suggests that the brain may need sleep to process short-term memories, creating “space” for new facts to be learned.
In their experiment, 39 healthy adults were given a hard learning task in the morning – with broadly similar results, before half of them were sent for their siesta.
When the tests were repeated, the nappers outperformed those who had carried on without sleep.
Checks on brain electrical activity suggested that this process might be happening in a sleep phase between deep sleep, and dreaming sleep, called stage 2 non-rapid eye movement sleep, when fact-based memories are moved from “temporary storage” in the brain’s hippocampus to another area called the pre-frontal cortex.
Brain ‘inbox’
Dr Matthew Walker, who led the study, reported at the AAAS conference in San Diego, said: “Sleep not only rights the wrong of prolonged wakefulness, but, at a neurocognitive level, it moves you beyond where you were before you took a nap.
“It’s as though the e-mail inbox in your hippocampus is full, and, until you sleep and clear out all those fact e-mails, you’re not going to receive any more mail.
“It’s just going to bounce until you sleep and move it into another folder.”
However, Professor Derk-Jan Dijk, the director of the Surrey Sleep Research Centre, said that there was no clear evidence that daytime napping offered a distinct advantage over sleeping just once over 24 hours.
“The sleep-wake cycle is not as rigid as we might think – we have the capability to sleep in different ways.”
He said that while the brain effect reported in the study might be spotted in a laboratory setting, the picture became more clouded in the “real world”.
“The size of these effects are much more difficult to assess – if I have to learn something, for example, it’s easier to do this when I’m feeling awake and alert than when I’m sleepy.”
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Taking an Afternoon Nap Makes You Smarter
February 22, 2010
All Headline News
By David Goodhue
A new study from University of California, Berkley researchers touts the mental benefits of taking a midday nap.
The researchers said in a statement that afternoon naps not only refresh the brain, but can also make a person better able to learn new information.
The researchers divided 39 healthy young adults into two groups – one that took a 90-minute nap at 2 p.m. and one that did not. Each group was given a series of tasks designed to work the brain’s hippocampus, the region that helps store fact-based memories.
The participants were given another round of tasks at 6 p.m. The researchers said that the no-nap group became worse at learning as the day progressed. The nap takers, however, actually improved their learning capacity, the researchers said.
The researchers said that they will next investigate whether the reduction in sleep experienced by people as they age impacts their ability to learn. The research, they said, could help scientists better understand neurodegenerative conditions like Alzheimer’s disease.
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Three Simple Steps to Healthy Weight in Children
February 8, 2010
Time
By Alice Park
To curb the childhood-obesity epidemic, health experts have long urged parents to make healthy changes to their family’s lifestyle — such as eating nutritiously, reducing TV time, exercising and getting a good night’s sleep.
Individually, these behaviors have been linked to a lower risk of obesity in kids, but researchers at Ohio State University were interested in learning whether their effect might be cumulative — that is, whether families who adopted not just one but two or more of these behaviors could reduce their children’s risk of obesity even further.
Led by epidemiologist Sarah Anderson, researchers analyzed data on 8,550 4-year-olds in a national study, and found that indeed children who practiced two healthy lifestyle behaviors were slimmer than those who adopted only one behavior, while youngsters who implemented three beneficial habits were the least likely to be overweight. “The more of these routines the children had, the lower was their risk of obesity,” Anderson says. “If children had all three routines, their risk of obesity was 40% lower than children who had none of the routines.”
The three behaviors that Anderson studied were eating dinner regularly with the family, limiting the amount of time in front of the TV, and getting enough sleep. The children who were least likely to be obese ate dinner with their families six or seven times a week, slept for at least 10.5 hours each night and watched less than two hours of television per day.
The protective effect of these routines remained strong even after Anderson accounted for other factors that can contribute to childhood obesity, such as mother’s obesity or low family income. The findings suggest that adopting these routines can be a powerful way for families to encourage healthy weight in their children, regardless of socioeconomic background, she says.
In addition, says Dr. David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life Program at Children’s Hospital Boston, the routines are relatively easy for most families to adopt. “This is a beautifully simple study. It makes a very important point, and one that needs to be re-emphasized time and again. These are all behaviors that are within the reach of us all.”
The data Anderson used came from the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Birth Cohort, a government-sponsored study of a cross section of children born in the U.S. in 2005. The children were enrolled in the study at birth, and their parents answered questions about the children’s daily routines — including how much television they watched, when they went to bed each night and when they woke up each morning — at 9 months, 2 years and 4 years old.
Anderson focused her attention on the 4-year-olds, and found that families who had layered on the routines tended to have the slimmest kids. “We know that it’s going to be more difficult for some families than for others to adopt these routines,” she says. “But we can feel comfortable recommending them and encouraging parents to consider them, because not only do they offer protection against obesity, they are also likely to have other positive benefits in terms of children’s social, emotional and cognitive development.”
Obesity experts stress that the key is to start somewhere, and these routines are as good a place as any. “We don’t have to be running marathons every day,” says Ludwig. “Even moderate improvements in these three key behaviors can translate into a marked effect on body weight.” And when it comes to controlling weight, especially in youngsters, every pound counts.
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February 4, 2010 by Brandy
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Aging Adults Need Less Sleep
February 1, 2010
FoxNews.com
How much sleep we need is largely a mystery, and sleep seems tougher to come by as we age. Many studies — often funded by the pharmaceutical industry — have suggested that we’re all sleep-deprived zombies, risking our health for lack of shut-eye.
But new research in the U.K. confirms previous indications that older people need less sleep. It also suggests that variations in sleep hours needed are normal and healthy — so long as one is not overly sleepy during the day.
“Healthy aging appears to be associated with reductions in the sleep duration and depth required to maintain daytime alertness,” the scientists said in a statement.
Still, researchers warn that many people in modern society suffer from sleep deprivation, and that it can lead to plenty of woes from accidents on the job to higher risk of falls and even death in elderly people.
The study, announced today, involved 110 healthy adults who did not have any sleep disorders and didn’t complain about lack of sleep. They went through various rounds of sleep and wake periods under varying conditions, and were tested for sleepiness during the wake periods.
During the first night with eight hours in bed, the resulting average sleep time, by age group:
Age 20-30: 433.5 minutes (7.23 hours)
Age 40-55: 409.9 minutes (6.83 hours)
Age 66-83: 390.4 minutes (6.51 hours)
The researchers do not suggest that these times, achieved during lab conditions much different from real life, are normal. But the comparison between groups is what’s interesting, with the oldest group snoozing about 20 minutes less than the middle-agers, who in turn slept about 23 minutes less than the youngest group. The amount of time spent in deep sleep, measured as “slow-wave sleep,” was also less in the older groups.
Daytime sleepiness was measured by asking the subjects to nap, which count in tallying your overall sleep, said study leader Derk-Jan Dijk, professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey in the U.K. (Previous research has shown that naps are good for you.)
“But, we need to be careful; naps very late in the day may make you feel better for the remainder of the waking day but also disrupt your subsequent night time sleep episode,” Dijk told LiveScience.
When participants were asked to lie in bed and try to nap, here’s how long it took on average for the members of each group to dose off:
Age 20-30: 8.7 minutes
Age 40-55: 11.7 minutes
Age 66-83: 14.2 minutes
However, the researchers note in the Feb. 1 issue of the journal Sleep that if you’re sleepy during the day, then you probably need more sleep.
“Our findings reaffirm the theory that it is not normal for older people to be sleepy during the daytime,” Dijk said. “Whether you are young or old, if you are sleepy during the day you either don’t get enough sleep or you may suffer from a sleep disorder.”
Scientists admit that the role of sleep is not well understood and that they aren’t sure how much sleep each person needs. A study last year indicated that some people are genetically programmed to need less sleep.
Dijk also helped with a 2008 study reported in the journal Current Biology, in which participants stayed in bed for 16 hours in the dark each day for several days, to see how much they would sleep. Younger people slept an average of 9 hours while older people got 7.5 hours.
“The most parsimonious explanation for our results is that older people need less sleep,” said Elizabeth Klerman of Brigham and Women’s Hospital & Harvard Medical School. “It’s also possible that they sleep less even when given the opportunity for more sleep because of age-related changes in the ability to fall asleep and remain asleep.”
Again in that 2008 study, however, Dijk and Klerman found that most healthy people, and young people in particular, don’t get as much sleep as they need.
If you chronically feel sleepy during the day, Dijk advises you see a doctor. But if you get just six or seven hours of snooze time and feel fine, “then that is OK,” he said. But if you think you’re okay and find yourself dozing during meetings or nodding off while watching TV, “there still may be a problem.”
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The Kevin Trudeau Show: 12-23-09
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Shock Therapy for Bedtime Teeth Grinders
November 17, 2009
BBC News
A chain of private dental practices in Hull is trialling a device which delivers a tiny electrical impulse when it detects grinding is about to begin.
Teeth grinding – or bruxism – is a common and usually harmless habit induced by stress.
It can, however, cause headaches and stiff necks, as well as irritating a sleeping partner.
Traditional treatments involve wearing a plastic device at night which prevents the top and bottom teeth from meeting.
With this new device, Grindcare , developed in Denmark, a small electrode is placed on the temple which then monitors the movement of facial muscles. When it detects tension mounting, it delivers a tiny electrical impulse – or biofeedback.
This is not consciously detected by the sleeping patient but still serves to relax the muscles.
Painkillers
The device is said to reduce grinding by as much as 80% within two months.
Other ways of tackling bruxism include counselling and relaxation therapies to resolve the initial source of stress and tension.
But Dr David Vivian, the dentist trialling the device, said that grinding could worsen existing anxieties.
“The broken sleep pattern caused by grinding can exacerbate any stresses or worries already being felt by the patient, and add an extra layer of anxiety to their lives.
“They may also be resorting to over-the-counter painkillers to treat side effects, such as headaches, and finding that they are having to increase the dosage all the time.
Results ‘promising’
“We are hoping that this biofeedback device will help to break the loop of fitful sleeping, and the psychological and physical problems which grinding can create.”
Professor Damien Walmsley, scientific adviser to the British Dental Association, said: “Teeth grinding is a problem that affects a significant minority of individuals. It is often caused by stress.
“Patients who are affected by the problem should consult their dentist.
“This study, which was carried out on a small sample of patients, shows promising results.
“Further research will be necessary to establish the technology’s true potential.”
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