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Headaches linked to mobile phones By Lewis Carter Last Updated: 1:02am GMT 21/01/2008 Radiation from mobile phones damages sleep and causes headaches, according to a study by telephone makers. People using a handset before going to bed take longer to reach deeper stages of sleep and spend less time in them, researchers found. This gives their bodies less time to repair wear and tear during the day, and gives them headaches. advertisementThe findings are particularly alarming for children and teenagers, most of whom, surveys suggest, use their phones late at night. The young need plenty of sleep and failure to...

Sunday is 'worst for a night's sleep' By Bonnie Malkin Last Updated: 1:02am GMT 21/01/2008 It may explain that Monday morning feeling - research has found that Sunday is the most sleepless night of the week. Nearly 60 per cent of employees have their worst night's sleep of the week on Sundays, a survey claims, with restless nights forcing one in four to call in sick on a Monday. Disrupted sleep has also been blamed for a lack of concentration at work (46 per cent) on Mondays, increased irritability towards bosses (30 per cent) and the odd impromptu nap at...

Note: This commentary was delivered by PFM President Mark Earley. From Starbucks, to Red Bull, to No-Doz, Americans are showing signs of addiction to caffeine. Sixty percent of us drink a cup of coffee a day. On average we will drink 52 gallons of soda this year. And Starbucks—they get a whopping $5.3 billion of our collective dough. Whether we are chemically stimulating because we do not get enough sleep, or whether the caffeine itself is depriving us of precious rest, we are also sleeping less than ever before. Americans get an average of six and a half hours of...

...Research shows that teenagers’ body clocks are set to a schedule that is different from that of younger children or adults. This prevents adolescents from dropping off until around 11 p.m., when they produce the sleep-inducing hormone melatonin, and waking up much before 8 a.m. when their bodies stop producing melatonin. The result is that the first class of the morning is often a waste, with as many as 28 percent of students falling asleep, according to a National Sleep Foundation poll. Some are so sleepy they don’t even show up, contributing to failure and dropout rates. Many of our...

How To Sleep Like a Hunter-GathererNot all people sleep in "giant sleep machines," like we do. What’s really going on inside your head when you sleep, dream, or are wide-awake? In his fascinating new book, The Head Trip: Adventures on the Wheel of Consciousness (Random House, $24.95), science writer Jeff Warren explores some familiar and some less familiar states of consciousness, everything from daydreams to lucid dreams. Warren talked to scientists and Buddhist monks, slept in sleep labs, and spent time in a secluded mountain cabin to experience firsthand various states of consciousness. Along the way, he discovered perception-shifting information...

WESTCHESTER, Ill. – Bad dreams in pre-schoolers are less prevalent than thought. However, when they do exist, nightmares are trait-like in nature and associated with personality characteristics measured as early as five months, according to a study published in the January 1 issue of the journal SLEEP. The study, led by Valérie Simard, under the direction of Tore Nielsen, PhD, of the University of Montreal, sampled 987 children in the Province of Quebec, who were assessed by their parents at the 29-month, 41-month, 50-month, five-year and six-year mark. Parents were asked in a questionnaire about the frequency of their child’s...

I open my eyes with a start, like the murderous freak in the slasher movie the audience thinks is dead but isn't. The clock reads 3:55 A.M. I've awakened within six minutes of this time for the past three nights. I shut my eyes and take a breath, hoping to ease back to sleep. Too late. The anxiety is already gathering momentum, my brain roiling with thoughts that have no business being there in the middle of the night. It's like a Law & Order episode in my head: Opposing sides argue and counterargue, witnesses are badgered, lawyers shout objections....

LONDON - It was once scientific heresy to suggest that smoking contributed to lung cancer. Now, another idea initially dismissed as nutty is gaining acceptance: the graveyard shift might increase your cancer risk. Next month, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, the cancer arm of the World Health Organization, will classify shift work as a "probable" carcinogen. That will put shift work in the same category as cancer-causing agents like anabolic steroids, ultraviolet radiation, and diesel engine exhaust. If the shift work theory proves correct, millions of people worldwide could be affected. Experts estimate that nearly 20 percent of...

American Heart Association meeting report ORLANDO, Nov. 7 — A cholesterol-lowering drug appears to disrupt sleep patterns of some patients, researchers reported at the American Heart Association’s Scientific Sessions 2007. “The findings are significant because sleep problems can affect quality of life and may have adverse health consequences, such as promoting weight gain and insulin resistance,” said Beatrice Golomb, M.D., lead author of the study and an associate professor of medicine and family and preventive medicine at the University of California at San Diego School of Medicine. In the largest study of its kind, researchers compared two types of cholesterol-lowering...

Your dreams miss you. Or so says a television commercial for Rozerem, the sleeping pill. In the commercial, the dreams involve Abraham Lincoln, a beaver and a deep-sea diver. Not the stuff most dreams are made of. But if the unusual pitch makes you want to try Rozerem, consider that it costs about $3.50 a pill; gets you to sleep 7 to 16 minutes faster than a placebo, or fake pill; and increases total sleep time 11 to 19 minutes, according to an analysis last year. If those numbers send you out to buy another brand, consider this, as well:...

The patient was a 37-year-old man who had been physically abused as a boy by his schizophrenic mother, often while he lay in bed trying to fall asleep. Nevertheless, he had grown into a reasonably normal, gainfully employed adult, and he thought that the worst was behind him, until one night he awoke to find an intruder rummaging through his dresser drawers. After that, his nightmares began — terrifying, recurrent dreams in which the intruder was a middle-age woman and a knife dangled with Damoclesian contempt from the ceiling fan over his head. “The old fear memories had not gone...

Oral surgery can reduce CPAP needs in patients with sleep apnea (Chicago, IL, October 24, 2007) — A procedure known as uvulopalatopharyngoplasty (UPPP) may help some patients improve or even eliminate their obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), according to a new study. The research, presented at CHEST 2007, the 73rd annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), says the procedure, which removes excess tissue in the throat or mouth to widen the airway, can reduce the amount of treatment required by patients with OSA. In addition, researchers say UPPP also can eliminate OSA completely in some...

As every sleep researcher knows, the surest way to hear complaints about sleep is to ask the elderly. “Older people complain more about their sleep; they just do,” said Dr. Michael Vitiello, a sleep researcher who is a professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington. And for years, sleep scientists thought they knew what was going on: sleep starts to deteriorate in late middle age and steadily erodes from then on. It seemed so obvious that few thought to question the prevailing wisdom. Now, though, new research is leading many to change their minds. To researchers’...

Sleep apnea is commonly diagnosed by way of measuring airflow by nasal pressure, temperature, and/or carbon dioxide, through sensors placed in the nose. However, this method is uncomfortable to some and can potentially disturb sleep. But new research, presented at CHEST 2007, the 73rd annual international scientific assembly of the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP), shows that remote infrared imaging can monitor airflow and accurately detect abnormalities during sleep, without ever coming in contact with the patient. The study indicates that the new method is ideal because it is portable and can monitor sleep in a natural environment. “Polysomnography...

In a study published in May, researchers at Harvard and McGill Universities reported that participants who slept after playing this game scored significantly higher on a retest than those who did not sleep. While asleep they apparently figured out what they didn’t while awake... “We think what’s happening during sleep is that you open the aperture of memory and are able to see this bigger picture,” said the study’s senior author, Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist who is now at the University of California, Berkeley. He added that many such insights occurred “only when you enter this wonder-world of sleep.” Scientists...

The task looks as simple as a “Sesame Street” exercise. Study pairs of Easter eggs on a computer screen and memorize how the computer has arranged them: the aqua egg over the rainbow one, the paisley over the coral one — and there are just six eggs in all. Most people can study these pairs for about 20 minutes and ace a test on them, even a day later. But they’re much less accurate in choosing between two eggs that have not been directly compared: Aqua trumped rainbow but does that mean it trumps paisley? It’s hazy. It’s hazy, that...

EXPEDITIONARY PATROL BASE - DULAB, Iraq (Oct. 10, 2007) -- “Enjoy it while you can maggots,” rasped the drill instructor into the darkness of the squad bay, “This is the most sleep you will see in the Corps, especially if you are allowed to become grunts.” The Marines with Company A, 1st Battalion, 7th Marine Regiment, Regimental Combat Team 2, now agree with the phantom from boot camp. In the small patrol base which borders on the village of Dulab, near the edge of the Euphrates River, sleep truly is a commodity. The Marines of Company A, known as the...

It's long been reported that a lack of sleep can be hazardous to one's health, but so can too much sleep, UK researchers report. Researchers from the University of Warwick and University College London found that both a lack of sleep and too much sleep can more than double the risk of death in individuals, according to a study of more than 10,308 people. Professor Francesco Cappuccio from the University of Warwick’s Warwick Medical School, speaking Monday to the British Sleep Society, said researchers studied data on the mortality rates and sleep patterns on the same group of civil servants...

Cat in dreamland. Short video Lol

An RAF mechanic who claimed he was sleepwalking when he had sex with a 15-year-old girl was cleared of rape yesterday. Senior Aircraftsman Kenneth Ecott, 26, broke down in tears after a jury took two hours to agree that he was not responsible for his actions. Ecott did not deny having sex with the girl but said he had no memory of it happening. Instead he insisted he had a condition known as 'sexsomnia' in which sufferers carry out indecent acts in their sleep. It was this rare affliction which caused him to climb naked on top of the girl...