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Consistently exercising 2–3 times a week over the long term is linked to a lower current risk of insomnia as well as the ability to clock up the recommended 6–9 hours of shut-eye every night, suggests an international 10-year study. The researchers assessed the frequency, duration, and intensity of weekly physical activity and symptoms of insomnia, nightly sleep clocked up, and daytime sleepiness among middle-aged adults. The 4,399 study participants (2,085 men; 2,254 women) were drawn from the European Community Respiratory Health Survey. They had answered questions on the frequency and duration of physical activity at baseline (ECRHS II;1998–2002) and...

Sleeping fewer than seven hours is associated with a higher risk of developing high blood pressure over time, according to a study. The current analysis pools data from 16 studies conducted between January 2000 and May 2023, evaluating hypertension incidence in 1,044,035 people from six countries who did not have a prior history of high blood pressure over a median follow-up of five years (follow-up ranged from 2.4 to 18 years). Short sleep duration was significantly associated with a higher risk of developing hypertension after adjusting for demographic and cardiovascular risk factors. Furthermore, the association was found to be even...

Feeling sleepy can make you feel 10 years older. Researchers have discovered that sleep affects how old you feel. B. Do you ever find yourself longing for the energy and vitality of your younger years? Feeling young is not just a matter of perception—it is actually related to objective health outcomes. Previous studies have shown that feeling younger than one's actual age is associated with longer, healthier lives. There is even support for subjective age to predict actual brain age, with those feeling younger having younger brains. In the first study, 429 individuals aged 18 to 70 were asked how...

Getting either too much or too little sleep is associated with changes in the brain that have been shown to increase the risk of stroke and dementia later in life, a recent study finds. "Conditions like stroke or dementia are the end-stage result of a long process that ends tragically," says Santiago Clocchiatti-Tuozzo, MD. "We want to learn how to prevent these processes before they happen." In one of the largest neuroimaging studies of its kind to date, the Yale team examined brain images of close to 40,000 healthy, middle-aged participants to evaluate how sleeping habits might impact two measures...

Dutch health technology company Philips will not sell new devices to treat sleep apnea in the U.S. in the coming years as it works to comply with a settlement with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced on Monday. The agreement followed the recall of millions of breathing devices and ventilators used to treat sleep apnea in 2021 because of concerns that foam used to reduce noise from the devices could degrade and become toxic, carrying potential cancer risks. Philips said it had reached what is known as a consent decree that spells out the improvements it needs to make...

A team of neuroscientists and sleep researchers has found that rather than improving sleep, consuming an alcoholic beverage before bed can cause a reduction in REM sleep. Prior research has shown that REM sleep takes up approximately 20% of a typical night's sleep, but is still important. Though scientists have not yet figured out the purpose of REM sleep, they do know that people who do not get enough can experience emotional problems, mental acuity difficulties and memory issues. In this new study, the researchers explored whether consumption of alcohol prior to sleep might have a positive or negative impact...

Artery calcification is almost twice as common in night owls compared to early birds, according to a study. Circadian rhythm appears to be particularly important for the heart and blood vessels during the early stages of the disease. Artery calcification, or atherosclerosis as it is also known, involves fatty deposits accumulating on the inside of the arteries, making it harder for blood to pass through. The study, involved 771 men and women aged between 50 and 64, all of whom are part of the larger population study SCAPIS. The degree of artery calcification in the heart's coronary arteries was examined...

Rudolph the Red-Nosed Ruminant, more like.Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and yes, even Rudolph have evolved an excellent strategy to rest efficiently, a new study finds. Published today in the journal Current Biology, this paper by researchers in Switzerland and Norway gifts us a discovery about how rumination — the process of rechewing partially digested food called cud — rejuvenates reindeer. Like cows, deer, camels, and llamas, reindeer are ruminants. All ruminants are four-stomached herbivores who feed on rough plants, regurgitate the partially digested cud, then chew it again and swallow. But the new paper, which analyzed...

Didn’t get enough sleep during the week? Take heart — catching up on shuteye over the weekend could provide the bonus of improved cardiovascular health, according to a new study published in the journal Sleep Health. Researchers from Nanjing Medical University in China analyzed data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES), which compiled information from 3,400 U.S. adults ages 20 years and older between 2017 and 2018. The survey gathered information on how long the participants slept on weekdays and weekends, as well as whether they had heart disease, high blood pressure and/or diabetes. The people who...

I bought some of this stuff and highly recommend it just for sleeping if nothing else. Mine was 1000mg which is considered medium strength I took a few drops throughout the day and night [yesterday] under the tongue and have to say it did the trick. Anyone tried it? Other ailments they say it's good for: Joint pain, anxiety, depression.

New research has explored how sleep, oxygen levels, and exercise affect our ability to perform mental tasks. Consequences of chronic sleep deprivation include cardiovascular disease, obesity, neurodegenerative disorders, and depression. In the short term, a lack of sleep can reduce cognitive performance (CP). A study has found cognitive performance improves during a bout of moderate intensity exercise, regardless of a person's sleep status or oxygen levels. The study involved two experiments, each with 12 participants. The first looked at the impact of partial sleep deprivation on a person's cognitive performance, and the second examined the impact of total sleep deprivation...

Short sleep lengths, daytime napping and even long sleep lengths have been linked to an increased risk of elevated blood pressure and cardiovascular disease, a new study has found. Using data from the UK Biobank, the study is the first study to demonstrate that independent of other factors, circadian rhythm-disrupting behaviors, including shift work, have an adverse effect on blood pressure regulation. "We found that compromised sleep health or nightshift work are associated with elevated blood pressure in both males and females and across all age groups," Professor Morag Young said. "What we've found is that having circadian rhythms out...

We all know that a lousy night's sleep can leave us feeling drained the next day. Now a study has found another reason to catch more Z's: poor sleep is tied to significantly higher odds of experiencing atrial fibrillation (A-Fib)—irregular heartbeats that can lead to blood clots, heart failure, stroke and other heart-related problems—the following day. A bad night of sleep was associated with a 15% greater risk of having an A-Fib episode, and continued poor sleep was associated with longer episodes of A-Fib. The researchers noted that it is important to treat underlying disease that may be causing A-Fib,...

Scientists have discovered a surprising connection between brain cells involved in producing the insulation around nerve fibers, our sleep patterns, and neurodegenerative diseases such as multiple sclerosis (MS). The cells studied are a type of glial cell known as oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs). These cells can mature into oligodendrocytes, which are responsible for making myelin—the insulation that ensheaths nerve fibers throughout the brain and speeds neuronal signaling. But before OPCs turn into oligodendrocytes, they have other duties. Gibson revealed that another unexpected role of OPCs may involve sleep. As a circadian biologist, Gibson is familiar with the effects that our...

As The Post's Liz Sly recently noted, the war in Syria has become a tangled web of conflict dominated by "al Qaeda veterans, hardened Iraqi insurgents, Arab jihadist ideologues and Western volunteers." On the surface, those competing actors are fueled by an overlapping mixture of ideologies and political agendas. Just below it, experts suspect, they're powered by something else: Captagon. A tiny, highly addictive pill produced in Syria and widely available across the Middle East, its illegal sale funnels hundreds of millions of dollars back into the war torn country's black market economy each year, likely giving militias access to...

Does this sound like you? You wake up at the same time each morning, get the kids out the door, and rush to catch the subway to work. But at night, maybe you stay up until midnight doing laundry or 1 a.m. to catch up on the bills. Many Americans—about one-third of us—are in the same situation and habitually get only five to six hours of sleep instead of the recommended seven to eight hours. But even a mild chronic sleep deficit may heighten the risk of developing heart disease later in life: Surveys of thousands of people have found...

Comments 10/7/23

The glymphatic system is the brain's self-cleaning mechanism. It wasn't discovered until 2012. The glymphatic system is tied to the circadian system and sleep architecture, and both are implicated in the pathophysiology of concussions. I'll explain the glymphatic system's nature, how its dysfunction contributes to concussion pathology, and the crucial role of circadian therapy in mitigating this impact. The glymphatic system was nicknamed "the garbage truck of the brain" by its discoverer. Its fundamental role is to remove waste products from the brain. Approximately 80–90% of glymphatic clearance occurs during "deep sleep." As sleep transitions from deep sleep into the...

A study finds that chronic caffeine consumption has surprising effects on sleep patterns and brain blood flow in mice, increasing brain blood flow during sleep. The study was conducted using a minimally invasive microchip and video recording system. The study found that mice consistently have a "siesta" during the latter part of their awake phase. Daily caffeine abolished this siesta and consolidated wakefulness during the awake phase It also shifted the onset of sleep (particularly REM sleep) by up to 2 hours relative to the light dark cycle. Interestingly, the mice that consumed caffeine when awake slept more solidly, and...

Chronic stress is associated with sleep disturbance. In their new study, Lu Huang and colleagues identify the neural pathway behind this behavior, and at the same time, explain how bright-light treatment is able to counter it. The research was conducted in mice. Bright-light treatment is known to improve sleep in those with sleep disorders, but how it works—and whether it works in cases of stress-induced sleep disturbances—was unknown. The researchers hypothesized that a part of the brain called the lateral habenula is deeply involved in this phenomenon because it both receives light signals from the eyes and can influence other...