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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...

Benzodiazepines are effective and widely used drugs for treating states of anxiety and sleep disorders. While short-term treatments are considered safe, their long-term intake can lead to physical dependence and, particularly in the case of older people, to cognitive impairments. The mechanisms by which benzodiazepines trigger these changes had previously been unknown. Researchers have now been able to demonstrate in an animal model that the active ingredient leads to the loss of neural connections in the brain. A key role is played by immune cells of the brain known as microglia. Benzodiazepines bind to a specific protein, the translocator protein...

Obstructive sleep apnea, a form of sleep-disordered breathing, is common in children and adolescents and may be associated with elevated blood pressure and changes in heart structure. "The likelihood of children having disordered breathing during sleep and, in particular, obstructive sleep apnea, may be due to enlargement of the tonsils, adenoids or a child's facial structure, however, it is important for parents to recognize that obesity also puts kids at risk for obstructive sleep apnea," said Carissa M. Baker-Smith, M.D. "Sleep disruptions due to sleep apnea have the potential to raise blood pressure and are linked with insulin resistance and...

Eric Barker, Barking Up The Wrong Tree September 9, 2014Roger Ekrich noticed many old books, including Chaucer's "The Canterbury Tales", referenced two periods of sleep being the norm in their era. Via Dreamland: Adventures in the Strange Science of Sleep: ...Ekirch somehow rediscovered a fact of life that was once as common as eating breakfast. Every night, people fell asleep not long after the sun went down and stayed that way until sometime after midnight. This was the first sleep that kept popping up in the old tales. Once a person woke up, he or she would stay that way...

The sleep doctors are coming and they want you to go to bed. On time. Tonight. Every night. Or else. They want doctors to add a single question to routine checks of vital signs like body temperature, pulse, blood pressure and rate of breathing. The question is: How did you sleep? If you’re like most people, probably not well, or at least not enough. Coffee-fuelled North Americans, with our smartphones at our bedsides, are sleeping, on average, nearly two hours less than we were 40 years ago, when most people slept 8½ hours or more. More and more people are...

IN the spring of 2010, a new patient came to see me to find out if he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He had all the classic symptoms: procrastination, forgetfulness, a propensity to lose things and, of course, the inability to pay attention consistently. But one thing was unusual. His symptoms had started only two years earlier, when he was 31. Though I treat a lot of adults for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the presentation of this case was a violation of an important diagnostic criterion: symptoms must date back to childhood. It turned out he first started having these problems the...

Patients suffering REM sleep behaviour disorders dream nightmares in which they are attacked and pursued, with the particularity that they express them by screaming, crying, punching and kicking while sleeping. Lancet Neurology has published the third consecutive work in five years about the relationship between this disorder and Parkinson’s disease. The first work showed in 2006 that 45% of patients who suffer this sleep disorder develop Parkinson’s disease and other neurodegenerative diseases caused by a lack of dopamine in the brain. The second article discovered that neuroimaging tests that measure dopamine in the brain, such as the brain SPECT, are...

Mayo Clinic cardiologist Apoor Gami, M.D., the lead researcher on the study, presented his findings at the American Heart Association's Scientific Sessions 2008 in New Orleans. "Nighttime low oxygen saturation in the blood is an important complication of obstructive sleep apnea," according to Virend Somers, M.D., Ph.D., the study's principal investigator. "Our data showed that an average nighttime oxygen saturation of the blood of 93 percent and lowest nighttime saturation of 78 percent strongly predicted SCD, independent of other well-established risk factors, such as high cholesterol. These findings implicate OSA, a relatively common condition, as a novel risk factor for...

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...

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....

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...

Researchers have found strong evidence that adenotonsillectomy — the surgery to remove the tonsils and adenoids — can help relieve childhood behavioral or attention problems, including attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, or A.D.H.D. Although the surgery has become less common with antibiotics, more than 400,000 children under 15 have their tonsils, adenoids or both removed every year, according to estimates by the Metropolitan Insurance Company. About half of the patients undergo the procedure to control chronic throat or ear infections. The rest have the operation to relieve breathing difficulty or nighttime sleep apnea, a serious disorder in which the sleeping child briefly...

SPRINGFIELD, IL, January 25, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) - A new study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, has found that women who experienced abortion were more likely to be treated for sleep disorders or disturbances compared to women who gave birth. The researchers, David Reardon of the Springfield, Ill.-based Elliot Institute and Priscilla Coleman of the University of Bowling Green, examined medical records for 56,284 low-income women in California who gave birth or underwent an abortion in the first six months of 1989. Researchers examined data for medical treatment for these women from July 1988...

TORONTO (Reuters) - The Canadian province of Ontario plans to review a court decision that acquitted a man of sexual assault charges because he suffers from "sexsomnia" and was asleep at the time of the incident. The Office of the Attorney General, which oversees the province's prosecutions, said on Thursday it needs to research its options for an appeal because of the strange circumstances of the case. "This matter will be carefully considered to determine our next steps," said Brendan Crawley, a spokesman for the Attorney General. Jan Luedecke, 33, was acquitted of sexual assault charges on Tuesday because he...

BOSTON (Reuters) - The common form of sleep apnea, in which the throat closes off throughout the night, at least doubles the risk of stroke or death, a study released on Wednesday showed. The researchers at Yale University also raised questions about whether existing apnea treatments reduced that risk, the study published in The New England Journal of Medicine showed. A separate Canadian study also published in the journal concluded that breathing machines used to treat a form of apnea common in people with heart failure do not prevent death or the need for a heart transplant. About 4 percent...

The prevalence of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactive Disorder (ADHD) and its associated attention, hyperactivity and concentration problems among American children has been steadily on the rise in recent years. The US Centers for Disease Control now estimates that eight percent of children suffer from ADHD, and more than half of them are being treated with drugs like Ritalin. But according to a study conducted by Israeli researchers, if your child is showing symptoms associated with ADHD, it's possible that they're suffering from sleep apnea or other sleep disorders. The researchers at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology's Sleep Medicine Center conclude that ADHD-diagnosed children...

"The pattern of insomnia in children reflects difficulty in getting to sleep, whereas with adults it's a problem staying asleep."-- Robert Epstein, Medco's chief medical officer

(AgapePress) - A study by Israeli researchers shows treatment of sleep apnea and other sleep disorders in children can lead to a significant reduction in symptoms associated with Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD).The study found that children diagnosed with ADHD had much higher levels of sleeplessness during the day than did non-ADHD youngsters. Dr. Giora Pillar is head of the Pediatric Sleep Lab at the largest hospital in northern Israel, and an associate professor at the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, which conducted the study.Pillar says sleep apnea or sleep disturbances can lead to daytime sleepiness -- and children who are...

LOS ANGELES (AP) - A state appellate court upheld the murder conviction Friday of a man who said he was sleepwalking when he stabbed and beat his girlfriend to death in a hotel room on Catalina Island. Stephen Otto Reitz is serving a sentence of 26 years to life in state prison for the Oct. 1, 2001, killing of Eva Marie Weinfurter. A three-judge panel of the 2nd District Court of Appeal found that physical evidence and the nature of Weinfurter's injuries suggested that Reitz attacked her while awake. The decision said she was hit with a flower pot and...

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - People who die in their sleep may stop breathing because they have lost too many brain cells, U.S. researchers reported on Monday. Sleep apnea -- a condition in which people stop breathing for long stretches of time in their sleep -- may sometimes be caused by the destruction of cells in the brain stem, where autonomic functions such as breathing are controlled, they said. Tests on rats showed that the loss of key brain stem cells that die off with age caused such disrupted sleep that the animals eventually stopped breathing completely. The same thing may be...