Topic: Sleep in the News

Much of the country right now is watching the damage being caused by Hurricane Florence in North Carolina and South Carolina, as The Weather Channel and others go to wall-to-wall coverage with reporters all over the area.  The situation is unfolding in slow motion, as the hurricane literally creeps down the coast.  This means that…
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The school year is in full swing all over the country, and we all know how important a good night’s sleep can be for learning.  A new study shows how sleep disruptions can be more of a problem for girls than boys. “What was most surprising is the fact that teenage girls reported a higher…
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We’ve all heard about how the early bird gets the worm.  But, who wants a worm if you’re not a bird?  New research does show another benefit of being the type that prefers to wake up early — less chance of depression. The study of more than 32,000 female nurses, published in the Journal of Psychiatric…
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It’s a well known parenting trick: if your kid won’t sleep, take them for a ride in the car.  There’s something about the vibrations of a car ride that just helps children sleep.  The problem is, new research indicates those vibrations are doing the same thing to the driver. With about 20-percent of fatal road…
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It’s a stereotype that Americans will work themselves to death to get ahead.  We don’t get enough sleep, and we don’t take near as much vacation time as the rest of the world.  This stereotype is somewhat true, until you get to upper management.  That’s apparently when people figure out to get a good night’s…
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We’ve all become aware in the last handful of years about the risks of playing football.  Repeated concussions can cause a variety of life-threatening health problems later in life.  But, head injuries are not the only serious risk involved in playing the sport.  Previous studies with professional football players have shown that sleep apnea, a serious…
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Humans and fruit flies may have not shared a common ancestor for hundreds of millions of years, but the neurons that govern our circadian clocks are strikingly similar. Now, University of Michigan researchers have made a discovery in fruit flies that may teach us a little more about our own sleep cycles. Using the fruit…
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The debate in sleep science has gone on for a generation. In short … why do we sleep? Psychiatrists Chiara Cirelli and Giulio Tononi of the Wisconsin Center for Sleep and Consciousness suggested back in 2003 that sleep is the price we pay for brains that are able to keep learning new things. A few…
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New research funded by the National Institutes of Health says it has identified risk factors for sleep apnea (interrupted breathing during sleep).  The researchers say individuals who snore, are older, and are obese are at particular risk.   “Our study found an easy, inexpensive way to screen large numbers of women at higher risk of sleep…
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An analysis of trends over the past two decades finds that while there’s a significant drop in fatalities from sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) and other sudden unexpected infant deaths (SUID), there hasn’t been a drop in such deaths among children in their first month of life.  The report from investigators from MassGeneral Hospital for Children(MGHfC)…
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