Topic: Sleep in the News

A new study that reviewed the sleep habits of African-Americans found that using nicotine nightly is worse than having a nightcap or drink with dinner, or even having a caffeinated beverage at night. A study led by a researcher at Florida Atlantic University with collaborators from Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard T. H Chan School…
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A quirk of the body clock that lures some people to sleep at 8 p.m., enabling them to greet the new day as early as 4 a.m., may be significantly more common than previously believed.  But, it still only covers about 1 in 300 people. So-called advanced sleep phase means that the body’s clock, or…
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Jeff Bezos and Arianna Huffington came up with brilliant ideas that turned into companies that are now household names — Amazon and HuffPost. The secret ingredient for coming up with these ideas may be something we can all tap into — a good night’s sleep. According to a new study, sleep plays an especially important…
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Women are losing out on as much as three hours sleep a night, and many say it is because of their partners. A study has found that half of British women say they feel constantly sleep deprived, while a third said that they had a broken night’s sleep every night.  This was compared to just…
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Researchers looking into how many children use melatonin revealed some surprising findings.  They’re also urging parents to consult with a medical professional if they plan for their children to use melatonin, as the long-term effects on minors are unknown.  The study, conducted at Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands, found that as many as…
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Science has proven what a lot of people already knew — taking a warm bath before bed is a great way to get a better night’s sleep. Biomedical engineers at The University of Texas at Austin used systematic review protocols — a method used to search for and analyze relevant data — to allowed researchers…
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A person’s weight is an important factor in their overall health. You don’t want to be too light, nor do you want to be too heavy, as both can pose a lot of health-related hazards. This is why malnourished people are told to gain weight, while obese people are encouraged to shed some of that…
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Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine have found that neural signatures in sleeping zebrafish are analogous to those of humans, suggesting that the brain activity evolved at least 450 million years ago, before any creatures crawled out of the ocean. Scientists have known for more than 100 years that fish enter a sleep-like…
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Gentle sound stimulation played during specific times during deep sleep enhanced deep or slow-wave sleep for people with mild cognitive impairment, including those who are at risk for Alzheimer’s disease. The individuals whose brains responded the most robustly to the sound stimulation showed an improved memory response the following day. The sound stimulation consisted of…
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A new study has found that not sticking to a regular bedtime and wake-up schedule, and thus getting different amounts of sleep each night, can put a person at higher risk for obesity, high cholesterol, hypertension, high blood sugar and other metabolic disorders. In fact, for every hour of variability in time to bed and…
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