Topic: Sleep in the News

A new study suggests that getting an extra hour of sleep at night could help your teenager drive more safely. The study, published in Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, compared school start times and automobile crash rates for students aged 16 to 18 years in Virginia Beach, Va., where high school classes began between 7:20…
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There’s a good post on the New York Times blogs this week, looking into the causes of snoring and how it can be reduced or prevented. The common misconception is those sharing a room with a snorer should just roll their noisy roommate over.  However, the Times quotes a 2009 study that shows position doesn’t…
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New research indicates that too little sleep can interfere with brain development … at the very least. NBC News is doing a series this week about the teen brain, and this installment looks into what harm is being done by the fact that teenagers on average get about two hours less sleep than they should:

There’s an interesting post on the New York Times’ health blog, Well, this week that talks about tonsillectomies.  Normally here at SleepBetter we don’t write about this type of surgery, but there’s been an interesting side-effect that’s developed from the reduction in the number of tonsil removals in the United States … and it relates…
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Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) isn’t exactly a sleep disorder, but it CAN rob sufferers of hours of sleep.  Now those sufferers may have relief.  The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has approved a new drug that treats moderate-to-severe RLS. People who have RLS describe unpleasant feelings in their legs, such as pulling, itching, tingling,…
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The Wall Street Journal this week published a great article on individuals who don’t seem to need very much sleep to function at their fullest. There has been some preliminary research that indicates the tendancy to be a so-called “Short Sleeper” may be genetic, and a group of scientists are working to put together a…
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Restless Leg Syndrome, or RLS, is a sleep stealer for millions of people.  Its symptoms, constant twitching of legs that happens mostly at night, sound simple, but its sufferers spend nights walking, massaging, and wishing they could sleep.  Now, new research indicates that RLS could damage the heart … possibly due to lack of sleep….
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A soon-to-be-published study indicates that Moms nearly always end up being the nighttime caregivers for children, regardless of whether they work outside the home.  This confirms what Moms already know, of course. The research, which will be published later this year in the sociology journal Social Forces, was the largest study of its kind to…
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Walking has many benefits — not the least of which is exercise.  However, the director of the Toronto Research Institute Sleep Research Laboratory says he may have found another benefit — reduced snoring and incidents of sleep apnea  Douglas Bradley says individuals who sit most of the day and suffer from sleep apnea or snoring…
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Researchers at Columbia University have discovered something key to our survival: People who are sleep deprived love ice cream. All joking aside, there IS very important information in the Columbia research.  Scientists there were looking into the reasons that people gain more weight when they don’t sleep enough.  Here’s a rundown of the study, from…
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