Sleep Info

Sleeping really should be one of the easiest and most natural thing to for all of us to do, but for some, it’s less than easy.  Countless businesses have sprung up offering a way to help you sleep.  One of the latest, however, has some promise.   Inscape, a meditation studio in New York City,…
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If you’ve ever had insomnia, you know worrying about sleep makes it even harder to fall asleep. For the 30 percent of breast cancer survivors who have insomnia, sleepless nights can lead to depression, fatigue and a heightened risk of disease. Now, new UCLA research shows that tai chi, a form of slow-moving meditation, is…
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Sleeping position is a matter of personal preference.  It seems like everyone has a way they can fall asleep quicker and more comfortably.  However, there is one position that’s not as healthy as others. Sleeping on your stomach can cause a variety of problems, both short term and long term.  In fact, many stomach sleepers…
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It’s well established that people who are sleep deprived eat more, and thus gain more weight.  But, new research shows that it might not be the food they crave, but rather the food odors. Sleep deprivation seems to increase the brain’s sensitivity to food smells, researchers reported at the recent Cognitive Neuroscience Society’s annual meeting…
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Poor sleep and sleep quality is one of the unhappy side-effects of autism spectrum disorder, and a new study says that lack of rest makes symptoms more severe. Insufficient sleep appears to take the biggest toll on a child’s ability to make friends: Every four-minute decrease in sleep duration is associated with a one-point increase…
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It turns out that being wide awake is a painkiller, at least according to new research. The facinating new study, from Boston Children’s Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC), shows that chronic sleep loss increases pain sensitivity. It suggests that chronic pain sufferers can get relief by getting more sleep, or, short of…
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New research indicates that “dummy pills,” or placebos, could work better than doing nothing at all to treat insomnia. Previous clinical trials have looked into the possibility of placebos working better than sleep medicine, but researchers believe that those studies may have been tainted because sometimes people simply feel better because they’re in a trial. The…
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When you have questions about pillows and other bedding, Happy Dan the Pillow Man is your guy!  He’s happy because he always gets a good night’s sleep.  Happy Dan is the alter ego of Dan Schecter, Senior Vice President at Carpenter Co., and the creator of SleepBetter.org.  He’s spent 30 years learning about pillows and…
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Many experts say co-sleeping is a no-no, but many still allow their children to crawl into bed with them at night. Doctors generally discourage co-sleeping, because of its link to sudden infant death syndrome or SIDS. However, Susan Stewart, a professor of sociology at Iowa State University, found that many parents still co-sleep with their children,…
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Researchers intent on understanding how too little sleep can undermine health have long suspected a relationship between short sleep duration and the actions of specific genes, but finding the genes involved has proven difficult. Now, a team of scientists based at Brown University has identified genes carrying “epigenetic” tags that are likely associated with shorter…
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