If one of your resolutions for this year is to eat more healthy foods, one way is to start sleeping better. According to a study by King’s College London, sleeping for longer each night is a simple lifestyle intervention that could help reduce intake of sugary foods and lead to a generally healthier diet. As…
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It’s notoriously difficult to track sleep. Among the choices sleep researchers have had in the past are having subjects sleep (or probably not sleep) in labs, or having the subjects fill out (sometimes wrongly) logs that track how well and how long they slept. A new tool — fitness trackers like Fitbits that measure sleep…
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According to new research, among the many benefits of sleeping at least eight hours per night is that it can reduce stress and anxiety. Binghamton University Professor of Psychology Meredith Coles and former graduate student Jacob Nota assessed the timing and duration of sleep in individuals with moderate to high levels of repetitive negative thoughts,…
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To measure a person’s sleep, researchers have always relied on costly and time-consuming approaches that could only be used in a sleep lab. But now researchers have found a way to capture detailed information on human sleep cycles over long periods of time while individuals slumber at home in their usual way. According to the…
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Washington State University researchers have discovered a genetic variation that predicts how well people perform certain mental tasks when they are sleep deprived. Their research shows that individuals with a particular variation of the DRD2 gene are resilient to the effects of sleep deprivation when completing tasks that require cognitive flexibility, the ability to make…
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Nine out of 10 Americans use devices like smartphones and laptops in the hour before bed, even though it can lead to insomnia. Since we’re unlikely to change, scientists are looking for ways to reduce the chance of this sleep-stealing behavior. Smartphones, tablets and other light-emitting devices are lit by LEDs, which have a peak…
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Scientists have identified differences in a group of genes they say might help explain why some people need a lot more sleep–and others less — than most. The study, conducted using fruit fly populations bred to model natural variations in human sleep patterns, provides new clues to how genes for sleep duration are linked to…
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Do you sleep restlessly and hit out and kick in your sleep? This could be a sign of a disorder associated with diseases of the brain. Researchers from Aarhus University in Denmark have studied the condition of the dopamine producing nerve cells in the brain and cells that participate in the brain’s immune system in…
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Many opponents of later school start times say that if schools start later, kids will simply go to bed later. According to new research, however, that’s not necessarily so. In a national study of urban teenagers, researchers found that high school start times after 8:30 a.m. increased the likelihood that teens obtained the minimum recommended amount…
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People who worry about poor sleep have more emotional and physical problems during the day than those who do not worry, regardless of how well either sleep, according to research conducted at The University of Alabama. In a review of more than a dozen sleep studies going back more than 20 years, Dr. Kenneth Lichstein,…
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