For thousands of years before humans harnessed electricity and created light bulbs, people rose and slept based the sun. This seems to be the natural rhythm humans were designed to follow.
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REM
Jun
28
2011
Insufficient sleep isn’t a ‘badge of honor’
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A new study shows that a sleep disorder may be a sign of dementia or Parkinson’s disease up to 50 years before the disorders are diagnosed. The research was published in the July 28, 2010, online issue of Neurology, the journal of the American Academy of Neurology. Using Mayo Clinic records, researchers identified 27 people [...]
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Oct
9
2009
Being overweight super-sizes consequences and risk of sleep apnea and sleep-disordered breathing
Overweight individuals are not just at greater risk of having sleep-disordered-breathing, they are also likely to suffer greater consequences, according to new research. According to the study , published in the American Journal of Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, excess weight increased the severity of oxygen desaturation in the blood of individuals with SDB during and after apneas and hypopneas.
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Research on the sleeping brain has revealed some fascinating stage-dependent interactions between areas involved in formation and storage of long term memories. The study, published by in the the journal Neuron, may also provide a framework for further understanding the role of sleep in memory.
Mammalian sleep occurs in two discrete stages, slow-wave sleep (SWS) and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep. One of the many ways in which SWS and REM sleep differ is in the level of synchronous firing in the hippocampus. Previous research has suggested that coordinated activity between the hippocampus?a brain area critical for memory formation where long-term memories are stored?—?may be critical for memory formation.
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Research on the sleeping brain has revealed some fascinating stage-dependent interactions between areas involved in formation and storage of long term memories. The study may also provide a framework for further understanding the role of sleep in memory.
Mammalian sleep occurs in two discrete stages, slow wave sleep and rapid eye movement sleep. One of the many ways in which SWS and REM sleep differ is in the level of synchronous firing in the hippocampus.
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Jan
12
2009
Exercise improves sleep and reduces PLM episodes
People who experience insomnia or have sleep disruptions related to periodic leg movements (PLM) can benefit from both the immediate and long-term effects of exercise, says a study published in the January 2009 issue Medicine & Science in Sports & Exercise. Exercise reduced PLM, often associated with restless legs syndrome (RLS), and contributed to better sleep patterns in patients who have the periodic episodes of repetitive leg movement during sleep.
The study was designed to examine both the acute (immediate) and chronic (long-term) effects of exercise as it relates to PLM/RLS. Volunteers included sedentary patients already enrolled in a sleep disorder program due to these conditions. All were analyzed after they had performed an intensive exercise session in the morning (acute) and later compared to half the group who trained for approximately six months, three days a week.
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Rapid eye movement sleep behavior disorder (RBD) appears to be a predictor of neurodegenerative disease in more than 50 percent of cases, according to a recent study
According to the latest study by Dr. Ronald Postuma, of the Research Institute of the MUHC, and Dr. Jacques Montplaisir, of the Université de Montréal and the Hospital of the Sacred Heart of Montreal, 52.4 per cent of patients with Rapid eye movement sleep (REM) sleep behavior disorder develop a neurodegenerative disease within 12 years following their initial diagnosis.
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Children and teens who get less sleep, especially those who spend less time in rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, may be more likely to be overweight, according to a report in the Archives of General Psychiatry.
The obesity rate has more than tripled among children six-to-11 years in the past 30 years, and approximately 17 percent of U.S. adolescents are now overweight or obese, according to background information in the article.
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Research engineers and sleep medicine specialists from two Michigan universities have joined technical and clinical hands to put innovative quantitative analysis, signal-processing technology and computer algorithms to work in the sleep lab. One of their recent findings is that a new approach to analyzing sleep fragmentation appears to distinguish fibromyalgia patients from healthy controls.
Joseph W. Burns, a research scientist and engineer at the Michigan Tech Research Institute (MTRI); Ronald D. Chervin, director of the University of Michigan’s Michael S. Aldrich Sleep Disorders Laboratory; and Leslie Crofford, director of the Center for the Advancement of Women’s Health at the University of Kentucky, report the results of their study in the August 2008 issue of the journal Sleep Medicine.
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