[Press release] Expert Panel Recommends New Sleep Times

 

http://sciencelife.uchospitals.edu/2015/02/09/and-so-to-bed-new-guidelines-from-the-national-sleep-foundation/

 

From the 2 February 2015 National Sleep Foundation press release

…

This is the first time that any professional organization has developed age-specific recommended sleep durations based on a rigorous, systematic review of the world scientific literature relating sleep duration to health, performance and safety,”

…

National Sleep Foundation’s Sleep Duration Recommendations:

Age	Recommended	May be appropriate	Not recommended
Newborns0-3 months	14 to 17 hours	11 to 13 hours18 to 19 hours	Less than 11 hoursMore than 19 hours
Infants4-11 months	12 to 15 hours	10 to 11 hours16 to 18 hours	Less than 10 hoursMore than 18 hours
Toddlers1-2 years	11 to 14 hours	9 to 10 hours15 to 16 hours	Less than 9 hoursMore than 16 hours
Preschoolers3-5 years	10 to 13 hours	8 to 9 hours14 hours	Less than 8 hoursMore than 14 hours
School-aged Children6-13 years	9 to 11 hours	7 to 8 hours12 hours	Less than 7 hoursMore than 12 hours
Teenagers14-17 years	8 to 10 hours	7 hours11 hours	Less than 7 hoursMore than 11 hours
Young Adults18-25 years	7 to 9 hours	6 hours10 to 11 hours	Less than 6 hoursMore than 11 hours
Adults26-64 years	7 to 9 hours	6 hours10 hours	Less than 6 hoursMore than 10 hours
Older Adults≥ 65 years	7 to 8 hours	5 to 6 hours9 hours	Less than 5 hoursMore than 9 hours

The recommendations are the result of multiple rounds of consensus voting after a comprehensive review of published scientific studies on sleep and health.

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[Press release] Why all-nighters don’t work: How sleep and memory go hand-in-hand

Why all-nighters don’t work: How sleep and memory go hand-in-hand 

From the Brandeis University press release

JANUARY 23, 2015 LEAH BURROWS LEAVE A COMMENT

Want to ace that test tomorrow? Here’s a tip: Put down the coffee and hit the sack.

Scientists have long known that sleep, memory and learning are deeply connected. Most animals, from flies to humans, have trouble remembering when sleep deprived, and studies have shown that sleep is critical in converting short-term into long-term memory, a process known as memory consolidation.

But just how that process works has remained a mystery.

The question is, does the mechanism that promotes sleep also consolidate memory, or do two distinct processes work together? In other words, is memory consolidated during sleep because the brain is quiet, allowing memory neurons to go to work, or are memory neurons actually putting us to sleep?

In a recent paper in the journal eLife, graduate students Paula Haynes and Bethany Christmann in the Griffith Lab make a case for the latter.

Haynes and Christmann focused their research on dorsal paired medial (DPM) neurons, well-known memory consolidators inDrosophila. They observed, for the first time, that when DPM neurons are activated, the flies slept more; when deactivated, the flies kept buzzing.

These memory consolidators inhibit wakefulness as they start converting short-term to long-term memory. All this takes place in a section of the Drosophila brain called the mushroom body, similar to the hippocampus, where our memories are stored. As it turns out, the parts of the mushroom body responsible for memory and learning also help keep the Drosophila awake.

“It’s almost as if that section of the mushroom body were saying ‘hey, stay awake and learn this,’” says Christmann. “Then, after a while, the DPM neurons start signaling to suppress that section, as if to say ‘you’re going to need sleep if you want to remember this later.’”

Understanding how sleep and memory are connected in a simple system, like Drosophila, can help scientists unravel the secrets of the human brain.

“Knowing that sleep and memory overlap in the fly brain can allow researchers to narrow their search in humans,” Christmann says. “Eventually, it could help us figure out how sleep or memory is affected when things go wrong, as in the case of insomnia or memory disorders.”

To learn more about this and other fly research, check out Christmann’s blog, Fly on the Wall. 

This research was funded by the National Institute of Health. 

 

Related articles

• How sleep and memory go hand-in-hand
• Why all-nighters don’t work: How sleep, memory go hand-in-hand
• How Sleep, Memory Go Hand-In-Hand
• Good Memory Is Based On A Good Night Sleep
• How Sleep And Memory Work Together
• Scientists uncover potential to restore lost memories in patients with early Alzheimer’s
• Sleeping after learning is important for infants’ long-term memory
• TED Ed: The benefits of a good night’s sleep

[Press release] From age 8 to 80, expert reveals the price we pay for not sleeping

From the 28 October 2014 Ohio State University press release

 

““For children, sleep deprivation can lead to behavior problems, trouble focusing and learning in school and it can affect their immune systems,” said Dr. Aneesa Das, a sleep medicine specialist at Ohio State’s Wexner Medical Center. “Chronic tiredness makes it harder to cope and process what’s going on around you.”

When children enter the teen years, sleep becomes a bigger issue. Das says a teen’s circadian rhythm, or internal body clock, tells them to stay awake later and sleep later than children and adults do. She says only 15 percent of teenagers get the recommended sleep they need.

“Sleep is time the body uses to restore itself. Muscles and other tissues repair themselves, hormones that control growth, development and appetite are released. Energy is restored and memories are solidified, so we need to try to get regular sleep on a regular basis,” Das said.

For adults, sleep loss is even more serious. It accumulates over the years and has been shown to contribute to several chronic diseases including heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, depression and obesity.”

….

To improve the chances of getting a good night’s sleep, Das offers a few tips: don’t perform vigorous exercise within four hours of bedtime; have a wind down routine that includes dim light; avoid using tablets, phones and laptops before bed because they emit blue light that interferes with sleep; try a warm bath two hours before bedtime and beware of sleep aid medications because they can have side effects.

 

Sleeping Brain Behaves as If It’s Remembering Something

 

English: Entorhinal cortex (red) was thinnest in youth with Alzheimer’s-related ApoE4 gene variant. View of left entorhinal cortex from beneath the brain, with front of brain at top. Artist’s rendering. Source: Philip Shaw, M.D., NIMH Child Psychiatry Branch http://www.nimh.nih.gov/science-news/2007/cortex-area-thinner-in-youth-with-alzheimers-related-gene.shtml (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 7 October 2012 article at Science Daily

 

UCLA researchers have for the first time measured the activity of a brain region known to be involved in learning, memory and Alzheimer’s disease during sleep. They discovered that this part of the brain behaves as if it’s remembering something, even under anesthesia, a finding that counters conventional theories about memory consolidation during sleep.

Mehta and his team looked at three connected brain regions in mice — the new brain or the neocortex, the old brain or the hippocampus, and the entorhinal cortex, an intermediate brain that connects the new and the old brains. While previous studies have suggested that the dialogue between the old and the new brain during sleep was critical for memory formation, researchers had not investigated the contribution of the entorhinal cortex to this conversation, which turned out to be a game changer, Mehta said. His team found that the entorhinal cortex showed what is called persistent activity, which is thought to mediate working memory during waking life, for example when people pay close attention to remember things temporarily, such as recalling a phone number or following directions.

“The big surprise here is that this kind of persistent activity is happening during sleep, pretty much all the time.” Mehta said. “These results are entirely novel and surprising. In fact, this working memory-like persistent activity occurred in the entorhinal cortex even under anesthesia.”

The study appears Oct. 7, 2012 in the early online edition of the journal Nature Neuroscience.

The findings are important, Mehta said, because humans spend one-third of their lives sleeping and a lack of sleep results in adverse effects on health, including learning and memory problems.

It had been shown previously that the neocortex and the hippocampus “talk” to each other during sleep, and it is believed that this conversation plays a critical role in establishing memories, or memory consolidation. However, no one was able to interpret the conversation…..

 

 

 

 

Related articles

• While Asleep, Brain Acts Like It’s Remembering (theepochtimes.com)
• Researchers Discover that the Sleeping Brain Behaves as if it’s Remembering Something (neurosciencenews.com)
• Sleeping Brain Behaves as If It’s Remembering Something (engineeringevil.com)
• Sleeping brain behaves as if it’s remembering something (earthsky.org)
• Sleeping brain behaves as if it’s `remembering` something (indiavision.com)
• Can Sleep Help You Organize Your Memories? (medicaldaily.com)
• UCLA researchers discover that the sleeping brain behaves as if it’s remembering something (eurekalert.org)

 

Lack of Sleep Affects Bone Health and Bone Marrow Activity

 

English: Human bone marrow. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 

From the 18th September 2012 article at Science News Daily

 

Scientists at the Medical College of Wisconsin, in a team led by Carol Everson, Ph.D., professor of neurology, cell biology, neurobiology and anatomy, have discovered abnormalities in bone and bone marrow in rats undergoing chronic lack of sleep. They discovered abnormalities in serum markers of bone metabolism in sleep-deprived rats, which led them to conduct direct measurements of bone parameters; this time in rats experiencing recurrent sleep restriction during a large portion of their young adulthood….

 

Related articles

 

• Lack of sleep affects bone health and bone marrow activity (eurekalert.org)
• Lack of sleep affects bone health and bone marrow activity (medicalxpress.com)

 

Learn to understand and interpret your body’s language (holiday stress example included)

 

From KevinMD.com article  by SUSAN BIALI, MD on September 9th, 2012

A few weeks ago I was brought in to speak to the staff of a local university. I gave a two hour workshop, which is even more fun for me than giving a keynote as I get to interact personally with the audience and draw their stories out. One of the sections of the workshop was about listening to your body. Every person’s body “speaks” to them in a different way; it’s important to pay attention to and learn to understand and interpret your body’s language.

 

When your life is off track, your body will let you know. It starts small, whispering to you through minor ailments such as suddenly developing a rash like eczema, or getting mild tension headaches. If you don’t pay attention and make adjustments it will get louder. You might start catching every cold that’s around, or end up with pneumonia.

This isn’t to say that you necessarily caused any and every medical condition you might end up with; there will always be some health situations that we have no explanation for. Yet there’s no question that when you’re out of balance in your life it’s perceived by your body as a stressor, and that can lead to all kinds of secondary consequences (and physical alarm bells). It’s essential to pay attention to this.

While speaking at that university, I asked the audience members if they had any examples of a time their body let them know that something in their life had to change. A small, pleasant-faced woman raised her hand.

“I got diabetes,” she told us. “There’s absolutely no history of it in our family. It was purely due to stress.”

Chronic excess stress could trigger diabetes in a variety of ways: reaching for sugary snacks or other poor food choices to temporarily calm and comfort; lack of time to exercise and maintain a healthy weight; being chronically sleep-deprived (even brief sleep deprivation triggers a pre-diabetic state); or having constantly elevated stress hormones that raise blood sugar.

I asked her what the circumstances were that had made her life so stressful.

“I’m a victim of the sandwich generation,” she said. “I was taking care of my kids, my parents, and everybody else. When I got diagnosed with diabetes, I knew something had to change. I was the person who everyone else came to for Thanksgiving, Christmas, everything. The year I got my diagnosis I told them that if they wanted to eat turkey they could make it themselves, I wasn’t lifting a finger. They didn’t like it at first, but I had no choice. Everything’s so much better now. I made lots of positive changes that were way overdue, and my blood sugar has gone back to normal.”

 

 

Related articles

• Is Getting Sick the Way You Say “No”? (psychologytoday.com)
• 4 Things That Help Stress (& 5 That Make It Worse) (refreshingnews99.blogspot.com)

 

Is napping good for you? – Ask Doctor K, Harvard Medical School

Is napping good for you? – Ask Doctor K, Harvard Medical School.

Excerpts from the article

 

POSTED NOVEMBER 24, 2011, 5:00 AM

DEAR DOCTOR K:

As I’ve gotten older I don’t sleep as well as I used to. I’m retired, so I have the time to take an afternoon nap. But I’m worried that if I sleep during the day, I’ll have even more trouble sleeping at night. What do you think?

DEAR READER:

I’m not surprised that you don’t sleep as well as you used to. Our sleep changes as we get older.

After about age 60, we have less deep sleep. We awaken more often and sleep an average of two hours less at night than we did as young adults.

It was once thought that older people didn’t need as much sleep as younger ones. But that’s not the case; we need it just as much. We just have a harder time getting it.

Regardless of age, we typically need seven and a half to eight hours of sleep to function at our best. So if you’re not getting enough sleep at night, what about daytime naps? Or, as you asked, does napping disrupt the sleep cycle? Will napping ultimately lead to less sleep and more daytime drowsiness?

Everybody’s different, and napping is both good and bad, depending on who you are. If you have trouble sleeping nearly every night, and as a result feel tired during the day, napping in the evening is a bad idea. Evening naps make it harder to fall asleep at bedtime. Long naps at any time of day often make you sleep less soundly that night.

On the other hand, suppose you have an occasional bad night’s sleep….

 

 

Read the entire article

 

 

Related articles

• The Secret and Surprising Power of Naps (webmd.com)
• Do power naps work? (zocdoc.com)
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• 18 and Under: A Child’s Nap Is More Complicated Than It Looks (nytimes.com)