Alerts
Get a Good Night's Sleep for Healthier Skin
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Sleep affects how we look, feel and perform on a daily basis and can have a major impact on our overall quality of life. When your body doesn't get the rest it needs, it will let you know — whether it's through fatigue or sickness as a result of a weakened immune system. |
Less Sleep Could Mean More Errors in Intensive Care
 Nurses who work in intensive care units were found to have a low sleep quality, which might lead to more errors and affect patient safety, according to a study presented at the annual meeting of the American College of Chest Physicians. Researchers at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston compared the sleep quality and vigilance of nurses in intensive care with floor nurses. |
Falling Back Could Hurt Less Than Springing Forward
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Fall is undeniably a great time of year for sleep enthusiasts because there's nothing better than gaining an hour of sleep. You might also find that it hurts a lot less than when you lose an hour in the spring, according to a new study in the Journal of Applied Psychology. |
CDC Finds Most Americans Experience Insufficient Sleep
 A new study published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention finds a majority of Americans experience insufficient rest or sleep at least once during a 30-day period. The findings come from an analysis conducted in 2008 of data from all 50 states (as well as D.C. and three U.S. territories) using the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS). |
Don't Forget to Fall Back This Weekend
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Millions of Americans will roll their clocks back one hour this weekend for the return to Standard Time. But as clocks move back and we wake on Sunday morning, after "gaining" an extra hour of the day, will Americans use that extra hour to catch up on their sleep? Probably not. |
Too Much Light at Night May Cause Depression
 Much of our sleep patterns – feeling sleepy at night and awake during the day – are regulated by light and darkness. Light is the most powerful regulator of our biological clock. So what happens if you get too much light at night? |
Former Foundation Chair Releases Sleep Medicine Atlas
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Meir H. Kryger, MD, former chair of the National Sleep Foundation and editor of the Principles and Practice of Sleep Medicine, has compiled an atlas on sleep medicine that uses new scoring rules to help doctors score, interpret and diagnose sleep disorders. |
Genes May Play a Part in Lack of Sleep
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The discovery by University of California, San Francisco, researchers of a genetic mutation that allows its carrier to function properly on less sleep than the average adult is opening scientists' eyes to the idea that our genes might actually determine sleep duration, according to a recent Forbes article. |
What is the Purpose of Sleep?
 If you enjoy pondering life's many mysteries, here's a good one: Why do we sleep? You know you need sleep, because that's what your body tells you. But what does sleep actually do? "There are as many theories of sleep's functions as there are sleep researchers," Mehdi Tafti, a geneticist at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, says in a recent ScienceNews article. |
People with Apnea More Vulnerable to Effects of Alcohol
 Drinking and driving is always dangerous. Add a life-threatening sleep disorder and you have a recipe for disaster. According to a study in the Annals of Internal Medicine, patients with obstructive sleep apnea are more vulnerable than healthy people to the effects of alcohol while driving. |
