Health & WellnessS


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Dying to Sleep

Tina Hesman Saey
Science News
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 04:00 UTC
Sleepy
© Tommy LeonardiSleepy volunteers put pedal to the metal in a University of Pennsylvania driving simulator.
Getting too little sleep can impair body and brain and could even be deadly

For many people, days just don't seem long enough. In order to cram everything into one 24-hour period, something has to give. Judging by many surveys of Americans, it's sleep.

Sleep is regarded by some as unproductive, wasteful downtime. People who would rather hit the hay than the dance floor are told that only losers snooze and that they can sleep when they're dead.

But new data about sleep's benefits suggest that losing sleep might speed up death's arrival. Recent research also shows that people who don't snooze enough face a higher risk of losing their health than those who regularly get a good night's sleep.

"What is certain is that we can't do without sleep," says Peter Meerlo, a neuroscientist at the University of Groningen in the Netherlands.
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Sleep Gone Awry

Laura Sanders
Science News
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:00 UTC
Sleep
© Oscar BurrielMore than a third of U.S. adults suffer occasional bouts of insomnia, with 10 to 15 percent experiencing a long-term, chronic form of the sleep disorder.
Researchers inch closer to causes, cures for insomnia, narcolepsy

If Ben Franklin had been able to live by his own advice, he might have been even healthier, wealthier and wiser. But he was a notorious insomniac, rumored to have been such a poor sleeper that he required two beds so he could always crawl into one with cool sheets when he couldn't sleep. Getting a good night's sleep turned out to be more difficult than taming lightning, heating houses or designing bifocal specs.

Today millions of people afflicted by sleep disorders know how Franklin felt. Some people can't fall asleep even when they're exhausted. Yet other people fall asleep when they should be wide awake. Although sleep disorders take many different forms, they do have one thing in common: The more researchers learn, the more they have left to figure out. Sleep problems present a constellation of symptoms, trigger overlapping diagnoses and divulge no clear causes.

"We always feel like we're one step away from getting all of the answers," says Adi Aran of Stanford University, "but I really believe that in the next decade we will understand much more about sleep disorders."
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When the Economy is in the Red, Are People Really in the Pink?

Carina Storrs
Scientific American
Sat, 10 Oct 2009 10:00 UTC
Depression
© Flickr/Ethan StockDRIVEN TO DEATH?: While the Great Depression forced people to give up luxuries, it may also have improved the nation's life expectancy.
A recent study finds that economic expansion could be worse for your health than a downturn, revealing a possible upside to today's recession

Unemployment reached 23 percent and the GDP shrank by as much as 14 percent, so it's hard to imagine a silver lining to the tumultuous years of the Great Depression. But could the general health of the U.S. population actually have improved when the nation's economic fitness took multiple nosedives? And, if a floundering economy improves longevity, what does this say about our current recession?

It turns out that the bleakest years of the Great Depression, as gauged by GDP and unemployment rate, saw the greatest gains in life expectancy and drops in mortality rates. And during the years that the economy perked up, the nation paid the price in terms of health, according to a study published last week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

To look at the relationship between economic and population well-being, social scientists José Tapia Granados and Ana Diez-Roux of the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor amassed U.S. Census Bureau data on mortality rates, life expectancy, unemployment and GDP for each year from 1920 to 1940. "What this [study] does is to look in detail at data that have now been available for some years but have not been looked at in detail," Tapia says.
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Are You Asleep? Exploring the Mind's Twilight Zone

Laura Spinney
New Scientist
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 02:00 UTC
Blurred Lines
© TessarloBlurred lines between asleep and awake
Earlier this year, a puzzling report appeared in the journal Sleep Medicine. It described two Italian people who never truly slept. They might lie down and close their eyes, but read-outs of brain activity showed none of the normal patterns associated with sleep. Their behaviour was pretty odd, too. Though largely unaware of their surroundings during these rest periods, they would walk around, yell, tremble violently and their hearts would race. The remainder of the time they were conscious and aware but prone to powerful, dream-like hallucinations.

Both had been diagnosed with a neurodegenerative disorder called multiple system atrophy. According to the report's authors, Roberto Vetrugno and colleagues from the University of Bologna, Italy, the disease had damaged the pair's brains to such an extent that they had entered status dissociatus, a kind of twilight zone in which the boundaries between sleep and wakefulness completely break down (Sleep Medicine, vol 10, p 247).

That this can happen contradicts the way we usually think about sleep, but it came as no surprise to Mark Mahowald, medical director of the Minnesota Regional Sleep Disorders Center in Minneapolis, who has long contested the dogma that sleep and wakefulness are discrete and distinct states. "There is now overwhelming evidence that the primary states of being are not mutually exclusive," he says. The blurring of sleep and wakefulness is very clear in status dissociatus, but he believes it can happen to us all. If he is right, we will have to rethink our understanding of what sleep is and what it is for. Maybe wakefulness is not the all-or-nothing phenomenon we thought it was either.
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Scientists Seek to Manage Dopamine's Good and Bad Sides

Robert S. Boyd
PhysOrg
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:00 UTC
The good, the bad and the ugly: That's a quick summary of the effects of dopamine, a natural brain chemical that's linked to pleasure, addiction and disease.

This little molecule -- it consists of only 22 atoms -- is essential to life but can be a curse sometimes. Too much or too little of it can lead to drug abuse, reckless thrill-seeking, obesity, the tremors of Parkinson's disease, even restless leg syndrome, an irresistible urge to move your legs.

Although dopamine was identified almost a century ago, brain scientists are still trying to figure out how to manage its undesirable effects, such as cocaine or nicotine addiction.

"There is no currently approved medication for treating cocaine addiction," Nora Volkow, the director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, said Monday as she announced the successful preliminary test of a possible future vaccine for the dangerous drug.
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Info

Fluoride Tide Halted by Ancient Court

Matt Smith
Southern Daily Echo
Wed, 07 Oct 2009 08:18 UTC
Fluoride tide
© Daily EchoFluoride tide halted by ancient court
It took three times of asking and the casting vote of Southampton's sheriff.

But Southampton's ancient Court Leet agreed to ask the city council to rethink its support for adding fluoride to tap water.

Anti-fluoride campaigners seized the chance to put their case for councillors to vote again on the scheme, which would affect 160,000 city residents, following the extent of public opposition.

Some 72 per cent of the 10,000 responses to a consultation by the South Central Strategic health Authority were not in favour and its decision to press ahead is now subject to a judicial review.

The jury of court, which has sat since the 14th century to hear "presentments" from citizens on matters of local concern, at first refused two requests for a fluoride rethink. A third request evenly split the jury after a couple of members left the session early and the sheriff, Councillor Carol Cunio, used her casting vote to accept it. The city council will now have to consider the court's plea for another fluoride debate.
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Health

Exercise Improves Body Image For Fit And Unfit Alike


Science Daily
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 14:17 UTC
Image
© iStockphotoNew research shows that the simple act of exercise and not fitness itself can convince you that you look better.
Attention weekend warriors: the simple act of exercise and not fitness itself can convince you that you look better, a new University of Florida study finds.

People who don't achieve workout milestones such as losing fat, gaining strength or boosting cardiovascular fitness feel just as good about their bodies as their more athletic counterparts, said Heather Hausenblas, a UF exercise psychologist. Her study is published in the September issue of the Journal of Health Psychology.
"You would think that if you become more fit that you would experience greater improvements in terms of body image, but that's not what we found," she said. "It may be that the requirements to receive the psychological benefits of exercise, including those relating to body image, differ substantially from the physical benefits."
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LSD Returns to University Labs


United Press International
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 12:10 UTC
LSD is back in labs after years of disrepute, joining other hallucinogens as legitimate subjects of research, a researcher in Santa Cruz, Calif., said.

The first new studies of LSD in human subjects started at Harvard University last year. Scientists are looking into it as a treatment of cluster headaches, the San Francisco Chronicle reported Sunday.

A second research project is under way at the University of California San Francisco.

"Psychedelics are in labs all over the world and there's a lot of promise," Rick Doblin, director of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies said. "The situation with LSD is that because it was the quintessential symbol of the '60s, it was the last to enter the lab."

"What poisoned the well was the widespread abuse being promoted by scientists to the public," Dr. John Mendelson, an associate professor of medicine and psychiatry at UCSF who is helping run the LSD study, said. "That put a lot of researchers off, and it made it very hard for researchers to justify getting back into the field. And there were no pressing health needs, no pressing treatments other than curiosity."
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Family

The mysterious effect of pets on sick kids

Carla Baranauckas
Edmonton Journal
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 08:56 UTC
Interaction with animals produces tangible results, families say

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© Photos.com, Canwest News ServiceMany companion animals, whether service dogs or pets, have an effect on human health that is noticeable but has yet to be fully understood through scientific study.
When Chad, a yellow Labrador retriever, moved in with Claire Vaccaro's family in Manhattan last spring, he already had an important role. As an autism service dog, he was joining the family to help protect Vaccaro's 11-year-old son, Milo -- especially in public, where he often had tantrums or tried to run away.

Like many companion animals, whether service dogs or pets, Chad had an immediate effect -- the kind of effect that is noticeable but has yet to be fully understood through scientific study. And it went beyond the tether that connects dog and boy in public.
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Family

Virus Is Found in Many With Chronic Fatigue Syndrome

Denise Grady
New York Times
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 17:16 UTC
Many people with chronic fatigue syndrome are infected with a little known virus that may cause or at least contribute to their illness, researchers are reporting.

The syndrome, which causes prolonged and severe fatigue, body aches and other symptoms, has long been a mystery ailment, and patients have sometimes been suspected of malingering or having psychiatric problems rather than genuine physical ones. Worldwide, 17 million people have the syndrome, including at least one million Americans.

An article published online Thursday in the journal Science reports that 68 of 101 patients with the syndrome, or 67 percent, were infected with an infectious virus, xenotropic murine leukemia virus-related virus, or XMRV. By contrast, only 3.7 percent of 218 healthy people were infected. Continuing work after the paper was published has found the virus in nearly 98 percent of about 300 patients with the syndrome, said Dr. Judy A. Mikovits, the lead author of the paper.
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