Asking sleep experts for advice on how to put children to bed often feels like an exercise in futility. The standard tips are banal and predictable: avoid caffeine; remove the TV from their bedroom; don't sleep on a full stomach; put up dark blinds. You have the feeling the experts are holding out on us - there has to be something more. And there is. Here's the stuff they'd love to tell you, if they weren't afraid of overwhelming you with science.
- Ever wonder why most people sleep better when their bedrooms are cool? It's because the circadian rhythm system that helps regulate sleep cycles is not just light sensitive, it's temperature sensitive. Anything above a neutral air temperature both slows the body's initiation of sleep and changes sleep patterns - a hotter room means an increase in non-REM sleep.
Taser stun guns issued to police forces across the country have been declared broadly safe, following the largest independent study of injuries inflicted by the weapons.
A 44-year-old Indonesian woman has died of bird flu, taking the country's total death total from the disease to 87, a health ministry official said on Monday.
The woman, from Pekan Baru city on Sumatra island, fell sick after she bought chicken in a market last month, Azizman Saad, head of bird flu management at the hospital where she was treated, told Reuters.
September 26, 2007
Andrew C. von Eschenbach, M.D.
Commissioner of Food and Drugs
U.S. Food and Drug Administration
5600 Fishers Lane
Rockville, MD 20857
Dear Dr. von Eschenbach:
FDA regulators will attend a forum in Brussels this week in which cosmetic industry representatives and international regulators will discuss "ways to remove regulatory obstacles among the regions" and other issues related to cosmetic marketing and safety (FDA 2007a). Environmental Working Group (EWG) is writing to express deep concern that FDA officials are excluding public health, consumer, and environmental organizations from this meeting while allowing the regulated industry to participate.
While such an unbalanced discussion of consumer safety issues is always unacceptable, this exclusion is even more problematic in light of our new analyses of product safety, which reveal that products sold in the U.S. frequently violate industry safety standards and contain ingredients banned in other industrialized countries. Our findings raise fundamental concerns about closed-door industry-regulator meetings that could further weaken international cosmetic policies.
A coworker who takes credit for someone else's work or rattles off obnoxious jokes is engaging in one of the top 10 most offensive workplace no-no's, according to survey results released this week.
Another eight deaths in just the past few months are being connected to Gardasil, Merck & Co.'s vaccine that targets the sexually transmitted human papillomavirus and is being considered by many states as mandatory for all schoolgirls, according to documents released by Judicial Watch.
There also have been another 1,824 adverse reactions to the drug, bringing the "known total" of such problems to 3,461, according to the public interest group that investigates and prosecutes government corruption.
A discovery made 25 years ago about how the brain controls blood pressure regulation is only now being explored with the help of scientists from the Howard Florey Institute.
German scientist, Prof Wilfrid Jänig, is in Melbourne this month to collaborate with Florey scientists, Dr Robin McAllen and Dr Bradford Bratton, on his research involving a pathway in the brain that controls blood pressure and may worsen cardiovascular disease.
Scientists are now one step closer to improved treatment of Type 2 diabetes following significant findings made by scientists at Australia's Garvan Institute of Medical Research. World-wide, more than 200 million people suffer from this disease, resulting in disability and reduced life expectancy. In Australia it affects around 7% of the population.
People with Type 2 diabetes do not produce enough insulin, a hormone made in the pancreas that helps convert the sugar in our blood into energy in our muscles. Current therapies force our bodies to make more insulin, make better use of the insulin that already exists or mimic the action of insulin. But none of these therapies specifically address the reasons why insulin production fails in the first place.
New research by The George Institute for International Health in Sydney, Australia has found that lowering blood pressure protects stroke victims with Chronic Kidney Disease from further strokes or heart attacks. Given the high risk of cardiovascular complications in people with Chronic Kidney Disease (CKD), these results have significant implications for millions of people across the world.
According to lead author, Dr Vlado Perkovic at The George Institute, most of the CKD population will die from cardiovascular complications. "People with Chronic Kidney Disease are at a significantly greater risk of cardiovascular events than those without the disease. We found that approximately twice as many cardiovascular events were prevented when a perindopril based blood pressure lowering regimen was used in these people, compared to people with normal kidney function."
Ryle Dwyer writes on the horror of the 1918-20 pandemic which the propaganda says was caused by Spanish flu (Irish Examiner, May 1 [2003]).
How did they know it was the virus of Spanish flu that killed millions of civilians and soldiers? This disaster occurred when viruses were unknown to medical science. It took a British science team to identify the first virus in man in 1933.
