Sleep Topics
More than 85% of mammalian species are polyphasic sleepers, meaning that they sleep for short periods throughout the day. Humans are part of the minority of monophasic sleepers, meaning that our days are divided into two distinct periods, one for sleep and one for wakefulness. It is not clear that this is the natural sleep pattern of humans. Young children and elderly persons nap, for example, and napping is a very important aspect of many cultures.
As a nation, the United States appears to be becoming more and more sleep deprived. And it may be our busy lifestyle that keeps us from napping. While naps do not necessarily make up for inadequate or poor quality nighttime sleep, a short nap of 20-30 minutes can help to improve mood, alertness and performance. Nappers are in good company: Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Ronald Reagan, Napoleon, Albert Einstein, Thomas Edison and George W. Bush are known to have valued an afternoon nap.
TYPES:
Naps can be typed in three different ways:
•Planned napping (also called preparatory napping) involves taking a nap before you actually get sleepy. You may use this technique when you know that you will be up later than your normal bed time or as a mechanism to ward off getting tired earlier.
•Emergency napping occurs when you are suddenly very tired and cannot continue with the activity you were originally engaged in. This type of nap can be used to combat drowsy driving or fatigue while using heavy and dangerous machinery.
•Habitual napping is practiced when a person takes a nap at the same time each day. Young children may fall asleep at about the same time each afternoon or an adult might take a short nap after lunch each day.
TIPS:
•A short nap is usually recommended (20-30 minutes) for short-term alertness. This type of nap provides significant benefit for improved alertness and performance without leaving you feeling groggy or interfering with nighttime sleep.
•Your surroundings can greatly impact your ability to fall asleep. Make sure that you have a restful place to lie down and that the temperature in the room is comfortable. Try to limit the amount of noise heard and the extent of the light filtering in. While some studies have shown that just spending time in bed can be beneficial, it is better to try to catch some zzz’s.
•If you take a nap too late in the day, it might affect your nighttime sleep patterns and make it difficult to fall asleep at your regular bedtime. If you try to take it too early in the day, your body may not be ready for more sleep.
BENEFITS:
•Naps can restore alertness, enhance performance, and reduce mistakes and accidents. A study at NASA on sleepy military pilots and astronauts found that a 40-minute nap improved performance by 34% and alertness 100%.
•Naps can increase alertness in the period directly following the nap and may extend alertness a few hours later in the day.
•Scheduled napping has also been prescribed for those who are affected by narcolepsy.
•Napping has psychological benefits. A nap can be a pleasant luxury, a mini-vacation. It can provide an easy way to get some relaxation and rejuvenation.
Most people are aware that driving while sleepy is extremely dangerous. Still, many drivers press on when they feel drowsy in spite of the risks, putting themselves and others in harm's way. While getting a full night's sleep before driving is the ideal, taking a short nap before driving can reduce a person's risk of having a drowsy driving crash. Sleep experts also recommend that if you feel drowsy when driving, you should immediately pull over to a rest area, drink a caffeinated beverage and take a 20-minute nap.
Shift work, which means working a schedule that deviates from the typical "9 to 5" hours, may cause fatigue and performance impairments, especially for night shift workers. In a 2006 study, researchers at the Sleep Medicine and Research Center affiliated with St. John's Mercy Medical Center and St. Luke's Hospital in suburban St. Louis, MO, looked at the effectiveness of taking naps and consuming caffeine to cope with sleepiness during the night shift. They found that both naps and caffeine improved alertness and performance among night shift workers and that the combination of naps and caffeine had the most beneficial effect.
James K. Walsh, PhD, one of the researchers who conducted the study, explains, "Because of the body's propensity for sleep at night, being alert and productive on the night shift can be challenging, even if you've had enough daytime sleep." "Napping before work combined with consuming caffeine while on the job is an effective strategy for remaining alert on the night shift."
NEGATIVE EFFECTS:
In spite of these benefits, napping isn't always the best option for everyone. For example, some people have trouble sleeping any place other than their own bed, making a nap at the office or anywhere else unlikely. Other people simply have trouble sleeping in the daytime; it could be that certain individuals are more sensitive to the midday dip than others – those who are may feel sleepier and have an easier time napping. Here are some other negative effects:
•Naps can leave people with sleep inertia, especially when they last more than 10-20 minutes. Sleep inertia is defined as the feeling of grogginess and disorientation that can come with awakening from a deep sleep. While this state usually only lasts for a few minutes to a half-hour, it can be detrimental to those who must perform immediately after waking from a napping period. Post-nap impairment and disorientation is more severe, and can last longer, in people who are sleep deprived or nap for longer periods.
•Napping can also have a negative effect on other sleeping periods. A long nap or a nap taken too late in the day may adversely affect the length and quality of nighttime sleep. If you have trouble sleeping at night, a nap will only amplify problems.
•One study has indicated that napping is associated with increased risk of heart failure in people already at risk.
STIGMAS:
While research has shown that napping is a beneficial way to relieve tiredness, it still has stigmas associated with it.
•Napping indicates laziness, a lack of ambition, and low standards.
•Napping is only for children, the sick and the elderly.
Though the above statements are false, many segments of the public may still need to be educated on the benefits of napping.
A recent study in the research journal Sleep examined the benefits of naps of various lengths and no naps. The results showed that a 10-minute nap produced the most benefit in terms of reduced sleepiness and improved cognitive performance. A nap lasting 30 minutes or longer is more likely to be accompanied by sleep inertia, which is the period of grogginess that sometimes follows sleep.
By now you're probably thinking about ways to incorporate naps into your daily routine. Keep in mind that getting enough sleep on regular basis is the best way to stay alert and feel your best. But when fatigue sets in, a quick nap can do wonders for your mental and physical stamina.
http://www.sleepfoundation.org/article/sleep-topics/napping
lunes, 26 de abril de 2010
Naps boost memory, but only if you dream
By Denise Mann, Health.com
April 23, 2010 -- Updated 1512 GMT (2312 HKT)
CNN
Sleep has long been known to improve performance on memory tests. Now, a new study suggests that an afternoon power nap may boost your ability to process and store information tenfold -- but only if you dream while you're asleep.
"When you dream, your brain is trying to look at connections that you might not think of or notice when [you're] awake," says the lead author of the study, Robert Stickgold, the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. "In the dream...the brain tries to figure out what's important and what it should keep or dump because it's of no value."
In the study, Stickgold and his colleagues asked 99 college students to memorize a complex maze on a computer. The researchers then placed the students inside a virtual, 3-D version of the maze and asked them to navigate to another spot within it. After doing this several times, half of the participants took a 90-minute nap while the other half stayed awake and watched videos.
When the students were given the maze test again five hours later, the nappers did better than the students who had stayed awake, even those who had reviewed the maze in their heads. However, the nappers who dreamed about the maze -- one described being lost in a bat cave -- performed 10 times better than the nappers who didn't.
The students who dreamed about the maze did poorly on the test the first time around -- which may not be a coincidence, the researchers say. If a task is difficult for you, your brain seems to know it, and you may be more likely to dream about it than if the task were easier.
"If you're not good at something, and you dream about it, you seem to get better at it -- especially if the information can be used in different situations," says Michael Breus, the clinical director of the sleep division for Arrowhead Health, in Glendale, Arizona, who was not involved in the study.
"The sleeping brain seems to be processing information on one level, but on a higher level it helps evolve your memory network if the information is relevant or helpful in your life experience," adds Breus, who is also the author of "Beauty Sleep."
The study's findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, underscore just how important sleep is to our memory and mental function.
It doesn't even need to be a deep sleep, as the researchers found when they monitored the brain activity of the students while they slept. Although the deep slumber known as rapid eye movement (REM) is most closely associated with dreaming, the students' dreaming and learning occurred after as little as one minute of non-REM sleep.
The type of learning that occurs while you dream can be illustrated by the classic dream that many people have in which they show up for an exam that they haven't studied for, Stickgold says.
"When you're in school -- especially college -- there's this ongoing sense that you haven't done enough," he says. "Maybe you didn't make it to a lecture, or you had a paper due in three days that you hadn't started, so you're laying down memories that say, 'I haven't done anything that I need to do.'"
When someone has the exam dream (or nightmare), he says, "Your brain is taking the knowledge of what happened to help you behave differently in the future."
You may be able to harness the dream power displayed in the study to perform better in your everyday life, Breus says.
"If you're studying something tough, get the basics down and take a nap. If you dream about it, you will probably understand it better," he says. "Or, go to bed a little earlier the night before, wake up early, review the material, and then take a quick nap to solidify your understanding."
That's good advice, says Dr. Rafael Pelayo, an associate professor of sleep medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, in Palo Alto, California.
"Instead of cramming, study intensely, catch a nap, and then maybe do some more studying," he says. "A nap may be a good tool to enhance your ability to remember information."
April 23, 2010 -- Updated 1512 GMT (2312 HKT)
CNN
Sleep has long been known to improve performance on memory tests. Now, a new study suggests that an afternoon power nap may boost your ability to process and store information tenfold -- but only if you dream while you're asleep.
"When you dream, your brain is trying to look at connections that you might not think of or notice when [you're] awake," says the lead author of the study, Robert Stickgold, the director of the Center for Sleep and Cognition at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, in Boston, Massachusetts. "In the dream...the brain tries to figure out what's important and what it should keep or dump because it's of no value."
In the study, Stickgold and his colleagues asked 99 college students to memorize a complex maze on a computer. The researchers then placed the students inside a virtual, 3-D version of the maze and asked them to navigate to another spot within it. After doing this several times, half of the participants took a 90-minute nap while the other half stayed awake and watched videos.
When the students were given the maze test again five hours later, the nappers did better than the students who had stayed awake, even those who had reviewed the maze in their heads. However, the nappers who dreamed about the maze -- one described being lost in a bat cave -- performed 10 times better than the nappers who didn't.
The students who dreamed about the maze did poorly on the test the first time around -- which may not be a coincidence, the researchers say. If a task is difficult for you, your brain seems to know it, and you may be more likely to dream about it than if the task were easier.
"If you're not good at something, and you dream about it, you seem to get better at it -- especially if the information can be used in different situations," says Michael Breus, the clinical director of the sleep division for Arrowhead Health, in Glendale, Arizona, who was not involved in the study.
"The sleeping brain seems to be processing information on one level, but on a higher level it helps evolve your memory network if the information is relevant or helpful in your life experience," adds Breus, who is also the author of "Beauty Sleep."
The study's findings, which appear in the journal Current Biology, underscore just how important sleep is to our memory and mental function.
It doesn't even need to be a deep sleep, as the researchers found when they monitored the brain activity of the students while they slept. Although the deep slumber known as rapid eye movement (REM) is most closely associated with dreaming, the students' dreaming and learning occurred after as little as one minute of non-REM sleep.
The type of learning that occurs while you dream can be illustrated by the classic dream that many people have in which they show up for an exam that they haven't studied for, Stickgold says.
"When you're in school -- especially college -- there's this ongoing sense that you haven't done enough," he says. "Maybe you didn't make it to a lecture, or you had a paper due in three days that you hadn't started, so you're laying down memories that say, 'I haven't done anything that I need to do.'"
When someone has the exam dream (or nightmare), he says, "Your brain is taking the knowledge of what happened to help you behave differently in the future."
You may be able to harness the dream power displayed in the study to perform better in your everyday life, Breus says.
"If you're studying something tough, get the basics down and take a nap. If you dream about it, you will probably understand it better," he says. "Or, go to bed a little earlier the night before, wake up early, review the material, and then take a quick nap to solidify your understanding."
That's good advice, says Dr. Rafael Pelayo, an associate professor of sleep medicine at Stanford University School of Medicine, in Palo Alto, California.
"Instead of cramming, study intensely, catch a nap, and then maybe do some more studying," he says. "A nap may be a good tool to enhance your ability to remember information."
miércoles, 7 de abril de 2010
Dress Codes and School
How students dress affects attitude.
Share Article | Sep 12, 2006 Barbara Pytel
What if students were allowed to wear anything they wanted to school? Are the dress code regulations necessary?
Dress Restrictions
Most schools have regulations on how students dress. The intent is to keep students safe and focused on academics. Teachers have enough on their plate to motivate learning without having to monitor which slogan is affecting who today.
Baggy pants and bandanas could be interpreted as gang dress. Dressing as a gang member intimidates other students and spreads fear instead of focusing on academics. Pants with large pockets are often restricted because a weapon or drugs could be carried in them. Certain colors are often banned if gang colors.
Coats and bookbags are often only permitted in lockers. Again, guns and drugs could be in coat pockets and bookbags.
X-Rated
Dressing seductively is a great distraction to the opposite sex. It only makes sense to put restrictions on what can be worn to school. Sexual thoughts are already frequent in middle school and high school. Most students do not need visual aids. The imagination is active enough. Schools have banned MySpace.com during school hours because of the suggestive content and predators lurking. MySpace has tried to make the site safer but students still make themselves vulnerable by being on MySpace.
T-Shirts
Clothing with reference to cigarettes or alcohol are usually not allowed. Television restricts commercials on these subjects so it doesn't make sense to allow students advertise in school. T-shirts from Hooters are usually not permitted because of the reference made to waitresses. But a new craze is emerging and it is not making administration and law enforcement very happy. The t-shirts say "Don't Snitch."
This latest trend tells students at school to not cooperate with teachers, principals and police. So, you witness vicious harassment--don't snitch. You witness a gun in a locker--don't snitch. You see drugs in the lunchroom--don't snitch. You overhear someone talking about a bomb--don't snitch.
Only Wrong If Caught
This new craze in t-shirts leads already confused middle school and high school students to believe that they must stand behind their friends at all costs. Doesn't really matter if it is morally wrong. You stand by your friends even if they could blow up the school, shoot your friends, or die of a drug overdose. The worst thing you can be is a snitch and cooperate with the police. Police rely on citizens to assist them in investigations. No leads, no arrests, less safety.
The Damage Has Been Done
Even though these t-shirts are no longer being produced, other companies have copied the slogan and sell on the black market as knock offs. But, more and more schools are saying "no" to these slogan t-shirts.
Uniforms
More and more public schools are switching to uniforms. This custom used to be reserved for private and Catholic schools but public schools are finding some positive results. When students wear uniforms to school, no one can tell who has more money. The latest expensive jeans can't be shown off along with the designer polo.
The results have been better attendance because students always have something acceptable to wear. Studies uncovered the fact that some students were missing school because they didn't have "cool" clothes to wear or the one pair of jeans that was "cool" was too wet to wear to school. And, since students are not distracted by who is wearing what, students focus better on academics and their own business.
How we dress does matter. Even entrepreneurs that work out of their home feel their workday is more productive when dressed appropriately rather than working in pajamas.
How we dress does affect our performance.
Read more at Suite101: Dress Codes and School: How students dress affects attitude. http://educationalissues.suite101.com/article.cfm/dress_codes_and_school#ixzz0kQanYLn1
domingo, 4 de abril de 2010
Magnets 'can modify our morality'
How complex is our sense of morality?
Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.
They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.
And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.
The small Massachusetts Institute of Technology study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lead researcher Dr Liane Young said: "You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour.
"To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."
The key area of the brain is a knot of nerve cells known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ).
The researchers subjected 20 volunteers to a number of tests designed to assess their notions of right and wrong.
In one scenario participants were asked how acceptable it was for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knew to be unsafe.
After receiving a 500 millisecond magnetic pulse to the scalp, the volunteers delivered verdicts based on outcome rather than moral principle.
If the girlfriend made it across the bridge safely, her boyfriend was not seen as having done anything wrong.
In effect, they were unable to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions.
Previous work has shown the RTPJ to be highly active when people think about the thoughts and beliefs of others.
Electric currents
The MIT team pinpointed the region in volunteers using a sophisticated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan.
They then targeted the area using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to create weak electric currents that temporarily stop brain cells working normally.
In one test, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions.
In a second experiment, volunteers were subjected to a much shorter 500 millisecond TMS burst while being asked to make a moral judgement.
In both cases, the researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm - not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
Morally dubious acts with a "happy" ending were often deemed acceptable.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a brain expert at University College London, said the findings were insightful.
"The study suggests that this region - the RTPJ - is necessary for moral reasoning.
"What is interesting is that this is a region that is very late developing - into adolescence and beyond right into the 20s.
"The next step would be to look at how or whether moral development changes through childhood into adulthood."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8593748.stm
Scientists have shown they can change people's moral judgements by disrupting a specific area of the brain with magnetic pulses.
They identified a region of the brain just above and behind the right ear which appears to control morality.
And by using magnetic pulses to block cell activity they impaired volunteers' notion of right and wrong.
The small Massachusetts Institute of Technology study appears in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Lead researcher Dr Liane Young said: "You think of morality as being a really high-level behaviour.
"To be able to apply a magnetic field to a specific brain region and change people's moral judgments is really astonishing."
The key area of the brain is a knot of nerve cells known as the right temporo-parietal junction (RTPJ).
The researchers subjected 20 volunteers to a number of tests designed to assess their notions of right and wrong.
In one scenario participants were asked how acceptable it was for a man to let his girlfriend walk across a bridge he knew to be unsafe.
After receiving a 500 millisecond magnetic pulse to the scalp, the volunteers delivered verdicts based on outcome rather than moral principle.
If the girlfriend made it across the bridge safely, her boyfriend was not seen as having done anything wrong.
In effect, they were unable to make moral judgments that require an understanding of other people's intentions.
Previous work has shown the RTPJ to be highly active when people think about the thoughts and beliefs of others.
Electric currents
The MIT team pinpointed the region in volunteers using a sophisticated functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) brain scan.
They then targeted the area using a technique called transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) to create weak electric currents that temporarily stop brain cells working normally.
In one test, volunteers were exposed to TMS for 25 minutes before reading stories involving morally questionable characters, and being asked to judge their actions.
In a second experiment, volunteers were subjected to a much shorter 500 millisecond TMS burst while being asked to make a moral judgement.
In both cases, the researchers found that when the RTPJ was disrupted volunteers were more likely to judge actions solely on the basis of whether they caused harm - not whether they were morally wrong in themselves.
Morally dubious acts with a "happy" ending were often deemed acceptable.
Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, a brain expert at University College London, said the findings were insightful.
"The study suggests that this region - the RTPJ - is necessary for moral reasoning.
"What is interesting is that this is a region that is very late developing - into adolescence and beyond right into the 20s.
"The next step would be to look at how or whether moral development changes through childhood into adulthood."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8593748.stm
domingo, 28 de febrero de 2010
Back pain 'eased by group therapy sessions'
By Emma Wilkinson
Health reporter, BBC News
Back pain is a common problem
A form of group "talking therapy" is a cheap, effective way to alleviate low back pain, a UK trial has shown.
The positive effect was still seen a year after the short six-session therapy programme, The Lancet reported.
The 600 patients taking part in the trial were also offered standard GP treatment including pain medication.
The sessions were designed to tackle "unhelpful" beliefs around back pain and physical activity and help patients better manage their condition.
Usually people with low back pain - one of the most common complaints GPs deal with - are advised to keep active, offered pain relief where needed and possibly other treatments such as acupuncture.
In the study, 400 people being treated in general practice were offered the six group therapy sessions and 200 people receiving standard care were monitored for a year.
The sessions - based loosely around a technique called cognitive behaviour therapy - were set up to discuss beliefs around doing physical activity and counter negative thoughts about back pain and its restrictions as well as relaxation techniques.
The one-and-a-half-hour sessions were also designed to help people overcome "fear" of hurting themselves more and how to get active again whilst avoiding flare-ups.
A year later, the people who underwent therapy scored significantly more highly on questionnaires designed to measure pain and disability.
Value for money
When looking at the costs, the team found the therapy was relatively cheap when the improvement in quality of life was taken into account, and better than the value for money offered by treatments such as acupuncture.
The researchers, from the Universities of Warwick and Oxford, said effective treatments that produced long-term results are "elusive" in low back pain.
Study author Zara Hansen, a clinical research fellow at the University of Warwick, said healthcare staff, including physiotherapists, psychotherapists and nurses, could learn how to run the course in a couple of days.
"The exciting bit here is that with a lot of back pain interventions, you'll get a feel-good factor and patients will feel better while they're undergoing the treatment but it's a short-term effect.
"But we showed they improve up to six months and then this is maintained for up to a year as they learn to manage their condition."
The team is looking at a project to roll out the programme to other areas of the country.
Dr Graham Davenport, clinical champion for musculoskeletal conditions at the Royal College of GPs, said chronic back pain was an extremely common condition and this sort of therapy could prove extremely useful.
"It's really just about changing people's beliefs.
"It's an excellent and very sensible treatment, the problem is the logistics of getting staff trained to deliver it but if we could overcome that it would be great."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8536698.stm
martes, 2 de febrero de 2010
Wheelchair mobility at the tip of the tongue
(CNN) -- Cruise Bogle, 18, was skimboarding with friends in Delray Beach, Florida, when he took a wave that whipped his board out from under him. Bogle was thrown backward, and his head hit the ocean floor. When friends saw him lying still in the surf, they knew something was wrong and rushed him to the hospital.
"I broke my C4 vertebra and was left paralyzed from the neck down," says Bogle of that fateful day in December 2008. "I then spent two weeks in the ICU at Delray Medical Center and was flown to Shepherd Center on New Year's Eve."
According to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, more than 11,000 Americans sustain spinal cord injuries each year. Although advances have been made in improving the quality of life for people such as Bogle, now a quadriplegic, innovators are always looking for something better.
Bogle became a part of this quest while at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It's one of the largest rehabilitation centers on the East Coast. Bogle was tapped to test drive a new piece of technology.
Shepherd joined forces with scientists from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology to try out a new wheelchair, powered not by a keyboard, buttons or a wand in the mouth, but by the patient's own tongue.
Why the tongue?
"One of the major advantages of the tongue is that it's directly connected to the brain," says Maysam Ghovanloo, assistant professor at Georgia Tech and head of the project. "The tongue is unlike the rest of the body, which is connected to the brain through the spinal cord. A patient who has even the highest level of spinal cord injury can still move his or her tongue like me or you."
"I broke my C4 vertebra and was left paralyzed from the neck down," says Bogle of that fateful day in December 2008. "I then spent two weeks in the ICU at Delray Medical Center and was flown to Shepherd Center on New Year's Eve."
According to the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, more than 11,000 Americans sustain spinal cord injuries each year. Although advances have been made in improving the quality of life for people such as Bogle, now a quadriplegic, innovators are always looking for something better.
Bogle became a part of this quest while at Shepherd Center in Atlanta, Georgia. It's one of the largest rehabilitation centers on the East Coast. Bogle was tapped to test drive a new piece of technology.
Shepherd joined forces with scientists from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology to try out a new wheelchair, powered not by a keyboard, buttons or a wand in the mouth, but by the patient's own tongue.
Why the tongue?
"One of the major advantages of the tongue is that it's directly connected to the brain," says Maysam Ghovanloo, assistant professor at Georgia Tech and head of the project. "The tongue is unlike the rest of the body, which is connected to the brain through the spinal cord. A patient who has even the highest level of spinal cord injury can still move his or her tongue like me or you."
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