Bed2U

“If you lose two hours of sleep, you can impair your performance equal to a .05 blood-alcohol level”

Between crack-of-dawn classes, sports, after-school activities and oh yeah, homework, Eileen Van Rheenen’s five children didn’t always get the nine to 10 hours of shut-eye they needed in their high school … via Inside Bay Area

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Bed Bugs With That Law Job? Lawfuel (press release), New Zealand - Mar 30, 2008 An email was sent around Cravath last week about the presence of bed bugs at the firm. 2. A few bedbugs were found on two floors, the 21st floor and the …

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We’ve been talking about how being sleep deprived or sleepy can lead to more body weight. The idea is that brain chemistry is set up such that alertness goes with less appetite and drowsiness goes with more appetite. So if you are trying to lose weight, or at least not gain weight as in my case, it is not a good idea to be short yourself on sleep and to be drowsy at work.

One of the ways that obesity is terrible for sleep is that is can cause or worsen snoring and sleep apnea. This is very true for middle aged men, but also try for young women. And even if you don’t have the sleep apnea, if you have to sleep next to someone who has sleep apnea, your sleep can be affected.

Let’s say your husband snores or has sleep apnea. If this condition is not treated, he has an increased risk of high blood pressure, stroke, and heart attack. But you, the suffering bedpartner, are likely to have worse sleep than if you slept alone, as well as more daytime sleepiness. So encouraging your snoring bedpartner (male or female) to get treated is good for both of you.

A study from the Mayo Clinic some years ago proved just this. Bedpartner slept better after the spouse was treated for sleep apnea. But many of us actually think that some people who sleep next to snorers get awakened by their spouse in the night and don’t even know it. It might be that the noise is enough to disrupt the sleep quality, but not enough to fully awaken the person. We don’t have good studies to prove this, but most of the time the spouse is very pleased to have the sleep apnea treated.

Which brings me to the last point: If you have sleep apnea you should be using CPAP. If you tried it and couldn’t do it, try it again. In the last few years the CPAP masks have been very much improved. I found a good update on the masks at this site, and here in Revolution there are some really good tips on using CPAP from the Mayo Clinic.

Hey ! Not only will you feel better if your sleep apnea is treated, it might even help your spouse lose weight.

J. Steven Poceta MD

is a licensed practitioner of neurology and sleep disorders who has been engaged by Revolution Health. No information in this blog is intended to diagnose or treat any condition. The opinions expressed here are Dr. Poceta’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Revolution Health.

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Dr. Tracy Rupp has won the 2008 National Sleep Foundation Young Investigator Award. A total of 106 abstracts from young sleep researchers (i.e., within 5 years of having obtained the doctoral degree) were submitted to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Each submission was rated by a team of 3 established sleep researchers.

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“It just suggests the increasing recognition of how profoundly sleep affects our lives.”

K n ow somebody who likes to brag that he can get by on six hours of sleep a night? Tell him that men who sleep less than seven hours a night have a 26 percent greater death rate during a two-decade period than … via The Olympian

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News reports over the last few days say that Hillary Clinton has blamed her sleep deprivation for some statements she made which turned out to not be true. Unlike searching for a scientific paper and looking at the data, it is a lot harder to know exactly what happened when in situations like this. There are several available report and opinion articles available, but I did not see the actual initial “mis-statements” nor the blaming them on sleep deprivation. Here are several links to these articles.

The Independent. Minneapolis Star Tribune.PittsburghLive

Apparently during a recent speech at George Washington University she said that in 1996 she landed in Bosnia during sniper fire. Then, others who were with her on the trip basically proved in the following days that this was not at all true. She initially defended herself and then claimed that she must have said those things because she was “human” and “sleep-deprived.”

Can sleep deprivation make a person do this? Cause a person basically make false statements?

Before we answer this, let’s make sure we know what sleep deprivation is. In this case, I assume Mrs. Clinton is talking about not getting enough sleep in bed because she is too busy. I don’t think that she is talking about sleep deprivation from sleep disorders like sleep apnea; I don’t think that she is talking about being totally sleep deprived as is sometimes done during torture. I figure that she is talking about sleeping 5 or 6 hours a night; often less, sometimes more, during the busy campaign. (Actually, I’d like to hear from all of them—McCain, Obama, and Clinton—just how much sleep they need and how much they get. Maybe I’d vote for one of them based on the “sleep issue” but never mind that.)

So the answer depends on just how much sleep deprivation we are talking about. And if you just casually Google “sleep deprivation” to get the answer, it takes a lot of digging into the original studies to see what is really meant by sleep deprivation. The Wikipedia

lists about 22 symptoms of sleep deprivation, and “lying” is not one of them. However, there are 3 symptoms that could be important and result in a mis-statement. These are hallucinations, psychosis and memory lapses. However, psychosis and hallucinations usually occur only after very long and very complete sleep deprivation. I really hope that a possible future President is not prone to hallucinations, psychosis or memory lapses just because of her schedule.

In closing, I want to reassure those of you feel you don’t get enough sleep, either because of an insomnia problem or your busy schedule. More studies are needed to understand the relationship between sleep and physical disease. I suspect that the most dangerous effect of not sleeping enough is daytime sleepiness. Dozing off while driving is a real problem for people who are short on sleep, and are much more likely to harm you or others. So please, if you are tired or sleepy, get your sleep checked out. J. Steven Poceta MD

is a licensed practitioner of neurology and sleep disorders who has been engaged by Revolution Health. No information in this blog is intended to diagnose or treat any condition. The opinions expressed here are Dr. Poceta’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Revolution Health.

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There is new promise on the horizon for those who suffer from REM Sleep Behaviour Disorder (RBD) according to researchers at the University of Toronto.RDB, a neurological disorder that causes violent twitches and muscle contractions during rapid eye-movement (REM) sleep, can lead to serious injuries.

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“Depriving our bodies of sleep can have negative effects on our overall mental state, as well as our mood and ability to concentrate.”

If you snooze, you lose. That old adage may be the key to taking advantage of a great opportunity. via The Daily Times

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As many as one in four people have some type of sleeping disorder, but only half are diagnosed, said researcher William G. Herbert, Ph.D., FACSM in a presentation at the American College of Sports Medicine’s 12th-annual Health & Fitness Summit & Exposition.

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People suffering from a sleep disorder have been given new hope after a health watchdog looked set to approve a treatment on the NHS. via Grantham Today

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There are several reasons to beliive that sleep and body weight are related. Studies of large populations show an association between less sleep at night and increased body weight. Also, patients with sleep apnea are both sleepy and heavy. Patients with narcolepsy appear to be on average heavier than people without narcolepsy. In some animals such as the rat, sleep deprivation increases food intake and body weight.

In the brain, the systems that control body weight (appetite and metabolism) and that control sleep and alertness are located in the hypothalamus. We know that experimental lesions in specific areas of this tiny body of nerve cells can produce major changes in both sleep and weight. In addition, the neuropeptide hypocretin-1, which is produced in the hypothalamus, is absent in narcoleptics. Other experiments indicate that hypocretin is involved in appetite regulation and in bodily movement. Another example is the effect of chemicals like amphetamines (diet pills now rarely used): they keep people alert and they decrease appetite.

Ever feel drowsy at your desk and go get a snack to perk up? It seems to be a common practice. Something about being “tired” or “sleepy” seems to increase the appetite in many people. This idea makes sense with what happens in starvation—eating less and being thin makes people more alert so they can go forage for food; that is, physical activity actually increases in the early stages of hunger. On the other hand, we tend to get sleepy after a big meal, so there is not a clear-cut 100 percent predictable relationship between sleepiness and appetite. A new study has shown how complicated the relationship is. This study showed that stress was a bigger factor in obesity than sleep duration, and that stress and nightly sleep times interacted in a complicated way even though both were still associated with weight gain (more stress, less sleep, more weight all went together).

The point for people who are trying to lose weight is that they should consider sleep and sleepiness in their daily routine. Although we tell people with insomnia to spend less time in bed so as to reduce worry about sleeping, in the case of someone who is obese and wants to lose weight, I would say they should EXPAND their time in bed and get as much sleep as feasible. If on a diet, DO NOT short yourself an hour or two of sleep. Plan to be in bed even a little longer–assuming that you can sleep a little longer—perhaps 8 or 9 hours. Being sleep deprived and sleepy during the day is going to make it harder to resist eating a little more. Again, if you want to lose weight, sleep more at night and be active and alert during the day.

J. Steven Poceta MD

is a licensed practitioner of neurology and sleep disorders who has been engaged by Revolution Health. No information in this blog is intended to diagnose or treat any condition. The opinions expressed here are Dr. Poceta’s own and do not necessarily reflect those of Revolution Health.

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If you’ve ever tossed, turned, counted sheep, taken a sleep aid, or just finally given up and gotten out of bed, well, there are ways to solve your sleep problems Aya Brackett 1 of 10 Is anyone sleeping through … via Real Simple

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Prison Bed Bugs KHON2, HI - Mar 24, 2008 By Ron Mizutani Bed bugs have surfaced at Waikiki hotels, care homes, theatres and hospitals and now you can add Halawa Correctional Facility to the list. …

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Documenting a “twofold to fivefold” increase in personal problems among adolescents with persistent sleeplessness, public health researchers at The University of Texas Health Science Center at Houston say they have completed the first prospective study demonstrating the negative impact of chronic insomnia on 11 to 17 year olds. More than one fourth of the youths surveyed had one or more symptoms of insomnia and almost half of these youngsters had chronic conditions.

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