http://sleep.health.am/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/obstructive-sleep-apnea-symptoms/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/obstructive-sleep-apnea-symptoms/ Since the 1980s, continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) - in which positive pressure is pushed through the nasal airways to help users breathe while sleeping - has been by far the most widely used treatment for obstructive sleep apnea (OSA). With more than 18 million people experiencing OSA, a number expected to rise, new results from a Penn case study of a new device implanted in the chest called hypoglossal nerve stimulation (HGNS) offers promise for patients with moderate to severe OSA who cannot tolerate CPAP. Researchers at the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania will present data (abstract 0378) on their outcomes with hypoglossal nerve stimulation for the treatment of patients with sleep apnea at SLEEP 2016, the 30th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC. The device is a pacemaker with a tiny generator and a sensing lead, but instead of using electrical pulses to control abnormal heart rate, the device uses two wires to stimulate the tongue. Patients use a remote control to turn on the device before going to sleep and turn it off upon waking up. A delay allows the user to fall asleep before the pulse generator begins stimulation. After detecting the user’s breathing pattern, the machine stimulates the hypoglossal nerve (the nerve that controls tongue motion) which enlarges the upper airway. In the current Penn case study, 20 implants were completed at the University of Pennsylvania between January 2015 and March 2016. Healthy Sleep News 2016-06-11T23:15:44+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-loss-detrimental-to-blood-vessels/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-loss-detrimental-to-blood-vessels/ Lack of sleep has previously been found to impact the activation of the immune system, inflammation, carbohydrate metabolism and the hormones that regulate appetite. Now University of Helsinki researchers have found that sleep loss also influences cholesterol metabolism. The study examined the impact of cumulative sleep deprivation on cholesterol metabolism in terms of both gene expression and blood lipoprotein levels. With state-of-the-art methods, a small blood sample can simultaneously yield information about the activation of all genes as well as the amounts of hundreds of different metabolites. This means it is possible to seek new regulating factors and metabolic pathways which participate in a particular function of the body. “In this case, we examined what changes sleep loss caused to the functions of the body and which of these changes could be partially responsible for the elevated risk for illness,” explains Vilma Aho, researcher from the Sleep Team Helsinki research group. Healthy Sleep News 2016-04-22T18:09:11+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/trouble-sleeping-tongue/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/trouble-sleeping-tongue/ The best time to identify signs of obstructive sleep apnea may not be at night while snoozing in bed but, instead, while sitting in the dentist’s chair. According to a new study led by University at Buffalo orthodontic researcher Thikriat Al-Jewair, dentists are in the unique position as health care professionals to pinpoint signs of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a disorder in which breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep due to blocked upper airways. The research found that oversized tonsils and tongue indentations, which are teeth imprints along the tongue that indicate it is too large for the mouth, placed people at high risk for OSA. Obese patients were almost 10 times more likely to report OSA symptoms than non-obese patients. Healthy Sleep News 2016-03-09T11:18:18+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/perimenopausal-women-develop-insomnia/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/perimenopausal-women-develop-insomnia/ Millions of women may likely be sleep-deprived. It’s already a known fact that women are more predisposed to insomnia. Now a new study presented at the 2015 Annual Meeting of The North American Menopause Society (NAMS) earlier this month suggests that perimenopausal women have an even greater risk for developing insomnia. Considering that perimenopause will affect roughly 500 million women within the next decade, that’s a lot of tired women. What’s worse is that the study found that insomnia symptoms are likely to get worse and more prevalent in the later stages of perimenopause (the transition period to menopause). In fact, the odds of having any one symptom of insomnia were 1.3 times greater for those in late stage versus early stage of perimenopause. The odds of developing chronic insomnia were 1.5 times greater for those in perimenopause than pre-perimenopause. “We found that there was a lot of research regarding insomnia in general but very little that addressed the insomnia trajectory in one of the higher risk groups of women - those transitioning to menopause,” says Dr. Colleen Ciano of the College of Nursing at The Pennsylvania State University and lead author of the study. Healthy Sleep News 2015-10-14T18:04:10+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-apnea-in-older-women/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/sleep-apnea-in-older-women/ The results of a new study suggest that nocturnal enuresis, or bedwetting, may be an additional symptom that doctors can look for when assessing post-menopausal women for obstructive sleep apnea. That condition left untreated can lead to serious medical problems, such as cardiovascular disease, as organs are undersupplied with oxygen. About 2 percent of women reportedly experience OSA, but it may be underdiagnosed among older women, said Dr. Patrick Koo, lead author of the new study in the journal Menopause. Past research suggests that women may understate some symptoms when reporting poor sleep, leading to misdiagnoses of depression or insomnia. Koo, a clinical assistant professor of medicine in the Alpert Medical School of Brown University and a physician at Memorial Hospital of Rhode Island, therefore set out to determine whether nocturnal enuresis, which has been associated with OSA in children, might be an additional risk factor worth considering. To do that he and his co-authors analyzed the vast trove of health data compiled by the Women’s Health Initiative, a massive research program that enrolled and followed more than 161,000 post-menopausal women between 1993 and 2005. Koo and his colleagues were able to review the prevalence of traditional OSA risk factors among the women - obesity, snoring, poor sleep, interrupted sleep, hypertension, daytime sleepiness - and their individual and collective association with nocturnal enuresis. In the analysis they accounted for a wide range of possible confounding factors, including the number of term pregnancies, alcohol consumption, and many other demographic and medical characteristics. Healthy Sleep News 2015-09-02T16:30:26+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/the-timing-of-sleep/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/the-timing-of-sleep/ Washington State University researchers have found that the timing of an animal’s sleep can be just as important as how much sleeps it gets. Ilia Karatsoreos, an assistant professor in WSU’s Department of Integrative Physiology and Neuroscience, shifted mice from their usual cycle of sleeping and waking and saw that, while they got enough sleep, it was of poorer quality. The animals also had a disrupted immune response, leaving them more open to illness. Most sleep research focuses on the effects of sleep deprivation or the overall amount of sleep an animal needs. This is generally referred to as sleep’s homeostatic process, which is driven by sleepiness or “sleep pressure.” Healthy Sleep News 2015-09-01T15:42:39+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/men-people-access-to-nature/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/men-people-access-to-nature/ Men and persons age 65 and older who have access to natural surroundings, whether it’s the green space of a nearby park or a sandy beach and an ocean view, report sleeping better, according to a new University of Illinois study published in Preventive Medicine. “It’s hard to overestimate the importance of high-quality sleep,” said Diana Grigsby-Toussaint, a U of I professor of kinesiology and community health and a faculty member in the U of I’s Division of Nutritional Sciences. “Studies show that inadequate sleep is associated with declines in mental and physical health, reduced cognitive function, and increased obesity. This new study shows that exposure to a natural environment may help people get the sleep they need.” In the study, Grigsby-Toussaint worked with both U of I researchers and scientists from the New York University School of Medicine. The team used data from the CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System, which surveyed 255,171 representative U.S. adults, to learn whether there was an association between self-reported days of insufficient sleep and access to green space. The team also used a USDA index that scores the country’s geographical areas for their natural amenities, using hours of sunlight, which is important in regulating a person’s circadian rhythm, and temperature. Healthy Sleep News 2015-08-24T17:07:03+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/partially-explains-1-racial-sleep-difference/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/partially-explains-1-racial-sleep-difference/ A new study clearly establishes a partial genetic basis underlying racial differences in slow-wave sleep, suggesting that it may be possible to develop sleep-related therapies that target specific genetic variants. Using a panel of 1,698 ancestry informative genetic markers, the study found that greater African genetic ancestry was associated with lower amounts of slow-wave sleep in African-American adults. African ancestry explained 11 percent of the variation in slow-wave sleep after adjustment for potential confounders. Although a similar association was observed for delta power, no association with African ancestry was observed for sleep duration and efficiency. “Our data are the first to show that race differences in slow-wave sleep may have an independent and significant genetic basis,” said senior author Martica Hall, professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh. “Although all humans have the same set of genes, variations within the genes sometimes follow population-specific patterns. By identifying the specific genetic variants that influence slow-wave sleep, we can eventually develop population-specific treatment approaches and therapies for sleep.” Healthy Sleep News 2015-08-22T17:47:00+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/can-i-get-some-sleep-hospital/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/can-i-get-some-sleep-hospital/ One of the most common complaints about hospitals is the noise. Patients complain that they can’t sleep soundly in the environment of multiple monitors, paging systems, wheelchairs and gurneys, and carts that squeak. Ongoing efforts at the University of Michigan Health System are making the hospital quieter, and the hospital has tested sound panels designed to dial down noise. During a pilot study, strategically placed sound acoustic panels helped diffuse sound in the hallways around patient rooms. The modest 3-4 sound decibel drop is recognizable to the human ear and consistent with a fall in noise generated by a car slowing down from 80 mph to 60 mph. “In hospital environments where noise levels are often double what they should be according to the World Health Organization’s standard decibel guidelines for patient rooms, the difference is significant,” says Mojtaba Navvab, Ph.D., associate professor of architecture and design at the Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Michigan. Healthy Sleep News 2015-08-17T15:37:02+00:00 http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/rem-sleep-critical-for-young-brain/ http://sleep.health.am/sleep/more/rem-sleep-critical-for-young-brain/ Rapid eye movement or REM sleep actively converts waking experiences into lasting memories and abilities in young brains reports a new study from Washington State University Spokane. The finding, published in Science Advances, broadens the understanding of children’s sleep needs and calls into question the increasing use of REM-disrupting medications such as stimulants and antidepressants. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health. Healthy Sleep News 2015-07-06T15:37:11+00:00