News from around the traps..
Below are various news items from the media, industry sources and other which you may find interesting.
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Insufficient sleep boosts crash risk for young people.
Insufficient sleep puts young drivers at greater risk of a car crash, a large study by Australian researchers has found.
The new findings, published in the journal JAMA Paediatrics, show that sleeping less on weekends and sleeping six hours or less per night over a sustained period are both factors that increase the chance of run-off road crashes.
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BREATHING difficulties during sleep may be an early warning sign of future Alzheimer's disease, researchers believe.
Experts are not sure how sleep-disordered breathing (SDB) and Alzheimer's are linked.
But evidence suggests some people who suffer from the sleep problem may already be starting to develop pre-symptomatic dementia.
SDB is an umbrella term for a group of conditions that affect breathing during sleep.
The most common is obstructive sleep apnoea, which affects around four per cent of middle-aged men and two per cent of middle-aged women in the UK.
Sleep apnoea results in breathing being repeatedly interrupted during sleep and is often accompanied by heavy snoring.
Dr Ricardo Osorio, from New York University School of Medicine, who led the new research, said: "We know that about 10 to 20 per cent of middle-aged adults in the United States have SDB and that the number jumps dramatically in those over the age of 65.
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New sleep aid could tackle insomnia without the morning hangover
A new class of sleep aids could result from the discovery of a culprit linked to insomnia – the protein orexin.
Scientists at Merck Research Laboratories in West Point, Pa., report that blocking the protein in rats leads to sleep and Merck is researching drugs that can cause drowsiness and sleep without a hangover, based on this finding.
Researchers at Merck are developing the new compound that reduces the negative after-effects associated with current sleep aids, such as drowsiness and amnesia, by tapping into the protein in the brain that controls wakefulness.
While the results represent a potential step forward in the realm of sleep aids, the compound DORA-22 is still in the early stages of research and has not yet been tested in humans.
Merck’s findings, published in Science Translational Medicine this spring, discovered that inhibiting orexin in the brain induced sleep in rats without affecting their cognition upon waking as much as current sleep aids on the market, such as Ambien and Lunesta.
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The University of Sydney and ResMed partner to accelerate research in sleep-disordered breathing and biomedical engineering.
The University of Sydney and ResMed Limited today announced a new partnership that includes significant and long-term funding of research at the University, ultimately benefitting the hundreds of millions of sufferers of sleep-disordered breathing worldwide.
Under an agreement recently reached between the parties, ResMed Limited will pay $AU25 million to the University to support its work, including the establishment of two perpetual academic chairs called the ResMed Chair of Sleep Medicine for sleep-disordered breathing with a focus on chronic disease and the ResMed Chair of Biomedical Engineering with an emphasis on bioinformatics research, as well as funding for research in related areas. The agreement also provides for the settlement of proceedings between the parties in the Australian Federal Court regarding a dispute over an earlier licensing agreement.
"Sleep-disordered breathing is a global health problem affecting one in five adults, with broad and deep implications in other chronic conditions, such as hypertension and heart failure," said ResMed Chief Executive Officer Michael Farrell. "With this partnership, we look forward to the University's research revealing new information on how to battle this costly and life-threatening condition."
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RACKED BY INSOMNIA, Linda Neil dreaded going to bed. then, without her really noticing it, a dream finally came true.
It's 4am and I'm lying on the floor beside my bed, wide awake. A nerve is flickering behind my left eye and my hands are clammy. I've tossed and turned and changed position so many times during the night that my body feels bruised. I get up and move around the house, restlessly flicking lights on and off, trying not to look at the clock, the evidence of the hours that have slipped past me again. Tension and stress have made my shoulders rock hard. My breath is shallow, my throat parched, the veins in my neck are throbbing. I try to relax, but at this hour it's almost impossible. I don't want to get back into bed. It smells like I do - the faintly acrid desperate aroma of the chronically sleepless.
The light is just creeping in from outside, where the birds are starting to sing. I yell at them to stop. Another night without sleep. I scrunch up my pillow over my eyes hoping to catch an hour of rest before the light and heat wake me up. I want to cry in frustration at the thought of the day ahead, when I'll walk again like a zombie through the land of the living.
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BAN mobiles, say teachers
Teachers are warning parents to ensure their children get enough sleep to do well at school, as experts fear late-night use of mobiles and computers are interfering with results.
Following a study suggesting Australian year 4 students were the fifth most sleep-deprived of the 50 countries examined, the Australian Education Union is calling on parents to be more vigilant in ensuring kids do not miss out on much-needed rest.
The union's federal president Angelo Gavrielatos said students who missed out on adequate sleep found it harder to learn and fully participate in school.
''There is clearly anecdotal evidence that suggests children are spending more and more time on computers, engaged in a lot more screen-time activities and that this may also be impacting on their sleep behaviours as well,'' he said.
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SLEEPY students fail global learning race.
Sleepiness may be holding Australian schoolchildren back in the international education race.
Research conducted alongside international maths tests shows Australian year 4s were the fifth most sleep-deprived in the world, of 50 countries studied.
According to their teachers, 67 per cent of Australian students were in classrooms where instruction was limited by students suffering from a lack of sleep.
Pupils in the United States were the sleepiest, with 73 per cent of students in classrooms in which sleepy students held back learning. Students in New Zealand, Saudi Arabia and Kuwait were also slightly more likely to be sleep-deprived than Australian students. Internationally, the average was 47 per cent of students being in classrooms where not enough sleep affected performance.
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TWO THIRDS of British children cannot concentrate at school because of sleep deprivation.
Sleep deprivation plays an important role in lowering the achievement of schoolchildren, according to new research.
The study, carried out by Boston College in the U.S., also found that the problem was particularly prevalent in developed countries - experts believe this is because of the increasingly technology-saturated culture children live in.
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NEWBORN babies that use dummies may have better protection against cot death because it improves their cardiac control, Australian research shows.
Associate Professor Rosemary Horne, of the Monash Institute of Medical Research says epidemiological studies have consistently shown dummy use protects against Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS).
However, she says, how the soother does this has been unclear. "Since 2005 there have been a number of case-controlled studies and they have all shown dummies to be protective, yet how does it work when dummies fall out 15 minutes after the baby goes to sleep," she asks.
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1 BAD GENE: Mutation that causes rare sleep disorder linked to migraines.
A gene mutation associated with a rare sleep disorder surprisingly also contributes to debilitating migraines, a new discovery that could change the treatment of migraines by allowing development of drugs specifically designed to treat the chronic headaches. Further study is needed to understand how this genetic pathway relates to migraines. But the finding is exciting because it most likely will shed light on all types of migraines, meaning hundreds of millions of people worldwide could benefit, according to K.C. Brennan, M.D., University of Utah assistant professor of neurology and first author of a study published May 1, 2013, in Science Translational Medicine.
"We don't get the chance very often to isolate one molecule that we're confident is related to migraines," Brennan says. "Once we understand which molecules and cells this mutation changes, we can develop drugs specifically targeted to them."
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Too Much Sleep May Up Colon Cancer Risk.
LONG sleep duration is associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer, especially among people who snore and are overweight, researchers reported.
In analysis of two long-running prospective observational cohorts, people who reported sleeping at least 9 hours a night were more likely to develop the disease than those who slept an average of 7 hours, according to Xuehong Zhang, MD, ScD, of Harvard Medical School, and colleagues.
But the association was restricted to people who either snored regularly or were overweight, Zhang and colleagues reported in the May issue of Sleep.
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MELBOURNE sleep clinics have reported a surge in the number of women seeking help with snoring.
Growing waistlines have been cited as a reason for the phenomenon, which is also linked to sleep apnoea. Epworth Sleep Centre director Darren Mansfield estimated that over the past decade, the number of female patients coming to his clinic had doubled.
"We didn't see many women at all when I started. Now it's seen as a more common problem," he said.
Prof David Hillman, chairman of the Sleep Health Foundation, said obesity and an ageing population were partly to blame for the rise in snoring, with 12.5 per cent of Victorians now believed to be offenders.
One in three snorers were female and one in every 25 women had sleep apnoea, he said.
Snoring and fatigue are the main symptoms of sleep apnoea, which causes interrupted breathing during sleep and is often brought on by obesity, smoking and alcohol.
If left untreated, the disorder can lead to depression, high blood pressure, stroke, heart disease and diabetes.
Prof Hillman said he was pleased women were more willing to confess to snoring.
"If you think sleep apnoea is a male problem, it isn't," he said.
"It's a real danger we need to recognise because ... snoring disturbs the sleep of others, it's not attractive and sleep apnoea has major health consequences."
Dr David Cunnington, director of the Melbourne Sleep Disorders Centre, said once women were post-menopausal, sleep apnoea was equally common in both sexes. He welcomed the evolving awareness that the disorder did "not just affect the male stereotype of a heavy, middle-aged truck-driver type with a thick neck".
Susan Graham, of Footscray, said she had been snoring since her teens but had never imagined sleep apnoea could be the cause of the crushing exhaustion that affected her work and social life.
The 39-year-old state policy officer sought medical help in 2006 and now enjoys quality shut-eye each night with the help of an air-pressure mask.
"Your whole life is different when you get a good night's sleep, I've got so much energy now," Ms Graham said.
"It makes everyone else's life in your household so much better."
Source: Herald Sun
To read more click here
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The patient didn’t have A.D.H.D., but a chronic sleep deficit.
IN the spring of 2010, a new patient came to see me to find out if he had attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder. He had all the classic symptoms: procrastination, forgetfulness, a propensity to lose things and, of course, the inability to pay attention consistently. But one thing was unusual. His symptoms had started only two years earlier, when he was 31.
Though I treat a lot of adults for attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, the presentation of this case was a violation of an important diagnostic criterion: symptoms must date back to childhood. It turned out he first started having these problems the month he began his most recent job, one that required him to rise at 5 a.m., despite the fact that he was a night owl.
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Cutting back on sleep harms blood vessel function and breathing control.
With work and entertainment operating around the clock in our modern society, sleep is often a casualty. A bevy of research has shown a link between sleep deprivation and cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, and obesity. However, it's been unclear why sleep loss might lead to these effects. Several studies have tested the effects of total sleep deprivation, but this model isn't a good fit for the way most people lose sleep, with a few hours here and there. In a new study by Keith Pugh, Shahrad Taheri, and George Balanos, all of the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom, researchers test the effects of partial sleep deprivation on blood vessels and breathing control. They find that reducing sleep length over two consecutive nights leads to less healthy vascular function and impaired breathing control. The team will discuss the abstract of their study entitled, "The Effects of Sleep Restriction on the Respiratory and Vascular Control," at the Experimental Biology 2013 meeting, being held April 20-24, 2013 at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Center, Boston, Mass. The poster presentation is sponsored by the American Physiological Society (APS), a co-sponsor of the event. As the findings are being presented at a scientific conference, they should be considered preliminary, as they have not undergone the peer review process that is conducted prior to the data being published in a scientific journal.
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Is snoring a trivial problem?
The author discovered that he had sleep apnoea – and that it could be the cause of his exhaustion.
Despite being shaken awake by almost every person I've ever shared a room with, I've been in denial about my snoring. Looking back, there were plenty of signals that it was a problem. My first girlfriend had to go to bed before me to fall asleep first, otherwise my snoring kept her awake. Many years later, when my family and I stayed in a farmhouse in the south of France, my children woke me in the middle of the night, hysterical because they were convinced a wild boar had got inside.
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Sleeping in separate beds may not be romantic, but making the move may just bring some couples closer.
Admit you're sleeping in a separate room to your partner and you may as well have said your relationship is on the rocks, or you're having an affair. That's the response most couples get when they reveal they sleep apart.
It's far from the norm, yet a recent survey of nearly 3000 Australians by medical devices company CPAP found that 20 per cent of respondents spent between three and seven nights a week in separate bedrooms because of their or their partner's sleep problems.
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Treating Sleep Apnea With CPAP Could Boost Work Productivity.
People with sleep apnea -- a condition that involves stopping breathing for periods throughout the night, leading to disrupted sleep and daytime sleepiness -- could boost their work productivity by having their sleep condition treated, according to a new study.
The small study, presented at the Sleep and Breathing Conference in Berlin, shows that CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure, a common treatment for sleep apnea) treatment for sleep apnea is linked with greater work productivity. Because the study has not yet been published in a peer-reviewed journal, the findings should be considered preliminary.
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SLEEPING away Saturday morning is silently helping your teen transition into an adult - but the habit could also be luring them into a sleep deficit trap.
Research has revealed the brains of sleeping adolescents are busy "pruning" away neural connections to pave the way for complex thinking.
The peak ages for brain pruning are between 12 and 16 1/2, leading scientists to suggest extra brain connections that are useful in childhood for coping with injury and adapting to new experiences hinder logical thinking and problem solving needed in adulthood.
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Sleep Apnea linked to behavioral, learning problems in Kids.
Obstructive sleep apnea is associated with increased rates of ADHD-like behavioral problems in children, as well as learning problems, according to a new study.
Obstructive sleep apnea, a common form of sleep-disordered breathing (SDB), occurs in about 2 percent of children who are otherwise healthy, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
Visit The Sleep Health Foundation website for more information on ADHD and behavioral problems in children
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Working on the night shift
Changing from day to night work can play havoc with your health and wellbeing
http://www.smh.com.au/national/health/working-on-the-night-shift-20120815-248wk.html
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Truck Week 2012
Australia's leading sleep associations are urging the trucking industry to make sleep a priority when they are off duty.
During Truck Week 2012 the Australasian Sleep Association and the Sleep Health Foundation are raising awareness of the importance of getting adequate sleep in between shifts.
Media Releases: SHF ASA PDF - Australian Truck Association PDF
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Dangerous to ignore a tired argument
YOU are getting sleeeee-py. You will start to get irritable. You will be more impulsive, take more risks, and your judgment will be impaired. You'll be less alert, and find it harder to think. These are the symptoms of sleep deprivation, and sleep experts expect them to accumulate over the next two weeks as sports fans and Olympics tragics risk red eye, and worse, to catch the action live from London.
Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/olympics/off-the-field/dangerous-to-ignore-a-tired-argument