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Sleep Disorders News: Getting A Good Night’s Sleep

Getting A Good Night’s Sleep

A good night’s sleep is something we all value. Scientists tell us, and we know from experience, that it refreshes us, helps us perform better, and contributes significantly to health and happiness, especially in children. And yet, there are millions of us suffering from ongoing shortage of sleep.

According to the World Association of Sleep Medicine (WASM), sleep problems add up to a global epidemic that affects 45% of the world’s population.

“Insomnia, obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), restless legs syndrome (RLS), and sleep deprivation significantly impact physical, mental and emotional health, in addition to affecting work performance and personal relationships,” they said, on the fourth annual World Sleep Day on Friday 18th March 2011, when health professionals from WASM and other organizations worldwide came together to deliver the message that sleep is a “human privilege that is often compromised by the habits of modern life”.
The 24/7 Technological Society
When we think about it, these figures are hardly surprising. Over the last two or three decades, the choice of round the clock activity available to the average Westerner today has become overwhelming. We can shop at 2 am, either at the supermarket or online, we can do our banking online 24/7, we can watch any number of films and TV channels or catch up on programs around the clock, we can download games, books and software and start enjoying them without having to wait until the morning.

And then there’s the communications technology through which we make ourselves accessible to others, via mobile or cell phones, internet chats and and social networks like Facebook and Twitter. Over less than a generation our social “interfaces” have multiplied enormously, leading to an ever increasing volume of transactions with a growing number of people.
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And all this impacts not only our daytime activity, but damages our sleep environment: it’s much harder to wind down and prepare for sleep when the bedroom is more like a NASA control center than a haven of peace and tranquility.

This is especially evident in the younger generation. Research suggests that as a group, teenagers are experiencing sleep deprivation on an unprecedented scale. A contributing factor is the tide of technology flooding into the bedroom of the average teenager.

Home insurance surveys show that most British children have a games console, a TV, a CD player and a DVD player in their bedroom, which one in five parents now ranks as containing more expensive items than the kitchen or living room. The bedroom is also the room teenagers spend most of their time in, and where they tend to hang out with their friends when they call round.

Calling and texting on cell phones is an especially big stealer of sleep time among teenagers. Doctors in the US are becoming very concerned about the effect this has on their health and development.

Dr R Michael Seyffert of the New Jersey Neuroscience Institute at JFK Medical Center in Edison, sees two or three teenagers a month with severe night-time cell phone problems, which he defines as spending two or more hours of texting and phoning each night. He says he has seen more of this in the last five years than ever before, and predicts it is only going to get worse.

Few would disagree with him: as we drift on this tide of technology toward a total 24/7, globally connected society, with an increasing number of gadgets to inform, stimulate and entertain us, the traditional boundaries between activity and sleep are being eroded, and we are likely to see a rise in the number of people experiencing health problems from lack of sleep.
How Much Sleep Do We Need?
Expert opinion varies as to the exact number of hours of sleep we need for optimum health, and some suggest it also depends on individual needs and age. The American Academy of Sleep Medicine says most adults need about seven to eight hours of sleep a night to feel alert and well rested. The National Sleep Foundation also recommends between 7 and 9 hours.

One recent study suggests it could be as little as 6 hours, but more than 9 hours could be just as bad as not enough. Dr Charles Bae, a neurologist at the Cleveland Clinic Sleep Disorders Center in Ohio, and colleagues examined data on 10,654 patients who had competed questionnaires about quality of life, depression and average hours sleep per night.

They were surprised to find that sleeping more than 9 hours a night was linked to a similar reduction in quality of life and increase in symptoms of depression as sleeping less than 6, they said at the SLEEP 2011 conference in Minneapolis.

Children and teenagers need more sleep than adults. Teenagers need at least 9 hours, says the National Sleep Foundation in the US.

Many people do not realize that sleep is far from being a “passive” process where the brain just switches off at night. It is an “active” process involving the whole body and the brain.

Neurotransmitters, chemicals that brain cells use to signal to each other, control whether we are asleep or awake by action on different parts of the brain. In the brainstem, which joins the brain to the spinal cord, brain cells produce serotonin and norepinephrine that keep some parts of the brain active while we are awake, while other brain cells at the base of the brain control signals that lead to sleepiness and falling asleep by “switching off” the ones that keep us awake.

When we sleep we go through several stages of sleep from light to deep sleep, and then the cycle starts over. One of the stages is REM (rapid eye movement), which stimulates the brain regions used in learning. Infants spend much more time in REM sleep than adults. REM is also linked to increased production of proteins and learning of mental skills.

Research also suggests that a chemical called adenosine, which causes drowsiness, gradually accumulates in the bloodstream while we are awake and gradually breaks down during sleep.

Study: Sleep boosts athletic performance

Young basketball players wanting to improve their game should put in long hours — not only of practice time, but also of sleep, U.S. researchers say.

A researcher in the Stanford University Sleep Disorders Clinic and Research Laboratory said her study has shown that basketball players at the college level improved on-court performance by increasing their amount of total sleep time.

“Athletes may be able to optimize training and competition outcomes by identifying strategies to maximize the benefits of sleep,” the researchers wrote in the journal SLEEP.

While it’s long been known lack of sleep can have negative consequences, very few studies have looked at the effect that sleep extension can have on performance, particularly of athletes, a Stanford release said Friday.

Most athletes focus on nutrition and physical training as part of their regimen, Mah said, but competitive athletes at all levels typically do not consider optimizing their sleep and recovery.

“Intuitively many players and coaches know that rest and sleep are important, but it is often the first to be sacrificed,” she said.

Over the course of two basketball seasons, Mah and colleagues worked with 11 healthy players to measure the effects of sleep extension on specific measures of athletic performance. At the end of the study period, the players ran faster 282-foot sprints (16.2 seconds vs. 15.5 seconds) and their shooting accuracy during practice improved, with free throw percentages increasing by 9 percent and 3-point field goal percentage increasing by 9.2 percent.

Sleep is an “unrecognized, but likely critical factor in reaching peak performance,” Mah said.

Home Sleep Testing (HST) Surpasses User Expectations

Sleep Group Solutions (SGS) is pleased to announce the widespread launch of InterpStudies.com, a home sleep study interpretation portal. Home sleep testing has been among the fastest growing segments of the sleep and medical market as it is a viable and cost effective study, similar to the overnight PSG tests done in sleep labs.

Home sleep tests (HST), such as the Embletta is the same HST device used today in many hospitals, Sleep Disorders Centers, VA and Kaiser Systems. These home sleep tests are user friendly, and frequently administered by primary care physicians, internal medicine physicians, dentists and other specialties. Since Embletta supplies many sleep labs with sleep study technology-sleep doctors are familiar with the data and diagnosing is seamless when studies are uploaded to InterpStudies.com. “Interpstudies.com was built with a scalable infrastructure so that companies interested in getting started with home sleep testing do not need to invest in the technology and expensive servers or programs, nor networking with physicians to make a system like this work. With Sleep Group Solutions and the InterpStudies.com network distributors, DME companies, multi-state medical groups and others can work with home sleep testing and offer physician interpretation nationwide with no additional investment.” explains John Nadeau, Sleep Group Solutions, VP.

Being a part of Sleep Group Solutions ‘Complete Home Sleep Testing Solution’ includes:

*Embletta Units: The “gold standard” in home sleep testing, and most other HST devises
*Customized web portal access for you and your customers: Seamless and easy access
*Interpretations by InterpStudies.com

Create your business’s own ‘Complete Home Sleep Testing Solution’ today, with the most cost effective model, and comprehensive company around. Dr. Gregory Carnevale, a sleep doctor in New York, and part creator of InterpStudies.com says “InterpStudies, LLC was born out of this idea to provide home sleep study interpretations efficiently and accurately using the most modern technology, and competitive price.” Dr. Carnevale mentions in a recent interview with the Sleep Magazine, and that’s exactly what InterpStudies delivers.

About Interpstudies.com
InterpStudies is a completely web-based company that transfers (“uploads”) home sleep study data that you provide to our team of “Analyzers” who are board certified sleep physicians. Our Analyzers will send you a report within 5 business days providing you with the most current American Academy of Sleep Medicine guidelines regarding diagnosis and treatment options, including CPAP, oral appliances and other treatments. Interpstudies.com work most often with Remlogic software and Embletta home sleep study equipment. Additional devices can be used including: MediByte Jr, Easy Ambulatory PSG, Somte, Watch-PAT (Prices and acceptance of new clients will change from time to time). The InterpStudy team with help you with all phases of the process including set-up and uploading. Most of this assistance can be done remotely.

About Sleep Group Solution

Sleep Group Solutions is an airway diagnostic technology company serving the needs of physicians and dentists interested in screening, diagnosing and treating sleep apnea and other upper airway disorders. Sleep Group Solutions offers the latest screening and diagnostic equipment solutions for patients with allergy, sinus congestion, rhinitis, deviated septum, nasal polyps, snoring and sleep apnea. SGS offers the most comprehensive dental sleep medicine CE seminars in the industry focused on teaching dentists the protocols needed to make the treatment of snoring and sleep apnea part of their practice. SGS offers sleep study interpretation, oral appliances (Norad Boil & Bite, Respire), online directory 1800SleepLab.com and online marketing at Sleeptest.com. SGS is the manufacturer of the Eccovision Systems Rhinometer and Pharyngometer.

Healthy Nutrition: Menu labels don’t influence student food choices

Menu labels don’t influence student food choices

Who chooses high-vegetable food options over hamburgers? Not college students, if a study is any guide.

Menu labels on college cafeteria food that highlight the nutritional good and the bad of various meal options make no difference in students’ choices, according to the study in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The results add to evidence that despite laws in some cities mandating calorie counts on fast-food menus, nutritional information makes little difference to people when they are eating out.

“Although it is important to inform consumers about the nutritional characteristics of the food offered, providing nutrition information in less healthy food environments such as fast-food restaurants is unlikely to alter consumers’ food choices,” wrote Christine Hoefkens and Wim Verbeke, two of the study’s authors, in an email to Reuters health.

The research team, based at Ghent University in Belgium, asked 224 people who regularly ate at two of the university’s cafeterias to log their diets for several days.

Then the researchers put up posters in the cafeterias that rated meals on how healthy they were — zero stars for the least healthy to three stars for the most healthy. Study participants and other diners didn’t know the posters were part of a study.

Labels next to menu items also highlighted whether a meal was high in salt, calories, saturated fats or vegetables.

Six months later, the participants, who were mostly female undergraduates, again logged what they ate for a few days.

Though the researchers predicted the diners would have responded to the posters and made healthier food choices, they found no difference in the number of meals eaten from each star category.

The results were not surprising, said Lisa Harnack, a professor at the University of Minnesota in Minneapolis, who was not involved in the study.

“In studies, when you ask people how important nutrition is to them when they’re ordering food from a restaurant menu, it’s far less important than a food price or taste. It’s just not a consideration,” she told Reuters Health.

U.S. cities such as New York and Philadelphia require fast-food chain restaurants to include calorie information on menus, while the health care reform bill passed in 2010 will also require that fast-food restaurants and vending machines include nutritional information.

What was concerning about the college student population was that the cafeteria meals were often their main source of food, Hoefkens and Verbeke said.

But others, such as Gail Kaye, the nutrition program director at Ohio State University, said that menu labels might still work to encourage healthier eating if they were paired with a healthier-leaning menu.

In the Ghent study, for instance, 70 percent of the meals earned zero or one stars, both before and after the labels, with the students’ meal choices mirroring the proportion of offerings in each star category.

McCain Foods Backs Healthy Eating Programme for Children

McCain Foods has announced that it will be working with PhunkyFoods, the award-winning schools healthy lifestyles programme, which helps teachers to give curriculum linked lessons in healthy eating and physical activity to primary age schoolchildren.

The company, which employs around 2,000 people in Britain, joins a consortium of Nestlé and Northern Foods in supporting the Harrogate-based programme which was created seven years ago by nutritional consultancy Purely Nutrition.

Bill Bartlett, Corporate Affairs Director for McCain Foods, said: “We are delighted to provide unbranded support for PhunkyFoods’ mission to help children across the country gain a greater understanding of the importance of healthy eating and active lifestyles.

“Many children have very little understanding of where their food even comes from, let alone its nutritional content and, as a responsible food company, we strongly believe we have an important role to play in changing that.”

Mr Bartlett added: “McCain Foods is fully committed to promoting good nutrition, learning and skills and physical activity. We already support a number of initiatives at a local and national level and we welcome the opportunity to strengthen our support in this area still further.”

There are now more than 1,000 schools in England, including seventy-five near McCain’s main UK sites, using the PhunkyFoods programme which subscribes to the National Curriculum.

The programme teaches children up to 11, which is seen as the critical age, healthy lifestyle messages through art, drama, music, play and hands-on food experience.

PhunkyFoods managing director Sorrell Fearnall said she was delighted that PhunkyFoods now had the support of a company as influential as McCain which clearly believed in the values of the programme.

“PhunkyFoods is now supported by a powerful food industry consortium and this will enable the programme to be developed and delivered cost effectively,” she said. “This innovative partnership approach to our work and to delivering public health messages is closely aligned with the Prime Minister’s Big Society values. It is also in tune with Health Secretary Andrew Lansley’s Responsibility Deal between government and industry to make food sold to the public healthier.”

Ms Fearnall added: “Given the severity of the obesity epidemic the PhunkyFoods programme offers an effective solution and could be rolled out to all primary schools in England. Our vision is for all 16,970 primary schools to be running the programme by 2013.”

EU researchers revolted as EFSA clears health claims vault

The European Food Safety Authority last week delivered the fifth batch of article 13, general function health claims bringing the total assessed to 2723. There are just 35 to go – to be published next month in a final mini-batch that will conclude the task begun in August 2008.

The Parma-based agency is no doubt slapping itself on the back for completing an exhaustive and gargantuan task but industry and academia would prefer slapping the face of EFSA’s health claim panelists that have for the best part of three years relentlessly rejected so much nutrition science.

As the negative opinions piled up, along with the more specific claims in article 13.5 (emerging and proprietary science) and article 14 (children’s development and disease risk factor reduction) these same academics, NGOs and industry stakeholders politely disagreed with EFSA’s conclusions among each other, at conferences, in the press and via official channels established by the nutrition and health claims regulation (NHCR).

When these gained no traction with EFSA’s Panel on Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA), the tone became more antagonistic, letters were fired off to MEPs and European Commission figures, the annoyance and frustration palpable when the NDA hosted rare public meetings.

Academics formed groups like the gut health scientists that have banded together (www.gut-health.eu ) to protest the treatment of pre- and probiotic submissions, and are learning that lobbying is not something scientists can afford to ignore in the European nutrition science environment.

A first class organisation (not)

But in the face of a scientific agency that has made it made blatantly clear that its pharma-style approach to nutrition science is not going to change one iota, battered academics and business folk are throwing their hands in the air and the gallows-humour is emerging.

Take this highly ironic missive from prominent probiotic researcher, Glenn Gibson, PhD, from Reading University in the UK.

“I am sure that EFSA are a first class organisation who know exactly what they are doing by putting the science first. I have to admire their stance in protecting consumers by trying to ensure that all valid pro and prebiotic products will disappear from Europe within a few years.”

Or this from Gregor Reid, PhD, the Canada-based researcher who has spent more than 20 years researching the ability of probiotics to benefit vaginal health, who was stunned last week when EFSA concluded vaginal health was not a nutrition matter.

“I have sent the EFSA committee a picture of the female anatomy. It seems they are unaware of the vagina’s location. Next, they will receive a large sack of mail, actually close to one billion letters. They will believe it’s fan mail and get excited for the first time in five years, but it will be from women who suffer from vaginal and bladder infections, letting them appreciate the failings of drugs, diagnostics and management practices approved by EFSA’s drug colleagues.”

Ouch.

Professor Reid, like a lot of researchers in the area has reached his tether, and no amount of consoling from the NDA about how the experts on the panel are bound by the regulation, and that research is one thing, but panel opinions are another is going to change that.

In the meantime, as the conspiracy theories grow about hidden agendas especially in the absence of a single minority opinion among all those 1000s of opinions, the NHCR’s effect among European healthy foods, ingredients and supplements purveyors comes into view.

“We’re off to Asia,” the owner of a promising French fruit extract firm told NutraIngredients at a recent conference, as he left the hall where an NDA panellist was telling attendees about the NDA’s approach to guarantee only strong claims made it to market.

“We give up on Europe.”