Childhood Obesity and Sleep Issues

A sleepless night makes us more likely to reach for doughnuts or pizza than for whole grains and leafy green vegetables, suggests a new study from UC Berkeley that examines the brain regions that control food choices. The findings shed new light on the link between poor sleep and obesity.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), UC Berkeley researchers scanned the brains of 23 healthy young adults, first after a normal night's sleep and next, after a sleepless night.

They found impaired activity in the sleep-deprived brain's frontal lobe, which governs complex decision-making, but increased activity in deeper brain centers that respond to rewards.

Moreover, the participants favoured unhealthy snack and junk foods when they were sleep deprived.

Matthew Walker

"What we have discovered is that high-level brain regions required for complex judgments and decisions become blunted by a lack of sleep, while more primal brain structures that control motivation and desire are amplified," said Matthew Walker, a UC Berkeley professor of psychology and neuroscience and senior author of the study published today (Tuesday, Aug. 6) in the journal Nature Communications.

Moreover, he added, "high-calorie foods also became significantly more desirable when participants were sleep-deprived.

This combination of altered brain activity and decision-making may help explain why people who sleep less also tend to be overweight or obese."

Previous studies have linked poor sleep to greater appetites, particularly for sweet and salty foods, but the latest findings provide a specific brain mechanism explaining why food choices change for the worse following a sleepless night, Walker said.

Stephanie Greer

"These results shed light on how the brain becomes impaired by sleep deprivation, leading to the selection of more unhealthy foods and, ultimately, higher rates of obesity," said Stephanie Greer, a doctoral student in Walker's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory and lead author of the paper.

Another co-author of the study is Andrea Goldstein, also a doctoral student in Walker's lab.

In this newest study, researchers measured brain activity as participants viewed a series of 80 food images that ranged from high-to low-calorie and healthy and unhealthy, and rated their desire for each of the items.

As an incentive, they were given the food they most craved after the MRI scan.

Food choices presented in the experiment ranged from fruits and vegetables, such as strawberries, apples and carrots, to high-calorie burgers, pizza and doughnuts.

The latter are examples of the more popular choices following a sleepless night.

On a positive note, Walker said, the findings indicate that "getting enough sleep is one factor that can help promote weight control by priming the brain mechanisms governing appropriate food choices."

Why Finnish babies mostly sleep in cardboard boxes

For 75 years, Finland’s expectant mothers have been given a box by the state.

It’s like a starter kit of clothes, sheets and toys that can even be used as a bed, and some say it helped Finland achieve one of the world’s lowest infant mortality rates.

It’s a tradition that dates back to the 1930s and it’s designed to give all children in Finland, no matter what background they’re from, an equal start in life.

The maternity package – a gift from the government – is available to all expectant mothers.

It contains bodysuits, a sleeping bag, outdoor gear, bathing products for the baby, as well as nappies, bedding and a small mattress.

With the mattress in the bottom, the box becomes a baby’s first bed. Many children, from all social backgrounds, have their first naps within the safety of the box’s four cardboard walls.

Mothers have a choice between taking the box, or a cash grant, currently set at 140 euros, but 95% opt for the box as it’s worth much more.

The tradition dates back to 1938. To begin with, the scheme was only available to families on low incomes, but that changed in 1949.

Heidi Liesivesi

“Not only was it offered to all mothers-to-be but new legislation meant to get the grant, or maternity box, they had to visit a doctor or municipal pre-natal clinic before their fourth month of pregnancy,” says Heidi Liesivesi, who works at Kela – the Social Insurance Institution of Finland.

So the box provided mothers with what they needed to look after their baby, but it also helped steer pregnant women into the arms of the doctors and nurses of Finland’s nascent welfare state.

In the 1930s Finland was a poor country and infant mortality was high – 65 out of 1,000 babies died. But the figures improved rapidly in the decades that followed.

Mika Gissler, a professor at the National Institute for Health and Welfare in Helsinki, gives several reasons for this – the maternity box and pre-natal care for all women in the 1940s, followed in the 60s by a national health insurance system and the central hospital network.

• Mattress, mattress cover, undersheet, duvet cover, blanket, sleeping bag/quilt
• Box itself doubles as a crib
• Snowsuit, hat, insulated mittens and booties
• Light hooded suit and knitted overalls
• Socks and mittens, knitted hat and balaclava
• Bodysuits, romper suits and leggings in unisex colours and patterns
• Hooded bath towel, nail scissors, hairbrush, toothbrush, bath thermometer, nappy cream, wash cloth
• Cloth nappy set and muslin squares
• Picture book and teething toy
• Bra pads, condoms
• At 75 years old, the box is now an established part of the Finnish rite of passage towards motherhood, uniting generations of women.

Reija Klemetti

Reija Klemetti, a 49-year-old from Helsinki, remembers going to the post office to collect a box for one of her six children.

“It was lovely and exciting to get it and somehow the first promise to the baby,” she says. “My mum, friends and relatives were all eager to see what kind of things were inside and what colours they’d chosen for that year.”

Her mother-in-law, aged 78, relied heavily on the box when she had the first of her four children in the 60s. At that point she had little idea what she would need, but it was all provided.

More recently, Klemetti’s daughter Solja, aged 23, shared the sense of excitement that her mother had once experienced, when she took possession of the “first substantial thing” prior to the baby itself. She now has two young children.

“It’s easy to know what year babies were born in, because the clothing in the box changes a little every year. It’s nice to compare and think, ‘Ah that kid was born in the same year as mine’,” says Titta Vayrynen, a 35-year-old mother with two young boys.

For some families, the contents of the box would be unaffordable if they were not free of charge, though for Vayrynen, it was more a question of saving time than money.

She was working long hours when pregnant with her first child, and was glad to be spared the effort of comparing prices and going out shopping.

“There was a recent report saying that Finnish mums are the happiest in the world, and the box was one thing that came to my mind. We are very well taken care of, even now when some public services have been cut down a little,” she says.

When she had her second boy, Ilmari, Vayrynen opted for the cash grant instead of the box and just re-used the clothes worn by her first, Aarni.

A boy can pass on clothes to a girl too, and vice versa, because the colours are deliberately gender-neutral.

The contents of the box have changed a good deal over the years, reflecting changing times.

During the 30s and 40s, it contained fabric because mothers were accustomed to making the baby’s clothes.

But during World War II, flannel and plain-weave cotton were needed by the Defence Ministry, so some of the material was replaced by paper bed sheets and swaddling cloth.

The 50s saw an increase in the number of ready-made clothes, and in the 60s and 70s these began to be made from new stretchy fabrics.

In 1968 a sleeping bag appeared, and the following year disposable nappies featured for the first time.

Not for long. At the turn of the century, the cloth nappies were back in and the disposable variety were out, having fallen out of favour on environmental grounds.

Encouraging good parenting has been part of the maternity box policy all along.

“Babies used to sleep in the same bed as their parents and it was recommended that they stop,” says Panu Pulma, professor in Finnish and Nordic History at the University of Helsinki. “Including the box as a bed meant people started to let their babies sleep separately from them.”

At a certain point, baby bottles and dummies were removed to promote breastfeeding.

“One of the main goals of the whole system was to get women to breastfeed more,” Pulma says. And, he adds, “It’s happened.”

He also thinks including a picture book has had a positive effect, encouraging children to handle books, and, one day, to read.

And in addition to all this, Pulma says, the box is a symbol. A symbol of the idea of equality, and of the importance of children.

Sleep Reinforces Learning: Children’s Brains Transform Subconsciously

During sleep, our brains store what we have learned during the day a process even more effective in children than in adults. 

Credit: Monkey Business / Fotolia

During sleep, our brains store what we have learned during the day ‒ a process even more effective in children than in adults, new research shows.

It is important for children to get enough sleep. Children's brains transform subconsciously learned material into active knowledge while they sleep -- even more effectively than adult brains do, according to a study by Dr. Ines Wilhelm of the University of Tübingen's Institute for Medical Psychology and Behavioral Neurobiology. Dr Wilhelm and her Swiss and German colleagues have published their results in Nature Neuroscience.

Studies of adults have shown that sleeping after learning supports the long-term storage of the material learned, says Dr Wilhelm. During sleep, memory is turned into a form that makes future learning easier; implicit knowledge becomes explicit and therefore becomes more easily transferred to other areas.

Children sleep longer and deeper, and they must take on enormous amounts of information every day. In the current study, the researchers examined the ability to form explicit knowledge via an implicitly-learned motor task.

Children between 8 and 11, and young adults, learned to guess the predetermined series of actions -- without being aware of the existence of the series itself. Following a night of sleep or a day awake, the subjects' memories were tested.

The result: after a night's sleep, both age groups could remember a larger number of elements from the row of numbers than those who had remained awake in the interim. And the children were much better at it than the adults.

"In children, much more efficient explicit knowledge is generated during sleep from a previously learned implicit task, says Wilhelm. And the children's extraordinary ability is linked with the large amount of deep sleep they get at night.

"The formation of explicit knowledge appears to be a very specific ability of childhood sleep, since children typically benefit as much or less than adults from sleep when it comes to other types of memory tasks."

Journal Reference: Ines Wilhelm, Michael Rose, Kathrin I Imhof, Bjöern Rasch, Christian Büechel, Jan Born. The sleeping child outplays the adult's capacity to convert implicit into explicit knowledge. Nature Neuroscience, 2013; DOI: 10.1038/nn.3343

Modafinil and Sleep: A Sociologocal Speculation

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution is a major proponent of the Great Stagnation thesis: that new innovations are not having the same impact on productivity as those we saw in the previous 150 years.

Think of iPads versus electricity and cloud computing versus the railroad.

Hence, we can expect to see slowing growth in GDP per capita as future productivity gains will take much more effort to unlock.

This week The Economist took up this line of thought with a thorough briefing on the subject that broadly agreed with Cowen, although with some equivocation.

Overall, I think the argument has a lot of merit but there may be at least one more piece of low hanging fruit: a vast reduction in our need for sleep.

The American Time Use survey reports that an average American work day includes 8.8 hours of work and 7.6 hours of sleep.

Sleep is the second largest single use of time. However, new drugs such as Modafinil appear to vastly reduce the need for sleep without significant side effects (at least so far).

Based on reports from users, it seems that people could realistically [edit: potentially (see update)] cut their sleep requirements to as few as 2.5 hours a night without a decrease in mental acuity. That gives us another 5 hours to distribute over the day.

Workers would probably prefer to allocate the bulk of that extra time to leisure but I doubt employers will let that happen.

Let's make a generous breakdown and give work an extra 3 hours and let workers spend another 2 as they wish. This increases working hours by around 34% and potentially increases leisure time by 80%.

This increases the number of hours a worker spends at work from around 1800 hours a year now to about 2,400.

The argument against the use of drugs such as Modafinil, is that a rapid introduction of these pills would amount to an increase in the labour supply and cause a fall in hourly wages or unemployment.

However, it's likely that individuals would generally still see an increase in their overall income and their additional leisure time (2 hours extra) would allow this to be translated into an increase in demand in the economy through increased consumption.

 Overall the transition to a sleepless world seems beneficial to humanity. There's nothing special about the 7 hours of sleep we get right now and I think people would rightly be opposed to a change that made everyone spend an extra hour asleep every day.

Caveats:

• I've never used Modafinil. This is because I don't know where to buy it, I have some moral qualms about using it when the rest of the world is not and because it is still a bit early to conclude that there are no long term health effects; 
• Some people I've talked to have raised the issue of environmental damage. I think the total environmental impact of a sleepless world could be positive or negative but surely the damage would be lower per unit of output (because there are a lot of fixed carbon outputs per work day such as commuting and building overheads). At the very least, a sleepless world looks like a more environmentally friendly growth strategy; 
• This argument is premised on the safety of these drugs. Clearly the calculus will change if they are shown to have negative long term consequences; 
• For those people who already work long hours with little sleep, these drugs should at least make that lifestyle less dangerous. There is convincing evidence that chronic lack of sleep is harmful in normal circumstances; 
• The precise amount of sleep that a Modafinil user can get by with seems to vary but all sources I've seen suggest it is dramatically lower; 
• The short term costs of a rapid change might be substantial so gradual adoption is probably preferable from the standpoint of welfare.

Real the full article here

Children with Sleep Related Behavioural Problems

Credit: Dream-angus.com

Children with sleep-related breathing problems (such as snoring or apnea) frequently have concurrent behavioural sleep problems (such as waking repeatedly) -- and vice versa, according to research led by a scientist at Albert Einstein College of Medicine of Yeshiva University.

However, children with one type of sleep problem are not routinely evaluated and treated for the other.

The findings suggest that pediatricians, respiratory specialists and sleep medicine specialists should work together whenever a sleep problem is suspected.

The study was published Dec. 4 in the online edition of Behavioral Sleep Medicine and is reprinted from materials provided by Albert Einstein College of Medicine, via Newswise.

"Our findings should raise awareness among parents and physicians that if a child is sleeping poorly, they should delve deeper to see if there is an unrecognized respiratory-related sleep problem," said senior author Karen Bonuck, Ph.D., professor of family and social medicine and of obstetrics & gynecology and women's health at Einstein.

"The best way to make sure this happens is by taking an interdisciplinary approach to the care of these children."

According to Dr. Bonuck, little was known about the co-occurrence of behavioural sleep problems and sleep-disordered breathing (SDB).

She and her colleagues carried out this study to find the prevalence and duration of behavioral sleep problems and of SDB and the rate at which they co-occur in a large, population-based sample of children (aged 18 months to nearly 5 years).

The researchers analyzed data on more than 11,000 children enrolled in the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children, a project based in the United Kingdom.

In response to mailed questionnaires, parents reported their child's snoring and apnea at 18, 30, 42, and 57 months of age.

For the same time intervals, parents were also asked whether their child refused to go to bed, and whether they regularly woke early, had difficulty sleeping, had nightmares, got up after being put to bed, woke in the night, or awakened after a few hours.

Children with five or more of these behaviours simultaneously were considered to have a clinically significant behavioral sleep problem.

The prevalence of behavioural sleep problems over the 18 to 57-month age reporting period ranged from 15 to 27 percent with a peak at 30 months of age.

Among children with behavioural sleep problems, 26 to 40 percent had habitual SDB, again peaking at 30 months.

Among children who had habitual SDB, 25 to 37 percent also had a behavioural sleep problem, peaking at 30 months.

While it is unlikely that behavioural sleep problems cause SDB, the converse may be true, noted Dr. Bonuck.

Frequent night wakings initially related to SDB may be reinforced by the parents' anxious responses. These behaviours may, in turn, develop into a persistent behavioural sleep problem, despite adequate treatment for SDB.

"It's important that we pay attention to how our children are sleeping," said Dr. Bonuck. "There's ample evidence that anything that interrupts sleep can negatively affect a child's emotional, cognitive, behavioural and academic development. Fortunately, snoring and apnea are highly treatable, and there are many effective interventions for behavioral sleep problems."

For more information on Sleep and Sleep-related Behavioural problems in children, visit Dream Angus - a qualified children's sleep consultancy practice based in the UK and Europe.

Wake Up and Dream - Radiolab

Matt Kielty introduces us to Steve Volk, a city reporter in Philadelphia who, for decades, was plagued by a recurring nightmare.

It popped up whenever Steve was going through a stressful time, and it always played out exactly the same way but no matter how self-aware Steve was about his most current set of anxieties, and no matter how hard he tried to rationalize and explain away the dream...he couldn't make it stop.

Then one year, Steve started working on a book about topics at the edge of science, and along the way he stumbled into lucid dreaming.

Pretty soon, Steve was reading through old sleep studies conducted by a scientist named Stephen LaBerge, and he was starting to wonder if lucid dreaming might not be so near the fringe after all.

So he called up LaBerge's assistant and began training himself on a set of techniques that would eventually help him put his inner demon to bed.

Read more:
Fringe-ology, by Steve Volk
Exploring the World of Lucid Dreaming, by Stephen LaBerge

The Science of Lucid Dreaming - YouTube

Have you ever wanted to take control of your dreams? Now you can, with the science of how to lucid dream! With these simple steps, and a little practice, you'll soon experience sleep like never before.

Sleep: Biologists uncover the dynamic between biological clock and neuronal activity

Biologists at New York University have uncovered one way that biological clocks control neuronal activity -- a discovery that sheds new light on sleep-wake cycles and offers potential new directions for research into therapies to address sleep disorders and jetlag.

"The findings answer a significant question -- how biological clocks drive the activity of clock neurons, which, in turn, regulate behavioural rhythms," explained Justin Blau, an associate professor in NYU's Department of Biology and the study's senior author.

Their findings appear in the Journal of Biological Rhythms.

Scientists have known that our biological clocks control neuronal activity but not previously understood is how this process occurs -- that is, how does information from biological clocks drive rhythms in the electrical activity of pacemaker neurons that, in turn, drives daily rhythms?

To understand this mechanism, the researchers examined the biological, or circadian, clocks of Drosophila fruit flies, which are commonly used for research in this area.

Earlier studies of "clock genes" in fruit flies allowed the identification of similarly functioning genes in humans.

In their study, the researchers focused on eight master pacemaker neurons located in the central brain -- these neurons set the timing of the daily transitions between sleep and wake in the fly.

Specifically, they were able to isolate these neurons from animals and identify sets of genes differentially expressed between dawn and dusk.

In a series of follow-up experiments, they concentrated on one gene, Ir, whose expression was found to be much higher at dusk than at dawn and much more highly expressed in pacemaker neurons than in the rest of the brain.

Ir encodes a potassium channel that helps set the resting state of neurons -- and so its rhythmic expression makes it an excellent candidate to help link the biological clock to pacemaker neuron activity.

High levels of Ir expression at dusk should make it much harder for pacemaker neurons to signal than the low levels seen at dawn, a finding that fits with earlier studies showing that pacemaker neurons fire more at dawn than at dusk.

The authors also found that genetic manipulations that either increase or decrease Ir levels affect behavioral rhythms. Perhaps more interestingly, these were also associated with changes in the timing and strength of oscillations in the core clock.

"Biology is never as simple as we imagine it will be," explained Blau. "We were looking for an output of the biological clock that would link the core clock to neuronal activity. Ir seems to do this, but it also, remarkably, feeds back to regulate the core clock itself. Feedback loops seem to be deeply engrained into the biological clock and presumably help these clocks work so well."

The Importance of Practice and Sleep for Musicians - Molly Gebrian

Musicians v. Non-Musicians - Molly Gebrian

Most of studies on changes in neuronal activity only last a week or two at the most. 

It’s not logistically feasible to have people coming into the lab for weeks or months on end to have their brains looked at, so, some neuro-scientists think musicians are an ideal population to find out what happens when you practice a motor task repeatedly for years and years.

One of the most obvious changes is that, especially in string players and keyboard players, the portion of the motor cortex devoted to the fingers is much bigger.

At the same time, the neurons in this cortical network are much more efficient.

These two things happen because, presumably, over time, lots and lots of neurons get connected by synapses that wouldn’t normally be connected, and the neuronal ensembles that result from these new connections get much better at what they do because they get to practice everyday.

A musician’s brain is so efficient at things like scales and other simple patterns that are automatic to us that entire brain areas don’t get engaged in a musician’s brain that are very active in a non-musician or amateur’s brain.

Two of these areas are the pre-motor cortex and the supplementary motor area.

These are involved in planning complex movements and coordinating timing, but when musicians play scales or simple rhythm patterns, these areas barely do anything at all.

The only other complex motor tasks that show this lack of activation are overlearned skills such as writing.

What this means is that our basic set of tools and skills as musicians are so automatic that our brain barely has to do anything to execute them.

But what this also means is that when you learn a new skill, especially something like the extended techniques used in contemporary music, there is a necessary period of days or weeks that your brain needs to rewire itself and for new neuronal ensembles and circuits to form.

The other amazing thing that happens in musicians’ brains, as new synapses form, is that our motor cortex gets connected to our auditory cortex.

Think about how strange that is. For most people, what they hear doesn’t cause them to have automatic associations with movement, and moving certainly doesn’t cause them to hear things in their heads.

But if a musician listens to a recording of a piece they know and play well, not only does their auditory cortex light up on a brain scan (fMRI), but the portion of their motor cortex devoted to their fingers does too.

Furthermore, neuroscientists have shown that the motor cortex isn’t just lighting up as a whole unit – the areas that control the individual fingers light up in the order and timing they would to execute the correct fingering (Bangert and Altenmuller, 2003).

NB: When these kinds of studies are done, measures are taken to make sure the musicians aren’t physically moving their fingers.

The opposite happens too: if you tell a pianist to play a piece silently on a tabletop, their auditory cortex lights up as it would if they were actually playing (and hearing) the piece.

These finding just serve to highlight how important it is to always keep singing in your head as you play and to be really clear about what you want to hear.

It affects what comes out of your fingers and arms and mouth, not in some strange metaphysical way, but because your auditory cortex is connected to your motor cortex.

If you aren’t clear on what you want to hear, the auditory cortex has a very limited message to send to your fingers.

The Role of Sleep in Learning

If all of these changes have to take place in your brain before you can play something fluidly and competently, is there anything you can do to speed up the process?

The answer depends on how much you want to speed it up, because it turns out that a very important component of motor (and auditory) learning is sleep.

Matthew Walker and his colleagues here in Boston have done a number of experiments on motor learning during sleep (Walker, et al, 2002, 2003, 2005).

Their basic experimental paradigm involves three groups of people. The first group gets taught a finger tapping task (4-1-2-3-4 where 4 is the pinky finger and 1 is the index finger) at 10am, which they then practice and are tested on multiple times throughout the day.

The second group gets taught and practices the same task at 10am, but they don’t get tested on it again until 10pm.

Then, they are sent home to sleep and tested the next morning at 10am. The final group is trained on the task at 10pm and has their first retest at 10am the next morning. What they found is astonishing.

The first group gets gradually better throughout the day at a rate that you can predict.

The second group shows the same linear increase during the day, but when you test them the next morning, there is a huge jump in their performance (measured by faster sequence execution without loss of accuracy).

The same goes for the group that was trained at 10pm and then retested for the first time the next day – they got much better overnight, even though all they were doing was sleeping!

NB: Everyone was instructed not to practice when they went home.

Even more surprising, there is absolutely no relationship between how much better a person got during daytime practicing and how much better they got after sleeping.

How is this possible and what does it mean? Researchers have concluded that the last result means that practice-dependent learning and sleep-dependent learning are independent processes.

This doesn’t mean, of course, that if you don’t practice, you’ll get better just by sleeping but it does mean that you shouldn’t underestimate the importance of sleep in learning, especially when it’s brand new.

Knowing this can help you use your practice time much more efficiently.

Say, for instance, you have a lot of music to learn for orchestra and not a lot of time to practice it.

You will be much better off practicing your orchestra music for 15 minutes a day until the concert, rather than “wood-shedding” the day before the concert.

Why? Because you’ll have all those nights of sleep for your brain to process the new music. So ultimately, you’ll be able to play the music better with fewer hours of actual practice.

When you’re learning a new piece that you have ample time to practice, keeping the role of sleep in mind can also help you practice more efficiently.

The primary thing that improved with sleep for the people in these studies was speed (at least that’s what the experimenters were measuring).

Since the amount of daytime improvement and learning after sleep aren’t related, spending hours and hours on a really tricky fast passage on the first few days of practicing isn’t as efficient as getting it fluent at a slower tempo and then just leaving it until the next day.

The next day, not only will you be able to play it faster, but you’ll spend much less time getting it to a faster tempo than you would’ve the day before.

No one probably would’ve guessed that just sleeping would make you better at playing your instrument, but researchers have shown that it does, over and over again.

The effects of sleep are really hard to study, but in this case, researchers think they know how it works.

Sleep is divided into two broad types: REM sleep and non-REM sleep (or NREM sleep). REM sleep is when you have dreams.

During what is called Stage 2 NREM sleep, however, electrical brain events occur that are called sleep spindles.

During a sleep spindle, there is a huge burst of electrical activity in a population of neurons that causes massive amounts of calcium to enter those cells.

Calcium is what causes all the changes discussed earlier, from strengthening and weakening synapses, to making new synapses, to synchronizing the firing of neuronal ensembles.

Sleep spindles reach peak intensity late in the night and have been shown to increase following motor learning during the day.

The study by Matthew Walker and his colleagues at Harvard Medical School also found that the percentage of improvement after sleeping strongly correlated with the amount of time the person spent in Stage 2 NREM sleep in the final quarter of the night, precisely when sleep spindle activity is at its peak.

This finding also highlights the importance of getting enough sleep while you’re learning something new.

A full night of sleep was defined as 8 hours in this study, and it was only the last two hours that were really important for learning.

Getting a full night’s sleep may be even more important that we realize.

Read the full article here: http://madisonjazz.files.wordpress.com/

Goodnight iPad, by Ann Droyd - YouTube

Last month, the web watched with equal parts amazement, amusement, and sheer horror as a one-year-old thought a magazine was an iPad and just last week, we were unsurprised to learn that a presenter’s toddler cousin walked up to a TV screen and tried to “swipe” it like a giant iPad.

So we find ourselves delighted by the release of Goodnight iPad — “a parody for the next generation” by Ann Droyd, winking at the long-gone quiet era of the Goodnight Moon classic and “adapting” it for the age of LCD WiFi HD TVs and Facebook.

10 Things that New Mothers should know

Unfortunately, no matter how many books you read or how prepared you feel you may be, babies have their own special way of being and you have to adapt to it.

From your breastfeeding troubles and postpartum bleeding to baby’s colic and indecipherable crying. Here are some young mothers' most unexpected, unforgettable moments as a new parent.

Breastfeeding isn’t always easy.
If you’re not getting the hang of breastfeeding right away, don’t beat yourself up. Despite what you may have heard, it doesn’t always come so naturally.

Whether baby’s not latching right or you can’t seem to boost your milk supply, there are a number of potential frustrations and they’re all totally normal.

Don;t give up! Make sure you’ve read up on possible solutions to your breastfeeding problems; you may find that a small change to your routine is a real lifesaver.

It’s also important to realize that you’re not alone. First, talk to a health professional. Failing that chat with other new mamas or join a support group.

Most newborn clothes will go to waste.
Yep, despite all the sleep deprivation and constant exhaustion, those first couple months sure do fly by.

The likelihood that baby will get a decent run out of every newborn outfit in his closet is pretty slim.

So don’t go crazy registering for or buying up tons of adorable outfits in newborn sizes and whatever you do, don’t go nuts with newborn shoes either, cute as they are.

Baby will likely spend a lot of those first three months in and out of romper suits instead of fancy outfits, and you’ll be changing him so much, thanks to spit-up and diaper mishaps that most of them will hardly see the light of day.

Newborns poops are noisy and messy.
Noisy, smelly, and yes, sometimes explosive, newborn poops are certainly not for the weak-stomached.

Something else to keep in mind is that Baby’s poop will be pretty liquidy in that newborn stage, meaning it won’t take much to send it flying. Always carry wipes and a change of baby clothes.

Going back to work is hard.
Heading back to work is rough on every mother and missing your baby when you’re away can be overwhelming.

Before you head back to work, make sure you set up a childcare situation that makes you 100 percent comfortable, whether it’s a live-in nanny, a daycare system, or a friend or relative.

Then do what you can to stay in the loop during the day by asking your nanny to give you certain updates or calling the daycare periodically to check in.

Keeping the lines of communication open will make you feel less disconnected from baby.

"Getting to know and like" baby can take a while.
It’s totally normal to have a hard time adjusting to motherhood at first, not everything comes naturally and not everyone snaps into “mom mode” the second after they give birth.

Same goes for feeling that instant connection to baby. Give yourself a break, and remember your body is going through a lot of hormonal shifts after delivery that will eventually pass.

But do remember that if the feelings don’t go away, or if they’re too difficult to handle on your own, talk to a health professional who will help you get to the root of the problem.

You will bleed postpartum.
We know, donning those life-raft-sized pads in the weeks after delivery is no picnic for anyone, but at least you can take comfort in the fact that they’re only temporary.

Your bleeding should last only for a few days max and if it doesn’t, contact your doctor. After that, it may change to a discharge that will last up to several weeks.

You won’t have time for anything else.
While having a baby definitely uses most of your “me” time in the beginning, but you need to be able to set up a system with your partner or relatives, for doing things like basic chores and running errands.

Try devising a plan of attack well before baby arrives and vowing to stick to it as much as possible. Sure, it may be easier said than done before baby comes, but you need to make sure that some semblance of routine is kept up, if only to maintain your relationship with your partner and your own sanity.

You won’t always know what your baby's cry means.
It’s definitely frustrating and emotional when you feel like you’ve tried everything to calm baby and nothing works.

The good news is that you can be taught by a health professional and you’ll eventually come to learn exactly what baby wants the more time you spend with her.

Pay attention to the way the baby cries. A low-pitched cry often means she’s hungry, whereas a high-pitched one means she might be in pain, especially if she draws her knees up at the same time.

If her cries build in intensity, she may be tired and if she’s just plain bored, her cry may sound like a passing whimper.

Baby may have sleeping problems.
It can take a few weeks for baby to sort out the difference between night and day. If it continues too long then your health and your relationship with your partner will suffer. Seek advice as early as possible.

Take baby outside for at least an hour each day, the new experiences will stimulate her. Then, at nighttime, prior to going to bed, avoid any stimulation at all, no light, no singing, and no talking.

Sleep is a specialist subject and for more key information on sleep issues and their resolution contact Deirdre at Dream-Angus

Colic is a nightmare.
The dreaded colic (or reflux) affects up to 25 percent of infants. Several reasons can cause this and in most cases these have to be determined by a health professional.

Some colic /reflux goes un-diagnosed and is put down to a 'grumbling' baby or one that doesn't sleep but experienced health support professionals should be able to detect it.

Contact Deirdre at Dream-Angus for more information on Colic /Reflux, as well as breast-feeding, sleep and feeding.

The Human body's Circadian biological clock: Scientists redraw the blueprint

The discovery of a major gear in the biological clock that tells the body when to sleep and metabolize food may lead to new drugs to treat sleep problems and metabolic disorders, including diabetes.

Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, led by Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk's Gene Expression Laboratory, showed that two cellular switches found on the nucleus of mouse cells, known as REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ, are essential for maintaining normal sleeping and eating cycles and for metabolism of nutrients from food.

The findings, reported March 29 in Nature, describe a powerful link between circadian rhythms and metabolism and suggest a new avenue for treating disorders of both systems, including jet lag, sleep disorders, obesity and diabetes.

"This fundamentally changes our knowledge about the workings of the circadian clock and how it orchestrates our sleep-wake cycles, when we eat and even the times our bodies metabolize nutrients," says Evans.

"Nuclear receptors can be targeted with drugs, which suggests we might be able to target REV-ERBα and β to treat disorders of sleep and metabolism."

Nurses, emergency personnel and others who work shifts that alter the normal 24-hour cycle of waking and sleeping are at much higher risk for a number of diseases, including metabolic disorders such as diabetes.

To address this, scientists are trying to understand precisely how the biological clock works and uncover possible targets for drugs that could adjust the circadian rhythm in people with sleep disorders and circadian-associated metabolic disorders.

In mammals, the circadian timing system is orchestrated by a central clock in the brain and subsidiary clocks in most other organs.

The master clock in the brain is set by light and determines the overall diurnal or nocturnal preference of an animal, including sleep-wake cycles and feeding behaviour.

Scientists knew that two genes, BMAL1 and CLOCK, worked together at the core of the clock's molecular machinery to activate the network of circadian genes.

In this way, BMAL1 acts like the accelerator on a car, activating genes to rev up our physiology each morning so that we are alert, hungry and physically active.

Prior to this work REV-ERBα and β were thought to play only a minor role in these cycles, possibly working together to slow CLOCK-BMAL1 activity to make minor adjustments to keep the clock running on time.

However, genetic studies of two genes with similar functions can be very difficult and thus the real importance of REV-ERBα and β remained mysterious.

The Salk scientists got around this hurdle by developing mice in which both genes could be turned off in the liver at any point by giving them an estrogen derivative called tamoxifen.

Now mice could develop normally to adulthood, at which point the scientists could turn off REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ in their livers, an organ crucial to maintaining the correct balance of sugar and fat in blood, to see what effects it had on circadian rhythms and metabolism.

"When we turned off both receptors, the animal's biological clocks went haywire," says Han Cho, first author on the paper and a postdoctoral researcher in Evan's Salk laboratory.

"The mice started running on their exercise wheels when they should have been resting. This suggested REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ aren't an auxiliary system that makes minor adjustments, but an integral part of the clock's core mechanism. Without them, the clock can't function properly."

Digging more deeply into the clockworks, the Salk scientists mapped out the genes that the REV-ERBs control to keep the body operating on the right schedule, finding that they overlap with hundreds of the same genes controlled by CLOCK and BMAL1.

This and other findings suggested that the REV-ERBs, act as a break on the genes BMAL1 activates.

"We thought that the core of the clock was an accelerator, and that all REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ did was to pull the foot off that pedal," says Evans.

"What we've shown is that these receptors act directly as a break to slow clock activity. Now we've got a accelerator and a break, each equally important in creating the daily rhythm of the clock."

The scientists also found that the REV-ERBs control the activity of hundreds of genes involved metabolism, including those responsible for controlling levels of fats and bile.

The mice in which REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ were turned off had high levels of fat and sugar in their blood, common problems in people with metabolic disorders.

"This explains how our cellular metabolism is tied to daylight cycles determined by the movements of the sun and the earth," says Satchidananda Panda, an associate professor in Salk's Regulatory Biology Laboratory and co-author on the paper.

"Now we want to find ways of leveraging this mechanism to fix a person's metabolic rhythms when they are disrupted by travel, shift work or sleep disorders."

Provided by Salk Institute

Sleep: Accentuating the positive memories

Sleep plays a powerful role in preserving our memories, but while recent research shows that wakefulness may cloud memories of negative or traumatic events, a new study has found that wakefulness also degrades positive memories.

Sleep, it seems, protects positive memories just as it does negative ones, and that has important implications for the treatment of post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“The study of how sleep helps us remember and process emotional information is still young,” says Alexis Chambers of the University of Notre Dame.

Past work has focused on the role of negative memories for sleep, in particular how insomnia is a healthy biological response for people to reduce negative memories and emotions associated with a traumatic event.

Two new studies presented this week at a meeting of cognitive neuroscientists in Chicago are exploring the flip side: how sleep treats the positive.

“Only if we investigate all the possibilities within this field will we ever fully understand the processes underlying our sleep, memory, and emotions,” Chambers says.

Protecting the positive

To test how sleep affects positive memories, Rebecca Spencer of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and her colleagues split 70 young adults into two groups, one that got to sleep overnight and one that had to stay awake.

Both groups viewed images of positive items, such as puppies and flowers, and neutral items, such as furniture or dinner plates.

The researchers then tested the participants’ memories of and emotional reactions to the images 12 hours later, after either the period of sleep or wake.

They found that “sleep enhances our emotionally positive memories while these memories decay over wake,” Spencer says.

“Positive memories may even be prioritized for processing during sleep.” But while people remembered the positive images more than the neutral ones, their emotional response to the positive images did not change over sleep versus wake.

“It doesn’t matter if you went to sleep or stayed awake, what you thought was a ’9′ i.e. really great, you still think is a ’9′,” she says.

The results, she says, could have significant implications for treating post-traumatic stress disorder, as using wakefulness could have the unintended effect of degrading of positive memories in addition to negative memories.

“It suggests that insomnia should be treated at some point after a traumatic event – perhaps a few days/weeks depending on the level of trauma, so that these positive memories can be strengthened and eventually outweigh the negative,” Spencer says.

Read more: Accentuating the positive memories for sleep | ScienceBlog.com

Sleep Apnea and Snoring in Children Linked to Behavioural Problems

Children with night-time breathing problems such as snoring or sleep apnea are more likely to develop behavioural problems such as hyperactivity, anxiety or aggressiveness and have problems with peer relationships, according to a new study in Pediatrics.

Children with "sleep-disordered breathing" such as snoring and sleep apnea were 40 percent to 100 percent more likely to develop behavioural issues by age 7 than the children who breathed normally through the night, researchers found.

The study surveyed 11,000 children over six years and found nearly over half of the children, 6,000 in total, had breathing disorders during sleep.

"This is the strongest evidence to date that snoring, mouth breathing, and apnea can have serious behavioural and social-emotional consequences for children," Karen Bonuck, lead author and professor of family and social medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine at Yeshiva University, said in a statement.

"Parents and pediatricians alike should be paying closer attention to sleep-disordered breathing in young children, perhaps as early as the first year of life," she said.

Sleep apnea and snoring decrease oxygen levels and increase carbon dioxide levels in the brain, according to the study.

The imbalanced brain chemistry interrupts the restorative process of sleep and leads to an inability to regulate emotion and impairs the ability to pay attention, plan ahead and organize, researchers said.

"We are sleeping to restore our brains, and sleep-disordered breathing interferes with that process," Bonuck reported. "For kids, these are critical periods in brain development."

Researchers saw symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing appear as early as 6 months in some children. Children who presented symptoms while very young, were between 40 and 50 percent more likely to experience behavioural problems.

"Although snoring and sleep apnea are relatively common in children, pediatricians and family physicians do not routinely check for sleep-disordered breathing," Bonuck said in a statement.

"In many cases, the doctor will simply ask parents, 'How is your child sleeping?' Instead, physicians need to specifically ask parents whether their children are experiencing one or more of the symptoms of SDB, i.e. snoring, mouth breathing or apnea." she said.

About one in 10 children snore regularly and 2 to 4 percent have sleep apnea, according to the American Academy of Otolaryngology-Head and Neck Surgery.

The journal Pediatrics published the study on Monday 5th March 2012.

People with sleep apnea take abnormally long pauses between breaths in their sleep. The pauses can last up to several minutes and may occur up to 30 times per hour, forcing them to wake up often during the night to take a breath, according to the National Heart Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI), a division of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.

Sleep apnea can cause frequent headaches and mood swings and if left untreated increases the risk of heart attack, stroke and diabetes, according to the NHLBI. Enlarged tonsils, also commonly cause sleep-disordered breathing.

Being overweight is one of the largest risk factors for sleep apnea and snoring, according to the NHLBI. Losing weight helps to reduce the effects.

Other treatment for sleep-disordered breathing includes the use of a Continuous Positive Airway Pressure (CPAP) machine. A CPAP machine consists of a mask that fits over the user's mouth and/ or nose and blows air continuously into the throat, keeping the airway open and allowing the user to breathe easier.

Surgery is sometimes performed to remove excess tissue in the mouth and throat to reduce symptoms.

US Healthcare costs related to Sleep Apnea costs about $1,336 per year, for a total of $3 billion annually, according to a 1999 study published in the journal Sleep.

Sleep Standards are Slipping

Kids never got enough shuteye, even back in grandpa's day.

That's according to a century's worth of expert advice and sleep studies, which a team of researchers has now distilled into a brief report in the journal Pediatrics.

"There is a common belief that children are not getting enough sleep and that children's total sleep time has been declining," Lisa Anne Matricciani of the University of South Australia in Adelaide and colleagues write.

And while it's true that kids aren't getting as much sack time now as they were in the late 1800s, that doesn't mean experts weren't worried back then, too.

In fact, as the Australian researchers combed through older and older literature, the recommended sleep time was always a good half-hour higher than what kids, or their parents, said they got.

"No matter how much sleep children are getting, it has always been assumed that they need more," the team says.

So why are the standards slipping?

According to Matricciani and company, there just isn't any good science on which to base recommendations. They went through 32 sets of sleep advice, and only one provided any reasoning for its guidance: the actual sleep of 500 healthy kids.

Today, the National Institutes of Health (NIH US) says adults commonly need between eight and eight and a half hours of sleep, whereas newborns should get 16 to 18 hours a day.

Children fall in between, with preschoolers needing 11 to 12 hours of slumber and older kids and adolescents 10 hours.

Those standards are based on how long people sleep when they're not interrupted but one expert reported that there is still little ironclad science behind the numbers.

"We need to do due diligence and do the nitty-gritty effort of measuring sleep in a large group of the population to find out what's normal," said Dr. David Gozal, an expert in childhood sleep problems at the University of Chicago. "That has never been done."

He went on, "If you don't know what's normal because you haven't measured it, then your recommendations are going to reflect what you believe is normal, although that's not necessarily correct."

That also explains why expert recommendations have been shifting downward over time, Gozal said, because physicians are influenced by changing societal expectations the same as everybody else.

"It only reflects the nature of our parental expectations," mused Gozal.

Based on 218 articles that contained self- or parent-reported sleep for children, the Australian researchers estimate that kids' actual sleep duration fell by 73 minutes over a century.

By comparison, recommended sleep times dropped by 71 minutes, but remained 37 minutes above the estimates of real sleep.

Like other researchers, Gozal blames our shorter nights on the accelerated pace of modern society with its 24-7 demands on parents and kids alike.

"The concern that kids aren't sleeping enough is real," he said. "More than 80 percent of parents need to wake up their kids, indicating that their kids don't get enough sleep."

Although it's next to impossible to prove conclusively that diminished shuteye is taking a toll on our health, several studies have linked it to a plethora of ailments, from obesity in American kids to attention problems in Korean high school students to heart disease around the globe.

"We are in fact reducing the amount of sleep as a society, and that is translating, at least in my mind, to an increased risk of many diseases," said Gozal.

So how do you know when your kid has had enough sleep?

"You will know that your child is sleeping enough if they wake up on their own rather than being awoken," Gozal advised. "If they don't get up on time, make them go to bed earlier."

SOURCE: bit.ly/cxXOG Pediatrics, online February 13, 2012.

For more good advice and support on how to solve children's sleep issues visit www.dream-angus.com

Zeo Sleep System for adults - YouTube

Do you have problem falling asleep? Been dreaming of a resting night? Want to stop waking up in the middle of the night? Do you have an iPhone?

Then you need the Zeo Sleep System that was shown at CES 2012.

With 64 million Americans facing sleep issues every night and an additional 49 million Americans experiencing problems at least a few nights a week, the need for a good night’s sleep as part of optimum health and wellness has become almost epidemic.

The new Zeo Sleep Manager is the only consumer system that tracks all sleep phases and offers science-based solutions to everyday sleep issues that affect health, aging, mental acuity, energy level, stress level and physical performance.

Zeo Sleep Manager is the only consumer sleep tracking system that measures actual sleep phases, including Light, Deep and REM sleep.

The system uses a wireless headband equipped with SoftWave sensor technology to track these sleep phases and provide a nightly ZQ score, a customized sleep quality score.


The new Zeo Sleep Manager Mobile system sends sleep data directly to users’ smartphones, which then sync automatically to their online Zeo accounts, so they can access online analytical tools to see why they’re not falling asleep.

My guess is, it’s because they spend too much time online looking at the analytics on why they can’t sleep.

For more information on sleep and sleep problems, plus real solutions to real issues, go to www.dream-angus.com

Sleep Infographic: What If You Don't Sleep Enough?

To see the full Infographic chart click on the sample image.

How many times have you told yourself "... it's just sleep." but what happens to your health when you're not sleeping enough?

This infographic designed by FFunction for Zeo, a company that makes an electronic "sleep coach," is less of a real data visualization than a set of illustrated facts but those facts are pretty impressive.

For example, we seem pretty tired all the time and only 7% of people get the necessary eight hours of sleep at night but the effects of this might be more than inconvenient. They may be disasterous.

Getting less sleep is now associated with a 200% rise in cancer, a 100% rise in heart disease, and a 20% rise in the likelihood you'll be dead in 20 years.

UnfortunatelY, not only will you be less healthy, you'll also be fatter. People who sleep an hour more each day lose 14.3 pounds per year and 1 in 3 women find themselves too sleepy for sex!

Studies have shown that sleeping too little effectively puts the body on "high alert," creating increased stress hormones and chemicals associated with inflammation.