Sleep Deprivation Leads to Less Cognitive Flexibility

Sleep deprived people may perform expected tasks well. Yet, when they are faced with unexpected events their reaction times are significantly impaired. These impairments can lead to safety errors and accidents. Early research has found sleep loss or disruptions to circadian rhythms (shift changes, jet lag) make it difficult to switch from proactive control to reactive control. Tired…

Video: What if You Didn’t Sleep?

In spite of growing evidence that adequate sleep is essential to every aspect of healthful living, estimates suggest that in the U.S. 66 percent of teens and 30% of adults are sleep-deprived. This short video animation provides an excellent summary of the importance of sleep. (Take a moment to complete the quiz that follows to test you…

Just One Night of Sleep Deprivation?

When thinking about treating obesity, most of us think of diet and exercise. However, sleep loss increasingly appears to be an important factor. Dogs deprived of sleep for one night suffered a 33% drop in insulin sensitivity. The same 8 dogs had a 21% drop when fed a high-fat diet for 6 months. These results cannot be…

Sleep Habits Affect Your Food Habits

Night owls beware, if you're not getting enough sleep you increase your chances of choosing a junk food diet! Researchers from UC Berkely have found that sleep deprived participants were more likely to desire high-calorie junk foods compared to well-slept participants. Brain scans showed that sleep deprived people had less blood flow to the frontal…

Tired People Make Poor Food Choices

Ever wondered why you have such a hard time resisting that mouth-watering, high-calorie desert? If you are sleep deprived, this could be part of the answer. Preliminary experiments with healthy, normal-weight volunteers found that those who are sleep deprived experience brain changes that make them more susceptible to making poor dietary choices. Functional magnetic resonance…

U.S. Workers Short on Sleep

The 2010 National Health Interview Survey has revealed that 41 million American workers sleep no more than 6 hours per night. This is most common among those working night shifts (44%) or rotating shifts (32%). However, 29% of those working regular day shifts also reported sleeping less than 6 hours per night. Sleep deprivation has…

Skip A Night’s Sleep. Overeat!

Young, healthy, normal weight men showed significantly greater hunger when shown pictures of high-calorie foods following one night of sleep deprivation--regardless of blood glucose levels. Participants served as their own controls with tests spaced two weeks apart. The areas of the brain involved in hunger motivation showed greater activity on functional magnetic resonance imaging. People who…

Awake But Still Asleep?

During wakefulness, our brain wave patterns are typically fast and of low-amplitude. This is different from the slow, high-amplitude non-REM phases of sleep. Researchers have discovered that, at least in rats, when they were sleep-deprived the rats appeared fully awake, but showed increasing impairment on behavioral tasks. There was also electrical evidence that some neurons…

Internet Addiction Leads to Depression in Adolescents

Teens typically use the internet for education and for amusement. While many teens are normal internet users, for others the internet captures the focus of their mind in an abnormal way. They may not know it, but obsessive internet use can become an addiction. Internet addiction can be measured using Young's Internet Addiction Scale.

How Much Sleep Do Kids Need?

In a previous blog we discussed how important sleep is for kids. Here is some more information that you might find interesting regarding sleep and kids, from a report by researchers at Stanford University.Adolescents need 9 hours and 15 minutes of sleep. Children need 10 hours and adults need 8 1/4 hours. Kids rarely get…