Sleep disorder could be a sign of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's

Research shows that a brain disorder that causes people to act out their dreams may be a sign of Parkinson's or Alzheimer's.

A sleep disorder that causes people to act out their dreams is a predictor of brain diseases like Alzheimer's and Parkinson's, a new research has found. 

"Rapid-eye-movement sleep behaviour disorder (RBD) is not just a precursor but also a critical warning sign of neurodegeneration that can lead to brain disease," said associate professor and lead author Dr John Peever from the University of Toronto in Canada. 

"In fact, as many as 80 to 90 per cent of people with RBD will develop a brain disease," said Peever. 

The disturbance occurs during the rapid-eye-movement (REM) stage of sleep and causes people to act out their dreams, often resulting in injury to themselves and/or bed partner, researchers said. 

In healthy brains, muscles are temporarily paralysed during sleep to prevent this from happening. 

"It's important for clinicians to recognise RBD as a potential indication of brain disease in order to diagnose patients at an earlier stage," said Peever. 

"This is important because drugs that reduce neurodegeneration could be used in RBD patients to prevent (or protect) them from developing more severe degenerative disorders," Peever said. 

His research examines the idea that neurodegeneration might first affect areas of the brain that control sleep before attacking brain areas that cause more common brain diseases like Alzheimer's. 

Peever said he hopes the results of his study lead to earlier and more effective treatment of neurodegenerative diseases. 

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Study: Sleep apnea can worsen if diabetes is not treated

A study claims that a person who has diabetes can worsen their sleep apnea if their diabetes is untreated.

People with diabetes and sleep apnea could worsen their diabetes if the sleep disorder isn't properly treated, a new University of Chicago study says.

Published in the Diabetes Journal, the study looked at 115 people with Type 2 diabetes and sleep apnea to examine the impact of sleep apnea on someone's metabolic rate and control of blood sugars.

Sleep apnea causes pauses in breathing during sleep, and is known to raise the risk of Type 2 diabetes.

Patients who had interrupted breathing during REM sleep had worse long-term effects on their blood sugar control, the researchers found.

The researchers found that best results aren't achieved from the typical treatment, using continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) for four hours.

Some patients remove their CPAP mask in the night because of discomfort, but can miss the REM sleep period that often occurs in the hours before waking.

Patients who had CPAP for seven hours, receiving the air during REM sleep, would have a better blood sugar control long-term, the study found.

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The placebo effect is relevant to sleep!

Researchers have shown that when people think they're getting more restorative sleep, they have better cognitive function.

A pair of researchers at Colorado College in College Springs, Colorado has shown that fooling people into believing they've had more or less than average amounts of REM sleep can impact their cognitive skill levels. In their paper published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition, Christina Draganich and Kristi Erdal describe an experiment they conducted with volunteers that evaluated the relationship between the placebo effect regarding REM sleep and performance on cognitive skills test.

Prior research has shown that shorter time spent in REM sleep tends to impair cognitive skill levels after waking. Conversely, long REM sleep periods have been shown to improve such levels. In this new effort, the researchersset out to determine if the placebo effect might do the same.

To find out, the researchers enlisted the assistance of 164 students from the College and divided them into two groups. Individuals from both groups were asked to lie down and go to sleep while attached to a special machine that could measure the amount of time they were undergoing REM sleep (it actually didn't do anything at all). All participants were also given a seminar before sleeping where REM sleep was explained—they were also told what percentage of the time people normally spend in it while sleeping (on average 20 to 25 percent). It was also explained to them how REM duration had been found to impact cognitive skill levels. After sleeping, volunteers from one group were told they had spent more time than average in REM sleep, while those in the other group were told they'd spent less than the average amount of time in REM sleep. Individuals in both groups were also asked how they thought they had slept before being asked to take some tests that measured cognitive abilities (processing speeds and attention levels).

In analyzing the results, the researchers found that the people who were in the group who were told they'd spent more time in REM sleep did better than average on thecognitive tests while those who were told they got less, did worse—regardless of how well the volunteers thought they had slept.

The study shows, the researchers report, that the placebo effect can indeed by applied to REM sleep and cognitive skill levels, though they are at a loss as to why that is.

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Sleep disorders, vitamin D and skin pigmentation

This article discusses the link between vitamin D deficiency and the increase of the occurrence of sleep disorders.

Vitamin D Deficiency and Daytime Sleepiness: Skin Pigmentation Is a Complicated Factor

Posted: 01/30/2013 12:11 pm

Vitamin D has received a great deal of attention recently. Vitamin D has long been recognized as primarily a regulator of calcium and phosphorus, helping to protect bone density. In recent years, however, our understanding of the functions of vitamin D in the body has expanded. Vitamin D is now understood to play an important role in metabolic and immune system functions. Vitamin D deficiency has been linked to a number of illnesses and chronic conditions, including high blood pressure, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, pulmonary disease, and chronic pain.

We've seen evidence that vitamin D deficiency is associated with sleep problems, particularly with daytime sleepiness. A new study examined the link between daytime sleepiness and vitamin D, and also considered one of the major risk factors of vitamin D deficiency: skin pigmentation.

Researchers at Louisiana State University investigated the relationship between vitamin D and daytime sleepiness with two specific goals in mind. First, they wanted to determine whether a correlation exists between vitamin D levels in the body and excessive daytime sleepiness. Second, they sought to evaluate the role that race might play in the relationship between daytime sleepiness and vitamin D.

In earlier work, researchers at LSU had observed that more than half of the patients who came to their sleep clinic with sleep problems and with chronic pain were also deficient in vitamin D. They noticed this cluster of symptoms appeared to occur more often in patients who were African-American.

Vitamin D is actually a fat-soluble hormone that the body can receive in food and also through supplements. But the primary -- and most effective -- way the body accumulates vitamin D is during exposure to sunlight. Exposure to sunlight prompts our skin to self-manufacture vitamin D. Increased skin pigmentation lowers the rate of manufacture of vitamin D. Therefore, greater levels of skin pigmentation are considered a risk factor for vitamin D deficiency.

...

The results of the study support a strong correlation between excessive daytime sleepiness and vitamin D. They also indicate that race is a factor in the relationship between vitamin D and daytime sleepiness. But the results were in some ways surprising and indicate a complicated relationship, particularly where race is concerned.

Here's an overview of the most important findings:

• Sixty-five percent of the study population was found to have a vitamin D deficiency.
• The patients with greater skin pigmentation had higher average levels of daytime sleepiness and lower average levels of vitamin D, compared to those with less skin pigmentation
• African-American patients made up 35 percent of the study population, but 55 percent of the group that was deficient in vitamin D
• Only 6 percent of the group without a vitamin D deficiency were African-American
• Among those with deficiencies of vitamin D -- under 20 mg/mL as measured by a blood test -- there was no correlation between vitamin D levels and daytime sleepiness. This is the opposite of what was expected based on prior research.
• An exception to this was found among African-American patients in the study group. Among those African-American patients with vitamin D deficiency, there was a direct correlation between levels of vitamin D and daytime sleepiness. Among these patients, higher vitamin D levels were associated with higher levels of daytime sleepiness -- the exact opposite of what was expected.

It is this last finding that is unexpected, and surprised researchers themselves, who expected to see lower levels of vitamin D associated with higher levels of daytime sleepiness.

Why might this have been the case?    Full article HERE

Sweet Dreams,
Michael J. Breus, PhD 
The Sleep Doctor™ 
www.thesleepdoctor.com

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Brain cell production increases during sleep

A study shows that brain cell production is boosted during sleep which may help research on how brain repair occurs during sleep.

Sleep increases the reproduction of the cells that go on to form the insulating material on nerve cell projections in the brain and spinal cord known as myelin, according to an animal study published in the September 4 issue of The Journal of Neuroscience. The findings could one day lead scientists to new insights about sleep's role in brain repair and growth.

Scientists have known for years that many genes are turned on during sleep and off during periods of wakefulness. However, it was unclear how sleep affects specific cells types, such as oligodendrocytes, which make myelin in the healthy brain and in response to injury. Much like the insulation around an electrical wire, myelin allows electrical impulses to move rapidly from one cell to the next.

In the current study, Chiara Cirelli, MD, PhD, and colleagues at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, measured gene activity in oligodendrocytes from mice that slept or were forced to stay awake. The group found that genes promoting myelin formation were turned on during sleep. In contrast, the genes implicated in cell death and the cellular stress response were turned on when the animals stayed awake.

"These findings hint at how sleep or lack of sleep might repair or damage the brain," said Mehdi Tafti, PhD, who studies sleep at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland and was not involved with this study.

Additional analysis revealed that the reproduction of oligodendrocyte precursor cells (OPCs) -- cells that become oligodendrocytes -- doubles during sleep, particularly during rapid eye movement (REM), which is associated with dreaming.

"For a long time, sleep researchers focused on how the activity of nerve cells differs when animals are awake versus when they are asleep," Cirelli said. "Now it is clear that the way other supporting cells in the nervous system operate also changes significantly depending on whether the animal is asleep or awake."

Additionally, Cirelli speculated the findings suggest that extreme and/or chronic sleep loss could possibly aggravate some symptoms of multiple sclerosis (MS), a disease that damages myelin. Cirelli noted that future experiments may examine whether or not an association between sleep patterns and severity of MS symptoms exists.

This research was funded by the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Psychiatry.

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Risks of sleep texting

This article discusses the new phenomenon of sleep texting and how it could be harmful for your health.

While smartphone owners use their devices to text and email throughout the day, some people are taking their addictions to new heights and texting while sleeping, reports say.

A phenomenon called "sleep-texting" is on the rise, with sleep disorder specialists reporting that more and more people are texting several times a night while they're asleep, according to CBS New York last week.

WebMD writes that teens are especially at risk of "sleep-texting," with more and more kids reaching for the phones during the night, sending texts, and waking up with no recollection of what took place.

"Four o'clock in the morning, 3 o'clock in the morning -- it would just be a sentence of jumbled-up stuff," sleep-texter Megan told CBS New York.

"I guess I got up and texted, and went back to bed, but I don't remember it."

Aside from the risk of sending bizarre texts to your contacts, sleep-texting isn't good for your health in that it interrupts deep, restful REM sleep, experts say.

"Sleep is a very important restorative process," Dr. Josh Werber, a sleep and snoring specialist, told US News. "And when we're not fully engaged in it, and not getting the amount we need, we're not having the same restorative effect on our brains -- and that affects our cognitive ability the next day."

Best way to resolve the problem? Experts recommend shutting off your smartphone before bed or even moving your devices out the bedroom entirely.

Also wean yourself off using gadgets in the evenings, in that research has shown that light-emitting screens from tablets and smartphone can suppress the release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin and enhance alertness, making it more difficult to sleep.

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Baby owls sleep like baby humans do!

As owls get older, their sleeping habits change in a similar way that humans do.

Baby birds have sleep patterns similar to baby mammals, and their sleep changes in the same way when growing up. This is what a team from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology and the University of Lausanne found out working with barn owls in the wild. The team also discovered that this change in sleep was strongly correlated with the expression of a gene involved in producing dark, melanic feather spots, a trait known to covary with behavioral and physiological traits in adult owls. These findings raise the intriguing possibility that sleep-related developmental processes in the brain contribute to the link between melanism and other traits observed in adult barn owls and other animals.

Sleep in mammals and birds consists of two phases, REM sleep ("Rapid Eye Movement Sleep") and non-REM sleep. We experience our most vivid dreams during REM sleep, a paradoxical state characterized by awake-like brain activity. Despite extensive research, REM sleep's purpose remains a mystery. One of the most salient features of REM sleep is its preponderance early in life. A variety of mammals spend far more time in REM sleep during early life than when they are adults. For example, as newborns, half of our time asleep is spent in REM sleep, whereas last night REM sleep probably encompassed only 20-25% percent of your time snoozing.

Although birds are the only non-mammalian group known to clearly engage in REM sleep, it has been unclear whether sleep develops in the same manner in baby birds. Consequently, Niels Rattenborg of the MPIO, Alexandre Roulin of Unil, and their PhD student Madeleine Scriba, reexamined this question in a population of wild barn owls. They used an electroencephalogram (EEG) and movement data logger in conjunction with minimally invasive EEG sensors designed for use in humans, to record sleep in 66 owlets of varying age. During the recordings, the owlets remained in their nest box and were fed normally by their parents. After having their sleep patterns recorded for up to five days, the logger was removed. All of the owlets subsequently fledged and returned at normal rates to breed in the following year, indicating that there were no long-term adverse effects of eves-dropping on their sleeping brains.

Despite lacking significant eye movements (a trait common to owls), the owlets spent large amounts of time in REM sleep. "During this sleep phase, the owlets' EEG showed awake-like activity, their eyes remained closed, and their heads nodded slowly," reports Madeleine Scriba from the University of Lausanne (see video in the link below). Importantly, the researchers discovered that just as in baby humans, the time spent in REM sleep declined as the owlets aged.

In addition, the team examined the relationship between sleep and the expression of a gene in the feather follicles involved in producing dark, melanic feather spots. "As in several other avian and mammalian species, we have found that melanic spotting in owls covaries with a variety of behavioral and physiological traits, many of which also have links to sleep, such as immune system function and energy regulation," notes Alexander Roulin from the University of Lausanne. Indeed, the team found that owlets expressing higher levels of the gene involved in melanism had less REM sleep than expected for their age, suggesting that their brains were developing faster than in owlets expressing lower levels of this gene. In line with this interpretation, the enzyme encoded by this gene also plays a role in producing hormones (thyroid and insulin) involved in brain development.

Although additional research is needed to determine exactly how sleep, brain development, and pigmentation are interrelated, these findings nonetheless raise several intriguing questions. Does variation in sleep during brain development influence adult brain organization? If so, does this contribute to the link between behavioral and physiological traits and melanism observed in adult owls? Do sleep and pigmentation covary in adult owls, and if so how does this influence their behavior and physiology? Finally, Niels Rattenborg from the Max Planck Institute for Ornithology in Seewiesen hopes that "this naturally occurring variation in REM sleep during a period of brain development can be used to reveal exactly what REM sleep does for the developing brain in baby owls, as well as humans."

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Study: Alcohol is bad for your sleep

A new study shows that drinking alcohol before bed is bad for your quality of sleep by reducing the amount of REM sleep.

Think a nightcap may help you get a better night’ssleep?

Think again.  

A new review of 27 studies shows that alcohol does not improve sleep quality. According to the findings, alcohol does allow healthy people to fall asleep quicker and sleep more deeply for a while, but it reduces rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

And the more you drink before bed, the more pronounced these effects. REM sleep happens about 90 minutes after we fall asleep. It's the stage of sleep when peopledream, and it's thought to be restorative. Disruptions in REM sleep may cause daytime drowsiness, poor concentration, and rob you of needed ZZZs.

“Alcohol may seem to be helping you to sleep, as it helps induce sleep, but overall it is more disruptive to sleep, particularly in the second half of the night,” says researcher Irshaad Ebrahim. He is the medical director at The London Sleep Centre in the U.K. “Alcohol also suppresses breathing and can precipitate sleep apnea,” or pauses in breathing that happen throughout the night.

The more a person drinks before bed, the stronger the disruption. One to two standard drinks seem to have minimal effects on sleep, Ebrahim says.

Alcohol Is Not a Sleep Aid

“The immediate and short-term impact of alcohol is to reduce the time it takes to fall asleep, and this effect on the first half of sleep may be partly the reason some people with insomnia use alcohol as a sleep aid,” Ebrahim says. “However, this is offset by having more disrupted sleep in the second half of the night.”

“Alcohol should not be used as a sleep aid, and regular use of alcohol as a sleep aid may result in alcohol dependence,” he says.

The findings will appear in the April 2013 issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

Alcohol tricks people into thinking they are getting better sleep, says Scott Krakower, DO. He is an addiction specialist at North Shore-LIJ in Mineola, N.Y. “People who drink alcohol often think their sleep is improved, but it is not.”

REM is the more mentally restorative type of sleep, says Michael Breus, PhD, a sleep specialist in Scottsdale, Ariz. “Alcohol is not an appropriate sleep aid. If you rely on alcohol to fall asleep, recognize that you have a greater likelihood to sleepwalk, sleep talk, and have problems with your memory.”

If you are having trouble sleeping, talk to your doctor about how to improve your sleep quality. He or she may be able to rule out underlying sleep disorders like sleep apnea and suggest appropriate sleep aids.

Better sleep habits can also help. Some tips to improve sleep habits include:

• Get regular exercise, but no later than a few hours before bed.
• Avoid caffeine, alcohol, or nicotine in the evening.
• Reserve the bed for sleeping and sex only.
• Keep your bedroom at a cool temperature.
• Set regular wake and bed times.

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Vitamin D Deficiency Linked to Sleep Disorder Epidemic

A clinical trial shows that sufficient levels of vitamin D3 results in normal sleep regardless of the sleep disorder present.

Vitamin D is known as the "Sunshine Vitamin" because spending time outdoors in the sun is known to increase vitamin D in the body via the skin. Our ancestors spent a considerable amount of their time outdoors, but for the first time in history, large amounts of the world population spend most of their time inside their offices and homes. Researchers at the East Texas Medical Center and the University of North Carolina have discovered that vitamin D helps to regulate the sleep-wake cycle. They've found a definite link between vitamin D deficiency and the current global epidemic of sleep disorders.

Rapid eye movement sleep (REM) is one of the deepest levels of sleep. It is the level in which dreaming occurs, and its related to good memory and learning. A disruption of REM sleep or an absence of it, is one form of insomnia. Other sleep disorders include sleep apnea - which involves interrupted or obstructed breathing or snoring during the night; insomnia from hormone fluctuations such as with menstruation or menopause; restless leg syndrome; and periodic limb movement disorder, a condition where the person moves their limbs involuntarily during sleep.

The results of the clinical trial of vitamin D supplementation was published in a recent issue of the journal "Medical Hypothesis". The researchers followed 1500 patients over a 2 year period. A consistent level of vitamin D3 was maintained in their blood over many months. This produced normal sleep in most of the participants, regardless of their type of sleep disorder, which suggests that many types of insomnia may share the same cause. During the research, the authors discovered the presence of high concentrations of vitamin D "receiving sites" or "receptors" in those areas of the brain that are related to the onset and maintenance of sleep.

Calcium is also directly related to our cycles of sleep. In one study, published in the European Neurology Journal, researchers found that calcium levels in the body are higher during the rapid eye movement (REM) phase. This study concluded that disturbances in sleep, especially the absence of REM deep sleep or disturbed REM sleep, are related to a calcium deficiency. Restoration to the normal course of sleep was achieved following the normalization of the blood calcium level. As a note, calcium works best when its balanced with magnesium in a two to one ratio (with twice as much calcium as magnesium).

Natural insomnia remedies containing vitamin D and calcium can be helpful with both falling asleep and staying asleep during the night. One remedy that's designed for many forms of insomnia is Sleep Minerals II fromwww.NutritionBreakthroughs.com. This sleep aid contains highly absorbable forms of vitamin D3, calcium, and magnesium, the best ingredients for sleeplessness and insomnia, as well as for heart health, restless legs syndrome, bone strength, menopause insomnia and teenage insomnia. The formula is delivered in a softgel form with healthy carrier oils, making it more rapidly absorbable than tablets or capsules and providing a deeper, longer-lasting sleep.

Doctor P. P. of Houston, Texas says: "I had developed sleeping problems and took two different sleep medications over the course of several weeks. When I discontinued them, the insomnia came back even worse. I literally got about 20 hours of sleep in 6 weeks time. Sleep Minerals II was just what I needed. I've been taking it for a couple weeks and getting many hours of sleep a night. As a doctor I would definitely avoid prescribing sleeping drugs — I would recommend Sleep Minerals II."

Anita L. of New Caney, Texas says: "I was having hot flashes every 30 minutes to an hour through the night and was so miserable. After about two weeks of taking the Sleep Minerals, I noticed an incredible difference with my sleep. I have much less interruption from flashes, I'm sleeping much better, and I'm a lot more comfortable."

The authors of the vitamin D study noted that sleeping disorders have played a role in the development of medical conditions such as hypertension, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, depression, and chronic pain -- all of which have become widespread similarly to insomnia. The authors suggest further research be done on the management of vitamin D levels in a variety of medical conditions related to sleep.

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Technology Devices to Help with Sleep

"If people were meant to pop out of bed, we'd all sleep in toasters," a wise, unnamed observer of the human condition once opined. (Some credit Garfield the cat.) Failing that, we could all sleep with gadgets that monitor our sleep and wake us at the moment we're most ready to hit the ground running — or at least not stumbling around in a bleary-eyed daze.

A variety of devices are claimed by their makers to do just that — by keeping tabs on your sleep cycle and rousing you at a moment when waking is most natural. The key is to sound the alarm when people are moving between two specific phases of sleep — light sleep and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep, which is the stage where dreams or nightmares generally occur, says David Dickinson, chief executive for Zeo, makers of one device, the Zeo Sleep Manager.

At these transitions, Dickinson says, "you're at the surface, already almost awake." By contrast, waking out of another phase, deep sleep, is often not so fun: You may feel groggy and confused, wondering who and where you are and why your head weighs 500 pounds.

How to track the sleep transitions? Devices use different methods.

The Zeo Sleep Manager

The Zeo (www.myzeo.com, $149 for bedside version, $99 for device that interfaces with your smartphone) consists of a headband you wear to bed that measures brainwaves and translates them into the sleep stages they correspond to: In deep sleep, brainwaves are slow; in light sleep, they have ups and downs; in REM sleep they're a lot like when you're awake. The information is sent wirelessly to your phone or a bedside station, depending on which version of the Zeo you have. At the optimum wake time within a window you've chosen (from 15 to 45 minutes long), the alarm goes off.

But more than a device to help you wake up, the Zeo is a device to help you sleep, Dickinson says,"to help you learn about the third of your life you had no idea about before." Its "sleep coaching" program encourages you to identify and put the kibosh on "sleep stealers" — too much caffeine or stress, say, or a less-than-prudent bedtime.

The Zeo is the first, and so far the only, alarm clock on the market that uses your brainwaves to decide when to wake you up.

The SleepTracker Wake Up Monitor

This was the pioneer in the field of minimally alarming alarm clocks, the first to aim — and claim — to wake you when you're going in or out of REM sleep. But instead of measuring your brainwaves to determine when that happens, the SleepTracker — which takes the form of a very precocious watch — keeps a technological eye on your movements during the night: People are pretty much bed potatoes during deep or REM stages of sleep, but are more apt to kick, twitch, turn or squirm during light stages. (About $120 on amazon.com, $149 at store.sleeptracker.com.)

Do the gadgets work? The evidence

The most sophisticated sleep monitoring is done in sleep labs, of course. There the gold standard of measurement is polysomnography (PSG), which takes account of multiple factors, including breathing, heart rate, eye movement and blood oxygen levels, as well as brainwaves and muscle activity.

Both the Zeo and the SleepTracker have funded studies comparing the accuracy of their own products with PSG results. The companies recognize that independent research would be seen as more reliable. "But no one's going to do that," says SleepTracker inventor Lee Loree, president of Innovative Sleep Solutions. "The companies have to fund this research, or it won't get done."

• In the Zeo study, published last year in the Journal of Sleep Research, measurements came from 26 healthy adults over two nights — the first was for getting familiar with the equipment and data were collected on the second. The PSG measurements were scored by two trained technicians from separate sleep labs, and the Zeo determinations of sleep stages agreed with each of them about 75% of the time. Not a perfect result, but then the two PSG scorers only agreed with each other about 83% of the time.

• The 2009 SleepTracker study looked at data collected from 18 subjects over one night each, comparing movements detected by the SleepTracker with movements detected by PSG equipment.

For all 18 participants, a total of 192 movement "events" were detected by the PSG equipment. The SleepTracker detected 176 of those, but missed 16. It also "detected" 11 events that did not really occur (meaning the PSG equipment did not detect them).

Loree freely concedes that his product can't distinguish between REM and deep sleep — since you're "catatonic" in both — whereas the Zeo probably can. But he argues that this doesn't affect the SleepTracker's effectiveness because in the last third of your sleep cycle — when you probably want to wake up — any period of motionless sleeping is likely to be REM sleep.

All in all, Loree says, "the Zeo and the SleepTracker probably get to the same place. They just go about getting there in a different way." In fact, he believes the choice between them is mostly a matter of whether you prefer to wear a headband or a watch to bed.

• Neither the Zeo nor the SleepTracker study tested whether their high-tech alarms really wake you at the most propitious moment or not. But another alarm clock, the aXbo — a motion-based sleep monitor like the SleepTracker that its makers say will be available again in the U.S. later this year — reports a relevant study on its website.

After acquainting 40 volunteers with the aXbo one night, researchers used it to wake them up the next three nights in a row. On two of these nights, the aXbo, as is its wont, calculated the most favorable wake-up time during the 30-minute window it allows. But on one of the nights, randomly chosen and unknown to the sleepers, the aXbo rang amok — sounding at some sub-prime time in the window. According to their self-ratings, participants were significantly more cheerful and less drowsy on the mornings when the aXbo did its thing correctly.

What sleep scientists say

Behind every commercial sleep monitor, there's probably a sleep scientist — quite possibly a bunch of them — and the products often assert their scientific pedigrees. "Zeo takes the science of sleep out of the lab and puts it into your hands," says the Zeo website. "Turn your home into your personal mini sleep lab," says aXbo's.

But some sleep scientists believe the lab comparison may be a bit of a stretch. "These devices just give estimates," says Dr. Clete Kushida, a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science at the Sleep Medicine Center at Stanford University. "They may not be as accurate as people think."

That might be fine for people who simply want to learn more about their sleep, he says, but for people with actual sleep disorders, a little estimation could be a dangerous thing.

"Relying too much on these devices may offer a false sense of security," agrees Dr. Alon Avidan, director of the Sleep Disorders Center at UCLA. Waking up naturally is still the best way, he adds: "Sometimes the answer for better sleep is simply to get more of it."

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Hitting the snooze button may do more harm than good

Many people rely on the snooze button, while some hit the ground running, but slapping the snooze button may be doing more harm then help.

That alarming sound interrupts your calm sleep,which is also known as REM sleep or rapid eye movement. Even if you feel like you may have drifted for a few minutes, those couple extra minutes are fragmented. That often leads to that "groggy" feeling you may experience throughout the day. The more you quiet the clock, the longer that hangover effect may stick around.

If you are extremely tried when that first alarm sounds, you may be suffering from sleep depravation. That can affect your memory, reaction time, comprehension, attention, and result in increased irritability.

According to the Sleep Disorders Center, racking up sleep loss of four hours, is equivalent to being drunk with a blood alcohol level of 0.1 percent. That is a scary situation to think lack of sleep can be so debilitating on your body. Sleep is important for your body to function in a healthy way, so hop up when the alarm goes off, and catch a cat nap later on in the day.

Read more: http://www.ksdk.com/news/article/292769/3/Hitting-the-snooze-button-may-do-more-harm-than-good

The Stuff of Dreams: How Sleep Eases Emotional Trauma

Scientists have unlocked one of the great mysteries of the human experience, how we deal with traumatizing experiences that could leave us emotionally crippled. It happens during an "elegant ballet of biology" that softens painful memories, according to psychologist and neurologist Matthew Walker of the University of California, Berkeley, who led the research team.

And here's the amazing part: It all happens while we sleep. Our dreams help us heal.

"When you snooze you win," Walker said during a telephone interview.

Walker's team produced strong evidence that supports an assumption among scientists that a specific phase of sleep, called rapid eye movement, or REM, plays a key role in helping us deal with troubling emotions. Until now, there has been "little to no" evidence that's true, and there was even less understanding of how it works.

But the Berkeley team found that during REM, which is also the time we dream, stress chemicals are suppressed in the "emotional hub" of the brain called the amygdala. The research shows that after a good night's sleep, even potentially traumatizing experiences are softened.

"During REM sleep, memories are being reactivated, put in perspective and connected and integrated, but in a state where stress neurochemicals are beneficially suppressed," Els van der Helm, a doctoral student in psychology at Berkeley, said in releasing the study, published in the journal Current Biology.

About 20 to 25 percent of the time an adult spends sleeping is spent in REM, and scientists have suspected that REM plays a critical role in helping us deal with emotions because patients suffering with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) also suffer from sleep disorders, especially involving the REM phase.

"We've heard all our lives that if we are troubled, we should get to bed," Walker said. "We'll feel better tomorrow." But is that right?

The researchers put 35 "healthy young adults" through hours of lab-induced stress to see if there is any evidence that those old bromides are really true.

All of the participants spent two sessions inside a magnetic resonance imager, 12 hours apart. While their brains were being scanned for neurochemical activity, they were shown 150 images ranging from benign, like a friendly cat, to highly emotional, like a snake with fangs, or a burn victim.

The participants were divided into two groups. The members of one group had their first scan early in the day and their second 12 hours later, with no time to sleep between the sessions. The other group had one scan in the evening and the second the next morning, after sleeping in a controlled environment in the university's sleep lab.

As they viewed the images, all the participants "had a short period of time when they could rate the emotional intensity they were feeling in response to that individual image," Walker said. "That allowed us to get a subjective measure of how they themselves were feeling in response to those emotional images."

But the scanner also produced an objective measurement of the emotional reaction. In the first session, the amygdala literally "lit up" because of a strong reactivity by chemicals associated with stress. That was true for both groups.

The second session tells the story. The group that had no sleep experienced even stronger neurochemical reactivity when shown the images than they had during the first session. But the group that had a full night's sleep had relatively mild reactions to the images.

Read more: http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/dreams-ease-effects-trauma-post-traumatic-stress-disorder/story?id=15052034#.TtacY3M9a7g