Tips to beat insomnia

This article gives 10 tips to help you beat insomnia.

Insomnia is the inability to get enough sleep needed to wake up feeling refreshed and well-rested.  Millions of people are suffering from this sleeping disorder.   You can cure insomnia without the additional cost of medication with just little changes in your lifestyle.

1. What you drink and eat before bedtime are also factors that can induce insomnia.  Cut down on alcohol, and do not eat heavy meals before bedtime.  Stick to light snacks and chamomile tea.Cut the caffeine – caffeine is a stimulant.  Cut down on other drinks and foods that have caffeine also, like sodas, teas, and tiramisus.  Coffee should be drank in the morning or at least eight hours before sleep.
2. Keep a quite, dark, and cool bedroom – an uncomfortable sleeping area will not induce sleep. Noise, light, and heat interfere with sleep.
3. The bed is for sleeping and sex – train your brain and body that the bed is for sleeping and sex. Doing office work and reading in bed is a no-no.  The goal is to associate the bed with relaxation and sleep.  Avoid watching TV while lying down in bed, watching TV stimulates your brain to think.  It may make your eyes tired, but the brain is busy converting images to thoughts.  Better yet, transfer the TV to the living room.
4. Avoid naps – try hard not to get that super nap in the afternoon. Naps disrupts sleep at night.  If you really can’t avoid it, limit it to 30 minutes before 3 pm.
5. Quit Smoking – nicotine, like caffeine, is a stimulant. The more you smoke, the more awake you’ll be.  Aside from the hazards of smoking, quitting will do wonders on your sleeping habits.
6. Change the way you think about insomnia – self-defeating thoughts help fuel insomnia. Think positive.  Instead of thoughts like “It’s the same every night,  another night of misery’, think this way instead “This does not every nught, some nights I get enough rest.”  Don’t worry too much, quit this mental habit.
7. Do away with stressful situations before bedtime – avoid heated discussions, heavy mental activities, even strenious activities before bedtime. Try some relaxing activities instead, listening to soft music with keeping the lights low will help in relaxing the brain.
8. Ban Blue Light in the bedroom – Short waves from blue light interferes with sleep. Use devices that have blue light an hour before going to sleep.  This includes TV, cellphones, and digital clocks.
9. Fat or Flat – not the body types, this refers to pillows. The discomfort you give your necks affects the quality of sleep, aside from having a sore neck upon waking up.  Pillows should be just the right size.  Side sleepers should have their nose align with the center of the body while sleeping.  Stomach sleeping should be avoided as this cranes the neck.
10. Control your body clock – go to sleep and wake up around the same time daily, irregardless if its a holiday or a weekend the next day. Our bodies have biological clocks and it is light regulated.  Try getting a ray of sunshine the minute you wake up, for 5 to 30 minutes.

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Study: Enforcing bed times helps kids get better sleep

Enforcing bed times and rules helps kids get better sleep, a study claims.

A regular bedtime and other sleep-related rules help children and teens get a good night's sleep, a new study suggests.

"Good quality and sufficient sleep are vital for children," study leader Orfeu Buxton, an associate professor of biobehavioral health at Penn State in College Park, Pa., said in a university news release.

"Just like a healthy diet and exercise, sleep is critical for children to stay healthy, grow, learn, do well in school, and function at their best," Buxton added.

Researchers analyzed survey responses from more than 1,100 American parents or guardians of youngsters aged 6 to 17.

Even though most of the parents believed sleep was important, only 10 percent of the children and teens in the study got the recommended amount of sleep for their age group. For ages 6 to 11, the amount of recommended sleep is at least nine hours a night. It's at least eight hours nightly for ages 12 to 17, according to the study.

Youngsters were more likely to get better and more sleep if they had a regular bedtime and rules such as limited caffeine consumption and no electronic devices on in the bedroom after bedtime, the researchers found.

"An important consequence of our modern-day, 24/7 society is that it is difficult for families -- children and caregivers both -- to get adequate sleep," Buxton noted.

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Alcohol can disrupt sleep

This article explains why drinking alcohol before bed can disrupt a person's sleep.

For individuals who drink before sleeping, alcohol initially acts as a sedative -- marked by the delta frequency electroencephalogram (EEG) activity of Slow Wave Sleep (SWS) -- but is later associated with sleep disruption. Significant reductions in EEG delta frequency activity and power also occur with normal development between the ages of 12 and 16; likewise this is a time when alcohol is commonly consumed for the first time, with dramatic increases in drinking occurring among collage-age individuals. A study of the effects of alcohol on sleep EEG power spectra in college students has found that pre-sleep drinking not only causes an initial increase in SWS-related delta power but also causes an increase in frontal alpha power, which is thought to reflect disturbed sleep.

Results will be published in the February 2015 online-only issue of Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research and are currently available at Early View.

"People likely tend to focus on the commonly reported sedative properties of alcohol, which is reflected in shorter times to fall asleep, particularly in adults, rather than the sleep disruption that occurs later in the night," said Christian L. Nicholas, National Health & Medical Research Council Peter Doherty Research Fellow in the Sleep Research Laboratory at The University of Melbourne as well as corresponding author for the study.

"The reduction in delta frequency EEG activity we see across the ages is thought to represent normal brain maturational processes as the adolescent brain continues to develop to full maturity," said Nicholas. "Although the exact function of non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep, and in particular SWS, is a topic of debate, it is thought to reflect sleep need and quality; thus any disruption to this may affect the underlying restorative properties of sleep and be detrimental to daytime functioning."

Nicholas and his colleagues recruited 24 participants (12 female, 12 male), healthy 18- to 21-year-old social drinkers who had consumed less than seven standard drinks per week during the previous 30 days. Each participant underwent two conditions: pre-sleep alcohol as well as a placebo, followed by standard polysomnography with comprehensive EEG recordings.

Results showed that alcohol increased SWS delta power during NREM. However, there was a simultaneous increase in frontal alpha power.

"For individuals researching sleep in the field of alcohol studies," said Nicholas, "our findings indicate that care needs to be taken when interpreting increases in 'visually scored' SWS associated with alcohol consumption. Increases in SWS, which traditionally would be interpreted as a good thing, can be associated with more subtle changes indicating disrupted sleep, such as the increases we observed in alpha activity, which are revealed when more detailed micro-structural components of the sleep electroencephalogram are assessed."

Nicholas explained that the increase in frontal alpha power that occurs as a result of pre-sleep drinking likely reflects a disruption of the normal properties of NREM slow wave sleep.

"Similar increases in alpha-delta activity, which are associated with poor or unrefreshing sleep and daytime function, have been observed in individuals with chronic pain conditions," he said. "Thus, if sleep is being disrupted regularly by pre-sleep alcohol consumption, particularly over long periods of time, this could have significant detrimental effects on daytime wellbeing and neurocognitive function such as learning and memory processes."

Alcohol is not a sleep aid, said Nicholas. "The take-home message here is that alcohol is not actually a particularly good sleep aid even though it may seem like it helps you get to sleep quicker. In fact, the quality of the sleep you get is significantly altered and disrupted."

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Sleep quality and obesity in children

A new study provides more evidence that sleep and sleep quality are linked to obesity in children.

Young children who get too little sleep are more likely than others to be obese by age 7, according to a new study.

Previous research has suggested insufficient sleep before age 4 raised the risk of obesity. But the new study, published online May 19 inPediatrics, observed the link from infancy to mid-childhood.

"Insufficient sleep is an independent and strong risk factor for childhood obesity and the accumulation of total fat and abdominal fat," said study researcher Dr. Elsie Taveras, chief of general pediatrics at Massachusetts General Hospital for Children in Boston.

"The main strength of this study is we looked at sleep at multiple periods," she added.

Excess body fat in childhood sets the stage for serious health problems, such as heart disease and diabetes.

Taveras and her team studied more than 1,000 children. Curtailed sleep was defined as fewer than 12 hours a day from ages 6 months to 2 years, fewer than 10 hours daily for ages 3 and 4, and fewer than nine hours a day for ages 5 to 7.

Kids who were most sleep deprived were about 2.5 times more likely to be obese than those who slept the most, the study found.

They were also 2.5 times more likely to have higher total fat, higher abdominal fat and a higher waist and hip circumference, said Taveras.

Many possible explanations exist for this association, Taveras said.

"If you sleep too little, it disrupts some of the hormones that regulate how hungry we are and how full we are," Taveras said.

In households with no consistent bedtime for children, there is likely to be chaos around regular mealtimes, too, and that can affect weight, she added.

Children who don't sleep enough may watch more television than kids who go to bed earlier, she said. Watching TV has long been linked with eating more, especially in response to food commercials, she said.

Or the children may have other "high-tech distractions," she said.

The new findings don't surprise Dr. William Muinos, director of the weight management program at Miami Children's Hospital in Florida, who was not involved in the study.

His advice for parents? Set a consistent bedtime. "Limit caffeinated beverages late in the day. Cut out all those electronic distractions; get them out of the bedroom," Taveras said.

Insist that children go to bed earlier, Muinos said. "Lack of sleep does change the physiology," he added. "It will put you in what is called stress mode. The body will read it as, 'I need to hold onto calories and accumulate fat.'"

The new research, Muinos said, "is very good because it studied a large group of children for a long period of time."

Ongoing studies are looking at whether improving sleep may directly improve weight control in children, Taveras said. And it's already known that good sleep has other benefits. "There's really good evidence that shows it improves schoolwork," she said.

For the study, mothers reported their children's usual sleep duration in a 24-hour period, beginning at age 6 months. They also reported it every year from age 1 to 7.

The children got a sleep score, ranging from zero (insufficient sleep) to 13 (consistent sufficient sleep). The average sleep score was 10.2. However, about 4 percent of kids were in the insufficient range, zero to 4. About 40 percent had a score of 12 or 13, termed enough sleep.

Those who slept less than average were more likely to be from poorer families with less educated mothers, the study found.

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Tips to get a better night's sleep

This article provides seven tips on how to get a better night's sleep, and discusses the importance of getting a good night's sleep.

"Extreme sleep deprivation may affect brain health in later life."

"Sleep may aid chronic pain sufferers."

"Sleep apnea linked with blood sugar levels"

Dr. Paul Walting, a sleep specialist in the Department of Neurology at Baystate Medical Center, acknowledged the media attention “a good night’s sleep” is getting today.

“We are learning more and more, especially with increased research being published, that lack of sleep appears to be associated with a variety of medical problems from cardiovascular disease to Alzheimer’s. We also know that lack of sleep is associated with an increase in accidents and injuries, and for kids it can affect their school performance,” Walting said. “There are so many reasons to be sleep deprived today from overwork to staying up late and watching television or surfing the Internet on your computer, to medical reasons such as a sleep disorder.”

The body requires a good night’s sleep to gain energy for the day, which is essential for cognition, mood and overall health, he added.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, newborns should be getting 12-18 hours of sleep, infants 3-11 months need 14-15 hours, toddlers 1-3 years should get 12-14 hours, preschoolers 3-5 years need 11-13 hours, school-age children 5-10 years require 10-11 hours, teens 10-17 need 8.5-9.25 hours, while adults can survive with 7-9 hours of good ZZZs.

Baystate Medical Center’s Neurodiagnostics and Sleep Center and the
American Academy of Sleep Medicine offer the following additional tips on how to get a good night’s sleep:

• Avoid nicotine, alcohol, food or drinks that contain caffeine, and any medicine that has a stimulant prior to bedtime.


• Follow a consistent bedtime routine.


• Establish a relaxing setting at bedtime.


• Avoid any rigorous exercise within two hours of your bedtime.


• Make your bedroom quiet, dark and a little bit cool.


• Don’t watch the clock at night, but use an alarm to help wake you up.


• Get up at the same time every morning.

Some people with sleep deprivation are not actually suffering from a sleep disorder that Walting and other physicians in Baystate’s Sleep Clinic treat, such as sleep apnea, insomnia or narcolepsy. Instead, it may just be a matter of prioritizing sleep over other activities.

For those with a significant sleep disorder, like Teresita Alicea, a former criminal defense attorney in Springfield, there is treatment.

“I was falling asleep in front of some of my guests that I had over for dinner or even in the afternoon,” said Alicea.

After constantly being exhausted, Alicea had enough and in 2009, after retiring from work, she decided to have a sleep study at Baystate Medical Center. The diagnosis was sleep apnea.

“After they did the testing, they found out my breathing stopped 102 times per hour,” said Alicea. Since getting her BiPAP breathing machine and face mask, she now stops breathing just 0.7x per hour.

“I’m like a new person. I can sit through a concert, I can read a book, I don’t fall asleep in conversation anymore,” she said.

One of the most common sleep disorders, sleep apnea affects more than 18 million Americans, with the most common treatment being CPAP and BiPAP machines, which some patients cannot tolerate.

Now, there is good news for those who find the machines troublesome. The FDA in May approved a pacemaker-like device that can be implanted into the chest region which zaps airways open with an electrical current. The new device, to be available on the market later this year, is for those with moderate to severe obstructive sleep apnea. The new device is not for everyone, and patients should consult with their physician about its safety and viability for them.

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How caffeine disrupts your sleep

New research looks into the specifics of how late-in-the-day caffeine can disrupt your sleep at night.

You hear it all the time when it comes to sleep: Don't drink caffeine too late in the day. It's among the most common sleep tips -- and it's a good one. Caffeine, with its stimulant effects, is disruptive to good sleep. And these days, with the popularity of energy drinks and other caffeine-laden beverages and snacks, it's not difficult to wind up consuming caffeine throughout the day, even if you've set your coffee cup aside. The negative health consequences of too much caffeine also extend beyond sleep problems. Research shows that caffeine may contribute to cardiovascular problems. A recent large-scale study also suggeststhat heavy caffeine consumption -- more than four 8-ounce cups of coffee per day on a daily basis -- is linked to higher mortality rates in men and women.

But how late in the day is too late in the day to be consuming caffeine? Despite consensus about caffeine's sleep-disrupting effects, recommendations about the timing of caffeine consumption -- and when it's best to stop for the day -- can vary widely. Though an abundance of research has been conducted to establish caffeine's negative effects on sleep, very little attention has been paid to the specific timing of caffeine consumption relative to bedtime.

A new study attempts to fill in some of these important specifics about the effects of late-afternoon and early-evening caffeine consumption on nightly sleep. Researchers at Michigan's Henry Ford Hospital's Sleep Disorders & Research Center and Wayne State College of Medicine analyzed the sleep-disruptive effects of caffeine consumption at different lengths of time before bedtime. They found that caffeine consumed even six hours before bedtime resulted in significantly diminished sleep quality and sleep quantity. This is believed to be the first study to investigate directly the effects of caffeine at specific times before nightly sleep.

The study included 12 adult men and women, all of whom were healthy and were normal sleepers who in their regular lives were moderate consumers of caffeine. During the study period volunteers kept up their normal sleep routines, which included bedtimes between 9 p.m. and 1 a.m. and wake times between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. Participants' total nightly sleep duration fell somewhere in the range of 6.5 to 9 hours per night, with no regular habit of napping during the day. Throughout the study researchers tracked sleep by having participants keep sleep diaries and by using at-home sleep monitors. Participants were given doses of caffeine in pill form as well as placebo pills, on a schedule that enabled researchers to measure the sleep-disruptive effects of caffeine taken at three different points: at bedtime, three hours before bedtime, and six hours before bed. They found significant disruptions to sleep as a result of caffeine taken at all three points:

• Caffeine consumed zero, three, and six hours before bedtime significantly reduced total sleep time. Even caffeine consumed six hours before bed reduced total nightly sleep amounts by more than one hour.
• Caffeine consumed at all three points diminished sleep quality. Caffeine taken three and six hours before bedtime, as well as caffeine consumed at bedtime, significantly increased the amount of time spent awake during the night.
• Disruptions to sleep as a result of caffeine were perceived by volunteers (as recorded in sleep diaries) for caffeine consumed at bedtime and three hours before bed, but were not reported for caffeine taken six hours before bed. However, sleep monitors measuring total sleep time, and sleep efficiency (time spent sleeping relative to total time spent in bed) showed that caffeine consumed six hours before bedtime had significant detrimental effects to both.

This last finding is especially important, because it suggests that people can't -- and shouldn't -- rely entirely on their own perceptions of how much or little caffeine affects their sleep, especially caffeine consumed in the afternoon. Even if you don't feel that late-afternoon cup of coffee has a negative impact on your sleep, this study suggests that it is likely to be interfering nonetheless. This is one reason that I have long recommended a 2 p.m. cut off time for caffeine consumption.

Remember, limiting caffeine doesn't mean removing it entirely from your daily routine. A moderate amount of caffeine, consumed at the right times, can be useful and evenhealthful, stimulating alertness and energy. These new findings provide us with some really important specifics about just how significantly late-in-the-day caffeine can undermine a good night's sleep. Want to enjoy your coffee without wrecking your sleep? Follow these basic suggestions for consuming caffeine in a sleep-friendly way:

Stick to a 2 o'clock cut off. As this current study shows, late-afternoon caffeine can cause problems for your sleep, even if you aren't aware of it. To avoid sleep disruption, restrict your caffeine consumption primarily to the morning hours. If you do have a midday cup of coffee, make sure to drink it before 2 p.m.

Taper caffeine as the day progresses. Start your day with your most highly caffeinated beverage and ease up on the caffeine as the morning goes on. First thing in the morning is likely when you'll crave caffeine the most, and when it can do you the most good in terms of boosting energy and shaking off the effects of a night's sleep. Switch over to tea or decaffeinated coffee as the morning continues, to keep overall daily caffeine amounts moderate and be comfortably caffeine-free by mid-afternoon.

Avoid jumbo drinks. These days, everything seems to be "super-sized" -- and caffeinated drinks are no exception. From a 20-plus-ounce latte or soda to a caffeine-packed energy drink, a lot of caffeine products deliver way more of the stimulant than is healthful. Stick to something much closer to the old-fashioned 8-ounce cup, and savor it.

Don't ignore your sleep problems. Being tired makes us more likely to feel the need for caffeine, and that extra consumption can in turn make sleep problems worse. Avoid this sleep-disruptive cycle by making sleep a daily priority. Practice good sleep hygiene and talk to your doctor about how you are sleeping, particularly about any problems that arise.

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Children's internal clock could result in trouble sleeping

This article discusses how a child's internal clock, which regulates their natural melatonin levels, could result in the child fighting off sleep at bedtime.

"Just one more story, please?" ''I need a glass of water." ''Mom, I can't sleep!"

When youngsters continually struggle to fall asleep at night, new research suggests maybe their body clock doesn't match their bedtime.

That doesn't mean tots should be up at all hours.

"Just like nutrition and exercise, sleep is critical for good health," said sleep scientist Monique LeBourgeois of the University of Colorado, Boulder, who is leading the research.

The ultimate goal is to help reset a delayed sleep clock so that young children can settle down more easily, she said. Hint: It seems to have a lot to do with light.

We all have what's called a circadian rhythm, a master biological clock, that regulates when we become sleepy, and when we're more alert. Those patterns vary with age: It's the reason teenagers are notorious for late nights and difficult-to-wake mornings.

But how does that clock work in preschoolers, who need more sleep than older kids or adults? A first-of-its-kind study tracked 14 healthy youngsters for six days to begin finding out.

The children, ages 2½ to 3, wore activity monitors on their wrists to detect when they slept. Parents kept diaries about bedtime routines.

Then on the last afternoon, researchers visited each home, dimming lights and covering windows. Then, every 30 minutes for six hours leading up to the child's appointed bedtime, they also coaxed each tot to chew on some dental cotton to provide a sample of saliva.

The reason: To test for levels of a hormone named melatonin that is key to the sleep cycle and also sensitive to light. At some point every evening, people's melatonin levels surge and a while later, they begin to feel sleepy. Among adults who sleep well, that melatonin rise tends to happen about two hours before whatever is their chosen bedtime.

For preschoolers, the new study found that on average, the melatonin surge occurred around 7:40 p.m. The children tended to be tucked in around 8:10 p.m., and most were asleep 30 minutes later, LeBourgeois reported in the journal Mind, Brain and Education.

When melatonin rose earlier in the evening, tots who hit the sack around 8 fell asleep a bit faster. But when the melatonin surge was closer to bedtime, the youngsters were more likely to fuss or make curtain calls after lights-out.

Two children in the study actually were tucked in before their rise in melatonin ever occurred, and it took them up to an hour past bedtime to fall asleep, she said.

"We don't know what that sweet spot is yet," LeBourgeois said, but the data suggest bedtime is easiest if the melatonin surge occurred at least 30 minutes earlier.

The study reinforces what doctors have long suspected is one bedtime barrier, said Dr. Jyoti Krishna, a pediatric sleep expert at the Cleveland Clinic. Other factors can disrupt a child's sleep, too, such as noise, stress or anxiety, or disrupted home routines, he cautioned.

"But this paper reminds us that, hey, there is a time that the body is more ready to sleep than at other times," Krishna said.

The National Institutes of Health says preschoolers need 11 to 12 hours of sleep each day; some typically comes from an afternoon nap.

Parents don't have melatonin tests as a guide, so Krishna advises looking for cues when setting a bedtime — yawning, rubbing eyes — and then to adjust that bedtime as the child gets older.

"The melatonin onset and our body rhythms change," Krishna said. "You can't stick to what worked two years ago with this child, because this child is now a different child."

About 25 percent of young children experience some type of sleep difficulty, including trouble settling down at bedtime, LeBourgeois said. Harried parents aside, there's concern that early-in-life bedtime frustration might lead to more persistent sleep trouble.

"Listen to your child's physiology," she advised. Some steps that might help:

—Research shows that in adults, too much light in the evening delays the melatonin surge and subsequent sleepiness. While there's no data in young children yet, LeBourgeois says dimming the lights about an hour before bedtime makes sense.

—Avoid electronics near bedtime, because they generate a specific type of light that triggers wakefulness. LeBourgeois was horrified to hear one parent offer a sleepless youngster an iPad to play with as long as the child stayed in the bedroom.

—And make sure blackout shades aren't keeping your children from getting enough morning sunlight, she said. Light in the morning also is key to keeping the biological sleep clock on schedule.

Stay tuned: With funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, LeBourgeois has begun a larger study that will track sleep patterns of 40 2-year-olds until they're 5. She'll also measure their light exposure, and periodically record their brain waves during sleep, in a bid to better understand the influence of sleep patterns on children's development.

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The importance of bedtimes for toddlers

A study on the natural sleep cycle of toddlers shows that toddlers have trouble falling asleep if their natural melatonin release is later than their bedtime.

The bedtime you select for your toddler may be out of sync with his or her internal body clock, which can contribute to difficulties for youngsters attempting to settle in for the night, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

The study pinpointed the time when thehormone melatonin increased in the evening, indicating the start of the biological night, in a group of 14 toddlers whose sleep also was studied over the course of six days. The study showed that toddlers with later melatonin rise times took longer to fall asleep after being put to bed, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois.

"There is relatively little research out there on how the physiology of toddlers may contribute to the emergence of sleep problems," said LeBourgeois, a faculty member in the integrative physiology department who led the new study. "Sleeping at the wrong 'biological clock' time leads to sleep difficulties, like insomnia, in adults."

While adults get to choose their own bedtime, toddlers rarely have this option, said LeBourgeois. "This study is the first to show that a poor fit between bedtimes selected by the parents of toddlers and the rise in their evening melatonin production increases their likelihood of nighttime settling difficulties," said LeBourgeois.

The findings are important because about 25 percent of toddlers and preschoolers have problems settling after bedtime, said LeBourgeois. Evening sleep disturbance can include difficulties falling asleep, bedtime resistance, tantrums, and episodes known as "curtain calls" that manifest themselves as calling out from bed or coming out of the bedroom, often repeatedly, for another story, glass of water or bathroom trip, she said.

Toddlers with longer intervals between the onset of nightly melatonin release and their subsequent bedtimes were shown to fall asleep more quickly and had decreased bedtime resistance as reported by their parents, according to the study.

A paper on the subject was published this month in the journal Mind, Brain and Education. Co-authors included University Children's Hospital Zurich Director of Child Development Oskar Jenni and CU-Boulder Associate Professor Kenneth Wright Jr. The National Institute of Mental Health funded the study.

Sleep problems in early childhood are predictive of later emotional and behavioral problems, as well as poor cognitive function, that can persist into later childhood and adolescence. In addition, parents of young children with sleep problems often report increased difficulties in their own sleep patterns, which can cause chronic fatigue and even marital discord, she said.

"A natural next step is to optimize our knowledge of the interactions between physiology and the environment to further understand how problems like bedtime resistance first develop and how they are maintained," LeBourgeois said.

Research in adolescents and adults has shown that exposure to light in the evening can delay the timing onset of melatonin. Whether the later rise of melatonin in some toddlers can be pushed to an earlier time by restricting evening light or by increasing morning light exposure is a question still to be answered, she said.

"We believe that arming parents with knowledge about the biological clock can help them make optimal choices about their child's activities before bedtime, at bedtime, and his or her sleeping environment," LeBourgeois said.

For the study, the research team recruited 14 families in Providence, R.I., each of which had a child between 30 and 36 months old who slept at least 10.5 hours nightly and took a daytime nap of at least 45 minutes. Saliva samples containing the children's melatonin levels were collected every 30 minutes over a six-hour period on one evening before bedtime.

Melatonin onset times varied among the 14 toddlers studied, which means the "hands" on the individual body clocks told each to be prepared to sleep at different times in the evening, she said.

Saliva was collected by having toddlers chew on dry dental cotton rolls, which were then "spun" onsite in a small centrifuge. The task of getting numerous saliva samples from a child during a single evening requires a team of three researchers called "sleep fairies" experienced at make-believe games, reading and crafts.

Because light suppresses melatonin levels, saliva samples were collected in families' homes after they were converted into "caves" of sorts by covering the windows with dark plastic, installing dimmer switches and using low-watt light bulbs.

The average evening melatonin onset for the toddlers occurred at roughly 7:40 p.m., which occurred about 30 minutes before parent-selected bedtimes, said LeBourgeois. On average, the toddlers fell asleep about 30 minutes after bedtime. "It's not practical to assess melatonin levels in every child," LeBourgeois said. "But if your child is resisting bedtime or having problems falling asleep, it is likely he or she is not physiologically ready for sleep at that time."

The study showed several toddlers who were put to bed before their rise in melatonin took 40-60 minutes to fall asleep. "For these toddlers, laying in bed awake for such a long time can lead to the association of bed with arousal, not sleep," she said. "This type of response may increase children's lifelong risk for insomnia over time."

The toddlers wore special wristwatches to measure activity, allowing the researchers to objectively assess their sleep. They also collected subjective data from parents on their toddlers' bedtime resistance and ease or difficulty falling asleep.

A 2012 study led by LeBourgeois indicated toddlers show more anxiety, less joy and interest, and a poorer understanding of how to solve problems when they missed their regular afternoon nap versus when they napped. These results suggested that children who miss out on needed sleep don't benefit from positive life experiences and have problems coping with day-to-day challenges.

LeBourgeois currently has 10 undergraduates working in her CU-Boulder lab. "The contributions of students to the research done in my lab are enormous," she said. "They not only perform the majority of data collection, but also participate in analyzing, interpreting and presenting our results to the scientific and lay communities. Their love of science, discovery and working together as a team continually inspires me."

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Study: Teenagers who go to sleep late have lower grades

A study shows that teenagers with late bedtimes have lower grades than those who go to sleep earlier.

Teens with late bedtimes during the school year and schooldays that start early have lower academic performance and are at risk for later emotional distress. A new study in the Journal of Adolescent Health provides further evidence for a growing body of research that supports a movement to delay school start times for adolescents.

"Going to bed after 11:30 pm, particularly in younger adolescents, predicted worse cumulative grade point average (GPA) at high school graduation and more emotional distress in the college years and beyond," said the study's lead author Lauren D. Asarnow, MA, a doctoral student in the department of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

The study gathered data on sleep and the number of hours slept from 2,700 teens age 13 to 18 participating in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health in two cohorts, one in 1995, the second in 1996. In 2001-2002, as respondents aged, data on academic performance and self-reported emotional health were collected for longitudinal comparison. The overall goal of the study was to examine the relationship between the sleep/circadian patterns of high school adolescents in a nationally representative sample, their overall academic performance in high school and rates of emotional distress reported post graduation.

For both high school cohorts, 23 percent of participants reported going to bed at 11:15 pm or later. By the time these teens reached graduation and college age, late school year bedtimes in high school predicted both lower cumulative GPA at graduation and more emotional distress between age 18 and 26. The researchers noted previous research found that adolescents who prefer late activities and bedtimes (a pattern of behavior often referred to as an evening circadian preference) were tested in the morning; they performed worse on cognitive tasks.

Asarnow urged parents to help youngsters get to bed earlier and added that a teen's sleep behavior is highly modifiable with proper support. However, shifting a teen's bedtime from a late to an earlier hour can be hard, she added, in part because for 30 percent to 40 percent of teens, delayed bedtimes have a biological basis tied to the onset and progress of puberty. Furthermore, academic pressure, habits around technology use and the bedtimes of friends also influence a teen's choice to turn in or stay up late.

Timothy Monk, Ph.D., director of the Human Chronobiology Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh agreed that the need to rise very early for school can put students at risk for underperformance academically and for other problems tied to a lack of sleep. "An early school start time both limits the sleeping time of the student and asks him or her to learn at what is close to the nadir of their circadian cycle."

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Recommendations for adapting to daylight savings time

This article provides information on how daylight savings time affects us and tips for how to acclimate to the time change.

When daylight saving time ends at 2 a.m. on Sunday, Nov. 3, that extra hour of sleep comes at the price of early evening darkness.

As we set clocks back one hour, we essentially gain an extra hour of sleep. But a Vanderbilt University Medical Center sleep specialist confirms what a lot of us already know—this change in sleep schedule can still cause a groggy and unsettled feeling come Monday morning, especially with our tendency to shift sleep patterns on the weekends.

“When we start playing around with our schedule, or have an irregular schedule staying up on weekends, we’re not allowing our clock to reset at its usual time,” said Raghu Upender, M.D., medical director of the Vanderbilt Sleep Disorders Center.

But there are ways to fight the sluggish feeling of being out of sync. Getting extra exposure to sunlight can help reset the biological clock and cope with the darker evenings. Upender’s best advice for resetting the internal clock is to get light exposure in the morning.

“It doesn’t have to be blasting sunlight. Open the curtains and turn on all the bright lights in your house, or get outside for a walk,” he said.

He says that light perception through the eye’s retina regulates the hormone melatonin, which controls the sleep-wake cycle, among other functions. Light inhibits the production of melatonin, while darkness encourages it.

“There are direct tracks from the eye to the brain structures that help sync the biological clock. This comes from our early days as humans when our only cues were the sun. Daylight hours were the times of activity and productivity,” Upender said.

This explains why we often feel more tired or groggy in the fall and winter months, when days are shorter and there are fewer hours of sunlight.

Most people adjust within a few weeks, especially with extra sunlight exposure during the day. In severe cases, sometimes called seasonal affective disorder, doctors may prescribe light therapy or melatonin hormone supplements.

Beth Malow, M.D., M.S., chief of Vanderbilt’s Division of Sleep Disorders, said trouble falling asleep or staying asleep, or feeling tired during the day may indicate a sleep disorder.

“I encourage people to discuss symptoms with their health care provider, as sleep disorders are highly treatable and can make a big difference in our health and daytime functioning,” Malow said.

Additional recommendations for good sleep:
· Establish a relaxing pre-sleep ritual, such as taking a bath, reading or listening to calm music.
· Make sure the bedroom is quiet, dark and at a comfortable temperature.
· Avoid the bright lights and stimulation of TVs, computers and other electronics before bed.
· Avoid large meals, alcohol and caffeine before bed.
· Exercise earlier in the day, not right before bed.
· Keep the same bedtime and wake time each day, even on weekends.

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Sleep deprivation epidemic in teenagers, study claims

A study claims that there is currently an epidemic of sleep deprivation among teenagers and discusses how this is harmful to their health.

Caffeine, late nights and lack of sleep are just a few ways to describe the life of a typical teenager. Fortunately, a recent teen sleep study conducted at the Golden Bear Sleep and Mood Research Clinic at UC Berkeley aims to help address this problem. Allison Harvey, a psychology professor and the main investigator of the study recognizes the growth in the number of sleep-deprived adolescents and the need to do something about it.

This study has been going on for four years. Participants in the study must be between the ages of 10 and 18 and experience at least one problem relating to emotional health, social aptitude, behavioral irregularity or academic achievement. They also must report having problems sleeping at night. If all criteria are met, they are then invited to a sleepover at the UC Berkeley sleep lab for observation.

Researchers of the study used many methods for improving sleep among the teenage participants. For instance, common methods included motivation interventions and chronothereapy — a type of therapy that involves controlling sleep cycle times as well as the amount of light present — in order to adjust the participants’ circadian rhythm, the internal clock that regulates our biological functions every 24 hours.

The aim of the study was to try to shift the bedtimes of the teenagers. To do so, researchers manipulated melatonin — a hormone which aids in sleep and wake cycles. Once the participants arrived at the campus for the sleepover, they were expected to complete a six-week intervention. The intervention included sessions with a sleeping coach, interviews, saliva samples as well as monitoring activity levels through a special watch known as the Actiwatch.

The study wouldn’t have been possible without the undergraduate student research assistants, whose help includes everything from helping with recording, monitoring Actiwatch, being a morning or night buddy for the participants and having an active role in the biomeasures and outreach group.

Grace Wang, an undergraduate student majoring in psychology, molecular biology and nutritional science, has been an active member of the research assistant team for the study.

“More and more people realize how important sleep is and how important it is to set a regular sleep cycle. Perhaps it would be harder for the teenaged generation to understand, acknowledge and actually implement this into their schedules as they have a lot of things on their plates: clubs, activities, homework, etc.,” Wang said, who is no stranger to unhealthy sleeping cycles herself, in an email interview.

However, sleep-deprived teenagers are not only exclusive to the UC Berkeley campus. Ariel Sim, a third-year UC Davis statistics major and economics minor, has the tendency to calculate the number of hours of sleep she will be getting, though sadly it’s not nearly enough. Just like many students found over all sorts of campuses, Ariel is involved in not only her academics, but other activities as well.

“I am a student leader at a Christian fellowship on campus. I also have to work as much as I can without sacrificing schoolwork to cover rent, tuition, bills, insurance, groceries and any other living expenses. While I have a lot of responsibilities that take up my time, I also suffer from mild insomnia. Perhaps, that’s why I don’t get an ‘ideal’ amount of sleep or ever feel fully rested,” Sim said in an email interview.

Dr. Irwin Feinberg and Dr. Ian Campbell, both from the UC Davis Sleep Research Lab and the Department of Psychiatry and Behavior Sciences are also interested in studying sleep deprivation among teenagers. Both are involved in a sleep need study in adolescents and how the need changes from the ages of 10 to 18 years old.

“There is a decreased need of sleep across adolescence from 12 to 16.5 years, and right now the recommended hours of sleep for teenagers is nine to 10 hours a night,” Dr. Campbell said.

Feinberg and Campbell’s findings lead the researchers to believe that adolescents need less recuperation during the night if they achieve it through naps during the day. Because these findings are not yet conclusive, they are working on teasing out the details.

So if you have brothers or siblings at that age or care for kids yourself, and if they are falling asleep during the day, then most likely they are sleep-deprived. According to both Dr. Feinberg and Dr. Campbell, it is equally important that teenagers develop a regular sleeping schedule regardless of the weekday or weekend.

As a rule of thumb, it is important to try to ensure that teenagers are well-rested in order to have a healthy lifestyle, but in the process of ensuring their sleep, don’t forget to catch some shut eye yourself.

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Irregular bedtime can mean behavioral problems in children

Irregular bedtimes in children can lead to sleep deprivation which can harm a child's brain and cause children to have behavioral issues.

Researchers from UCL have found that children with irregular bedtimes are more likely to have behavioral difficulties.

The study, which is published in the journal Pediatrics, found that irregular bedtimes could disrupt natural body rhythms and cause sleep deprivation, undermining brain maturation and the ability to regulate certain behaviours.

Professor Yvonne Kelly (UCL Epidemiology & Public Health), said: "Not having fixed bedtimes, accompanied by a constant sense of flux, induces a state of body and mind akin to jet lag and this matters for healthy development and daily functioning."

"We know that early child development has profound influences on health and wellbeing across the life course. It follows that disruptions to sleep, especially if they occur at key times in development, could have important lifelong impacts on health."

Analysing data from more than 10,000 children in the UK Millennium Cohort Study, the team collected bedtime data at three, five and seven years, as well as incorporating reports from the children's mothers and teachers on behavioral problems.

The study found a clear clinical and statistically significant link between bedtimes and behavior as irregular bedtimes affected children's behavior by disrupting circadian rhythms, leading to sleep deprivation that affects the developing brain.

As children progressed through early childhood without a regular bedtime, their behavioural scores -- which included hyperactivity, conduct problems, problems with peers and emotional difficulties -- worsened. However, children who switched to a more regular bedtime had clear improvements in their behaviour.

Professor Kelly said: "What we've shown is that these effects build up incrementally over childhood, so that children who always had irregular bedtimes were worse off than those children who did have a regular bedtime at one or two of the ages when they were surveyed.

"But our findings suggest the effects are reversible," continued Professor Kelly. "For example, children who change from not having to having regular bedtimes show improvements in their behaviour."

Irregular bedtimes were most common at the age of three, when around one in five children went to bed at varying times. However, by the age of seven, more than half the children went to bed regularly between 7.30 and 8.30 pm. Children whose bedtimes were irregular or who went to bed after 9 pm came from more socially disadvantaged backgrounds, and this was factored into the study findings.

Professor Kelly said: "As it appears the effects of inconsistent bedtimes are reversible, one way to try and prevent this would be for health care providers to check for sleep disruptions as part of routine health care visits. Given the importance of early childhood development on subsequent health, there may be knock-on effects across the life course. Therefore, there are clear opportunities for interventions aimed at supporting family routines that could have important lifelong impacts."

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Tips for Parents to get Bedtime Right

This article discusses tips to help parents get their children back on a regular bedtime schedule.

There’s nothing like back-to-school schedules to knock parents on our heels in a public way. The dog days – and late bedtimes – of summer are gone. Parents are left crying in their coffee at 7 a.m. after late nights spent barricading children in their rooms, caving in and crawling into bed with them or any one of a number of other jury-rigged solutions to avert sleep deprivation.

Getting kids to sleep is one of the dominant parenting woes of our times – just ask author Adam Mansbach, who scored a roaring bestseller with his ode to bedtime defeat, 2011’s Go the F–– To Sleep. Scientific researchers are refining what we know about sleep and its crucial function in memory, cognition and general health for all of us. And as they increasingly turn their focus to children and the relationship between sleep, biology and development, the reasons to get it right are only proliferating. It’s no wonder modern parents are whining about their perceived failures and grasping for sleep solutions from professionals.

“My phone has not stopped ringing this week,” says Tracey Ruiz, a respected Toronto sleep consultant. Ruiz, who goes by the professional handle Sleep Doula, started her business focused on babies, but now says her biggest growth area is the under-10 set. Clients have been desperate enough to fly her across the continent for bedtime triage.

Maybe they read about studies like the one released in July that looked at 9,000 four-year-olds. It found that those who had shorter-than-average sleep times have increasing rates of “externalizing” behavior such as anger, overactivity, aggression and impulsivity.

“It’s becoming a bigger issue because we’re all more scheduled, even the kids,” says Rachel Y. Moon, the sleep expert who has written the newest book on the subject, Sleep: What Every Parent Needs to Know. “In my practice, I see so many parents making decisions based on emotion and desperation,” the Washington, D.C.-based pediatrician says.

Shalini Roy feels my pain. The Toronto mother is in the midst of trying to dial bedtime back to 7:45 for her seven-year-old son, who needs more sleep for his big Grade 3 days.

“It’s kind of a stretch – he’s moving around, getting his PJs on,” she says. “The problem is this year he’s into chapter books. It just doesn’t end. ‘Just a few more words, just till the end of the chapter.’”

Admittedly, she says she often finds herself playing timekeeper while her husband, who oversees bedtime when the deadline gets pushed toward 8:30 or 9. There may be yelling, she allows.

Most experts recommend an average of 12 hours for toddlers and school-age kids. Ruiz says that can mean 10½ for some kids and 13 for others. And all experts stress consistency in sleep and wake times as a way to maintain circadian rhythms – not to mention consistency in how parents approach sleep setbacks.

Valerie Kirk, the medical director of the Pediatric Sleep Service at the Alberta Children’s Hospital in Calgary, says about half of her clinic’s families are experiencing non-medical sleep problems .

“One person’s problem is another person’s crisis,” she says. “The spectrum of what we see, on the mild side would be a child getting up two or three times a week to one getting up many, many times a night or simply refusing to go to bed.”

Kirk says that regardless of the methods out there to get bedtime back on track – from reward-based sticker charts to timers and cut-the-apron-strings techniques – the key is that bedtime become non-negotiable, much like bad-tasting medicine for a sick child or a car seat.

What’s more, she says, if your can get bedtime right, other disturbances like nighttime waking will become less likely.

“Non-negotiable” doesn’t have to mean they retreat to their rooms and you close the door and ignore them, Ruiz says. Nor does it mean favouring consistency over an extra cuddle. “Your child is not a robot.”

And forget laying down the law through gritted teeth when you’re frustrated – such as: “You are melting down. You’re tired. You have to go to bed earlier.”

Instead, Moon suggests talking with your child at dinner or on the way to school about any new rules – when everyone can be more rational.

Many parents I’ve heard from have summoned up enough rational reserves and enforce an ironclad 6 or 6:30 bedtime.

Burlington mother Jennifer Cushing is one of them. Bedtime for her five- and 2½-year-old is 6:30 sharp (wake-up is 6:30 or 7). Dinner is at 4:15 or 4:30.

“I was getting up with them at night when my second was a newborn,” she says. She tried the “extinction method,” also known as a “modified cry-it-out” approach, advocated by pediatrician and author Marc Weissbluth.

“It’s a rush to get home, make dinner, bath them, get them ready for bed,” she says, adding that her husband gets home early enough to get the process under way. “But you have to find what works for you.”

In our house, we’re getting there, 10 minutes at a time. I’m consoling myself with Moon’s reassurance: “You are not the first parent of a kindergartener who fell asleep on the bus. It’s a big transition.”

My son even started waking up five minutes before the alarm this week. We should all get a sticker for that.

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