From the category archives:

Sleep

Overweight? New Research Explains How Proper Sleep Is Important for Healthy Weight

May 9, 2012 News & Research

If you’re counting calories to lose weight, that may be only part of the weight loss equation says a new research report published online in The FASEB Journal. In the report, French scientists show that impairments to a gene known to be responsible for our internal body clocks, called “Rev-Erb alpha,” leads to excessive weight gain and related health problems.

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Scientists Redraw The Blueprint Of The Body’s Biological Clock

April 16, 2012 Diabetes Research

The discovery of a major gear in the biological clock that tells the body when to sleep and metabolize food may lead to new drugs to treat sleep problems and metabolic disorders, including diabetes. Scientists at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, led by Ronald M. Evans, a professor in Salk’s Gene Expression Laboratory, showed that two cellular switches found on the nucleus of mouse cells, known as REV-ERBα and REV-ERBβ, are essential for maintaining normal sleeping and eating cycles and for metabolism of nutrients from food.

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Coordinating The Circadian Clock: Molecular Pair Controls Time-Keeping And Fat Metabolism

April 16, 2012 Cancer

The 24-hour internal clock controls many aspects of human behavior and physiology, including sleep, blood pressure, and metabolism. Disruption in circadian rhythms leads to increased incidence of many diseases, including metabolic disease and cancer. Each cell of the body has its own internal timing mechanism, which is controlled by proteins that keep one another in check.

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Circadian Rhythms Have Profound Influence On Metabolic Output

March 20, 2012 Diabetes Research

By analyzing the hundreds of metabolic products present in the liver, researchers with the UC Irvine Center for Epigenetics & Metabolism have discovered that circadian rhythms — our own body clock — greatly control the production of such key building blocks as amino acids, carbohydrates and lipids.

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Physical Activity Impacts Overall Quality Of Sleep

November 30, 2011 News & Research

People sleep significantly better and feel more alert during the day if they get at least 150 minutes of exercise a week, a new study concludes. A nationally representative sample of more than 2,600 men and women, ages 18-85, found that 150 minutes of moderate to vigorous activity a week, which is the national guideline, provided a 65 percent improvement in sleep quality.

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Sleep Interruptions Erode Memory

September 6, 2011 Cognitive Function

Storing Information Requires a Continuous Supply of Z’s

Continuity of sleep, not just the total hours of nightly slumber, is crucial to forming and retaining memories, a new study in mice suggests. Mice couldn’t remember objects they’d seen before after a night of interrupted sleep, Asya Rolls of Stanford and her colleagues report online July 25 [...]

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Poor Sleep Quality Increases Risk of High Blood Pressure

August 29, 2011 Hypertension

Reduced slow wave sleep (SWS) is a powerful predictor for developing high blood pressure in older men, according to new research in Hypertension: Journal of the American Heart Association.
SWS, one of the deeper stages of sleep, is characterized by non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) from which it’s difficult to awaken. It’s represented by relatively slow, synchronized brain [...]

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Sleep Apnea May Raise Risk of Dementia, Study Finds

August 11, 2011 News & Research

Sleep apnea, a fairly common, treatable disorder that causes people to stop breathing momentarily while they sleep, may lead to cognitive impairment and even dementia, according to a new study of elderly women.
Women in the study with sleep apnea or other sleep disorders that affected their breathing were much more likely than those with normal [...]

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