Good night's sleep may reduce risk of type 2 diabetes in obese teens
September 22, 2011
Science Daily/Children's Hospital of Philadelphia
Obese teenagers who don't get the proper amount of sleep may have disruptions in insulin secretion and blood sugar (glucose) levels, say pediatric researchers. Their study suggests that getting a good night's sleep may stave off the development of type 2 diabetes in these adolescents.
"We already know that three out of four high school students report getting insufficient sleep," said study investigator Dorit Koren, M.D., a pediatric endocrinologist at The Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. "Our study found to keep glucose levels stable, the optimal amount of sleep for teenagers is 7.5 to 8.5 hours per night." She added that this is consistent with research in adults showing an association between sleep deprivation and increased risk of type 2 diabetes.
"Reduced insulin secretion may lead to the higher glucose levels that we found in subjects who had insufficient sleep," said Koren. "We will seek to confirm these findings with home-based studies of sleep patterns in obese teenagers. In the meantime, our study reinforces the idea that getting adequate sleep in adolescence may help protect against type 2 diabetes."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/09/110920103816.htm
A father's stress may affect his unborn children
September 6, 2011
Science Daily/Elsevier
Does Dad's stress affect his unborn children? According to the results of a new study, it seems the answer may be "yes, but it's complicated."
The risk of developing depression, which is significantly increased by exposure to chronic stress, is influenced by both environment and genetics. The interplay of these two factors is quite complex, but in fact, there is even a third factor that most of us know nothing about -- epigenetics. Epigenetics is the science of changes in genetic expression that are not caused by actual changes in DNA sequencing. It is these mechanisms that have been the recent focus of intergenerational investigations into the transmission of stress vulnerability.
Inheritance is complex. We've all known that mothers and fathers have tremendous influence on their children, but "this study highlights how complicated the relationship between genetic, epigenetic, and environmental contributions can be with regards to the inheritance of important behavioral traits," commented Dr. John Krystal, editor of Biological Psychiatry.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110831081606.htm
Stress boosts performance for confident students, but holds back those with more anxiety
August 26, 2011
Science Daily/University of Chicago
Knowing the right way to handle stress in the classroom can make the difference between success and failure for the millions of students going back to school this fall. Researchers found that a hormone released in response to stress can either be tied to a student's poor performance on a math test or contribute to success, depending on the frame of mind of the student going into the test.
"We found that cortisol, a hormone released in response to stress, can either be tied to a student's poor performance on a math test or contribute to success, depending on the frame of mind of the student going into the test," said Sian Beilock, associate professor in psychology at UChicago and one of the nation's leading experts on poor performance by otherwise talented people.
"When you're worried about doing well in a game, or giving a memorized speech in front of others, the best thing to do is to distract yourself with a little tune before you start so you don't become focused on all the details of what you've done so many times before," she said. "On the playing field, thinking too much can be a bad thing," she further explained.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110809092045.htm
School obesity-prevention curriculum can reduce medical costs
August 1, 2011
Science Daily/Children's Hospital Boston
Teaching middle-school children about nutrition and exercise and encouraging them to watch less TV can save the health care system a substantial amount of money, suggests a new economic analysis.
"Because eating disorders can be so expensive to treat, preventing even one case in the five Planet Health schools translated into reducing medical costs by $34,000," says Austin. "But if we scale up our calculations to include, say, 100 middle schools in Massachusetts, the medical costs reduced by preventing bulimia increase to over half a million dollars. And if we scale up nationwide, to say 1,000 schools, the potential reduction in the medical cost burden is sizable."
Austin notes that obesity prevention programs that stigmatize obesity or create a sense of blame can actually contribute to eating disorders. "We need to be smart about choosing obesity prevention strategies that, at the same time, can prevent eating disorders," she says. "Our study shows that when we do both, we substantially increase the benefits, both in terms of health and reducing medical costs."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/08/110801161416.htm
Adolescents with a sunny outlook on life may have better health in their adult years
July 23, 2011
Science Daily/Northwestern University
Teenagers are known for their angst-ridden ways, but those who remain happy and positive during the tumultuous teenage years report better general health when they are adults, according to a new Northwestern University study.
Researchers also found that teens with high positive well-being had a reduced risk of engaging in unhealthy behaviors such as smoking, binge drinking, using drugs and eating unhealthy foods as they transitioned into young adulthood.
The study, one of the first to focus on the effect positive psychological characteristics in adolescence can have on long-term health, is published in the July 2011 issue of the Journal of Adolescent Health.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110719072806.htm
Is there a link between obesity, chronic illness and bullying?
July 5, 2011
Science Daily/University of Bristol
A study exploring the prevalence of overweight and obesity in nine-year-olds and its associations with chronic illness and bullying has recently been completed. The study found obesity to be more prevalent in girls. In addition children, particularly boys with an abnormal body weight had a significantly higher rate of an ongoing chronic illness. Children who were overweight or obese were a lot more likely to be victimized by bullying when compared to children who were not overweight.
Childhood obesity is a major personal, family and public health challenge. Weight problems and obesity in children has increased dramatically throughout Europe in the past two decades. In addition to the increased likelihood of adult obesity with its associated health risks, serious short-term physical and psychosocial consequences endanger the wellbeing of an affected child.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/07/110705211026.htm
Daytime sleepiness is associated with an increased craving for carbs among teens
June 15, 2011
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
In a new study, the intensity of self-reported craving for carbohydrates among 262 high school seniors increased in a linear relationship with the severity of subjective daytime sleepiness.
The odds of having a strong craving for carbs were 50 percent higher among those with excessive daytime sleepiness. The rate of depression also was higher among students who had a strong craving for carbohydrates (34 percent) than among students who had little or no craving for carbs (22 percent).
"This is one of the first studies in a high school population to show a linear relationship between carbohydrate craving and sleep deprivation," said principal investigator Dr. Mahmood Siddique, director of Sleep and Wellness Medical Associates and Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at Robert Wood Johnson Medical School in New Jersey.
"In particular, as sleep deprivation increased, self-reported carbohydrate craving also increased. Further, the risk of carbohydrate craving was especially strong among depressed students."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/06/110614101246.htm
Job Stress in Teachers Linked to Student Achievement
May 25, 2011
Science Daily/University of Houston
After 17 years of researching traumatic stress with war-afflicted populations (veterans and civilians) and job stress in the medical profession, Teresa McIntyre, a research professor in the department of psychology and the Texas Institute for Evaluation, Measurement and Statistics (TIMES), at the University of Houston (UH), decided to study another high risk occupation, middle school teachers in seventh and eighth grade.
"Middle school is probably the most difficult level to teach because student-teacher interactions are more difficult during this time, and this kind of difficulty in teacher-student interactions is a major source of stress for teachers at this level," McIntyre said.
"For students it's a time of adolescence and many changes developmentally, and that is going to affect the dynamics of learning, as well as the social relationships and climate in the classroom. It's going to affect the teachers as well. Our premise is that if the teacher is stressed, their behavior will be different with students, and they will perform differently with students."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110525181422.htm
Pace of Brain Development Still Strong in Late Teens
May 10, 2011
Science Daily/Brown University
The brain changes during the teen years, for instance by pruning away connections that no longer seem needed. By measuring the brainwave signals of sleeping teens ages 15-16 and again a few years later, researchers found that the process does not appear to slow as teens approach adulthood.
Boys and girls have put many of the trappings of teenagerhood behind them by the age of 18 or 19, but at least some of the brain resculpting that characterizes the decade of adolescence may still be going as strong as ever, according to findings in a new study that measured brainwaves of subjects in their midteens and again in their late teens.
"The unique feature of this study is that it puts together these EEG measures of power and looks at these sleep stages longitudinally (in the same people over time) and across several regions around the brain," she said.
Carskadon said that sleep is a convenient time to take long-term, well controlled measurements of neural activity, but that the study does not show the role sleep may play in neural renovation among older teenagers.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/05/110510101621.htm
Teen Sleep Study Adds to Evidence of a 'Neural Fingerprint'
May 2, 2011
Science Daily/Brown University
New research finds that consistent, "signature" brainwave patterns first noticed in short-term studies of adults are so robust that they're also detectable over a matter of years in the notoriously turbulent brains of teens. From there, the question is what such a "neural fingerprint" might mean.
Teens are rarely described as stable, so when something about their rapidly changing brains remains placidly unaltered, neuroscientists take notice. Such is the case in a new study of electroencephalography (EEG) readings gathered from dozens of teens while they slept. Despite the major neural overhaul underway during adolescence, most individuals maintained a unique and consistent pattern of underlying brain oscillations. The work lends a new level of support to the idea, already observed in adults, that people produce a kind of brainwave "fingerprint."
"At the moment it's too soon to tell anything about individual sleep or behavior from this, but it could provide a tool to geneticists," she said. "It is a link between behavior and genes."
With further research, the functional or physiological significance of the patterns could become clearer, Carskadon said. One question would be whether particular influences such as sleep deprivation or alcohol use affect the pattern.
"Knowing this gives us another tool to examine brain function and stability," Carskadon said. "Showing that there are these fingerprints may open up future possibilities in using this kind of analysis in larger samples to look for endophenotypes that might be predictive of someone, say, who might go on to develop schizophrenia or depression."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110426185251.htm
Caffeine Negatively Affects Children: Most Consume Caffeine Daily
December 17, 2010
Science Daily/Elsevier Health Sciences
Caffeine consumption in children is often blamed for sleep problems and bedwetting. Information on childhood caffeine consumption is limited, and many parents may not know the amount or effects of their child's caffeine consumption. In a study published in The Journal of Pediatrics, researchers found that 75% of children surveyed consumed caffeine on a daily basis, and the more caffeine the children consumed, the less they slept.
Dr. William Warzak and colleagues from the University of Nebraska Medical Center surveyed the parents of over 200 children 5 to 12 years old during routine clinical visits at an urban pediatric clinic. Parents were asked to report the types and amounts of snacks and beverages their child consumed on a daily basis.
According to Dr. Warzak, "Some children as young as 5 years old were consuming the equivalent of a can of soda a day." The authors also noticed that the older children drank more caffeinated beverages. "Children between the ages of 8 and 12 years consumed an average of 109 mg a day," Dr. Warzak explains, "the equivalent of almost 3 12-ounce cans of soda."
The study authors stress the importance of parental awareness regarding their child's caffeine consumption. "Parents should be aware of the potentially negative influence of caffeine on a child's sleep quality and daily functioning,"
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/12/101216073209.htm
Exposure to early evening sunlight in spring creates teenage night owls
July 26, 2010
Science Daily/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
In the spring, later sunset and extended daylight exposure delay bedtimes in teenagers, according to new research.
"Biologically, this increased exposure to early evening light in the spring delays the onset of nocturnal melatonin, a hormone that indicates to the body when it's nighttime," explains Mariana Figueiro, Ph.D., associate professor. "This extended exposure adds to the difficulties teens have falling asleep at a reasonable hour."
Over time when coupled with having to rise early for school, this delay in sleep onset may lead to teen sleep deprivation and mood changes, and increase risk of obesity and perhaps under-performance in school, according to Figueiro.
"This is a double-barreled problem for teenagers and their parents," says Figueiro. "In addition to the exposure to more evening daylight, many teens also contend with not getting enough morning light to stimulate the body's biological system, also delaying teens' bedtimes."
Measuring "Circadian Light"
In the study, the Algonquin Middle School students were exposed to significantly more "circadian light" in the early evening during spring than in winter, resulting in both delayed melatonin onset and shorter self-reported sleep durations. Each subject wore a Daysimeter, a small, head-mounted device developed by the LRC to measure an individual's exposure to daily "circadian light," as well as rest and activity patterns. The definition of circadian light is based upon the potential for light to suppress melatonin synthesis at night, as opposed to measuring light in terms of how it stimulates the visual system.
This study, sponsored by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) and, in part, by a grant from a Trans-National Institutes of Health Genes, Environment and Health Initiative (NIH-GEI), is the first to relate field measurements of circadian light exposures to a well-established circadian marker (the rise in evening melatonin levels) during two seasons of the year.
In a previous field study, also funded by USGBC and NIH-GEI and published in Neuroendocrinology Letters, Figueiro and Rea examined the impact of morning light on teen sleep habits and found that removing short-wavelength (blue) morning light resulted in a 30-minute delay in sleep onset by the end of a five-day period.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/07/100726124420.htm
Lack of morning light keeping teenagers up at night
February 27, 2010
Science Daily/Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
The first field study on the impact of light on teenagers' sleeping habits finds that insufficient daily morning light exposure contributes to teenagers not getting enough sleep.
"As teenagers spend more time indoors, they miss out on essential morning light needed to stimulate the body's 24-hour biological system, which regulates the sleep/wake cycle," reports Mariana Figueiro, Ph.D., Assistant Professor and Program Director at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute's Lighting Research Center (LRC) and lead researcher on the new study.
"These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly under-performing on standardized tests. We are starting to call this the teenage night owl syndrome."
Disrupting Biological Rhythms
The problem is that today's middle and high schools have rigid schedules requiring teenagers to be in school very early in the morning. These students are likely to miss the morning light because they are often traveling to and arriving at school before the sun is up or as it's just rising. "This disrupts the connection between daily biological rhythms, called circadian rhythms, and the earth's natural 24-hour light/dark cycle," explains Dr. Figueiro.
In addition, the schools are not likely providing adequate electric light or daylight to stimulate this biological or circadian system, which regulates body temperature, alertness, appetite, hormones and sleep patterns. Our biological system responds to light much differently than our visual system. It is much more sensitive to blue light. Therefore, having enough light in the classroom to read and study does not guarantee that there is sufficient light to stimulate our biological system.
"According to our study, however, the situation in schools can be changed rapidly by the conscious delivery of daylight, which is saturated with short-wavelength, or blue, light," reports Dr. Figueiro.
The new research has applications for more than 3 million shift workers and Alzheimer's patients who suffer from lack of a regular sleep pattern.
Studies have shown that this lack of synchronization between a shift worker's rest and activity and light/dark patterns leads to a much higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, seasonal depression and cancer over decades.
As evidenced in prior studies by Dr. Figueiro, light therapy can also be used to improve sleep in Alzheimer's patients, who usually display uneven sleep patterns. "By removing light at certain times of day, and giving light at other times, you can synchronize the sleep/wake patterns of Alzheimer's patients with the light/dark pattern, providing them with more consolidated sleep," says Dr. Figueiro.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/02/100216140305.htm
Less Is More: Teens Who Sleep Less Eat More Fatty Foods and Snacks
September 7, 2010
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
A study in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep shows that teens who slept less than eight hours per weeknight ate higher proportions of fatty foods and snacks than adolescents who slept eight hours or more. The results suggest that short sleep duration may increase obesity risk by causing small changes in eating patterns that cumulatively alter energy balance, especially in girls.
Results show that a shorter mean weekday sleep duration was significantly associated with an increase in the percentage of calories consumed from fats and a decrease in the percentage of calories from carbohydrates. After adjusting for potential confounders such as age, sex and race, teens who slept less than eight hours on weeknights consumed 2.2 percent more calories from fats and 3.0 percent fewer calories from carbs than teens who slept eight hours or more. Further adjustments for body mass index (BMI) had little effect on these associations. In secondary analyses stratified by sex, the results were significant among girls but not boys.
"The relative increase in fat consumption among shorter sleepers by 2.2 percent per day chronically may contribute to cumulative increases in energy consumption that would be expected to increase risk for obesity and cardiovascular disease," said senior author and principal investigator Susan Redline, MD, MPH, professor of medicine in the Division of Sleep Medicine at Brigham and Women's Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, teaching affiliates of Harvard Medical School in Boston, Mass.
"The demonstration of chronically altered dietary patterns in adolescents with shorter sleep provides insight into why shorter sleep has been associated with obesity in prior experimental and observational studies."
The study also found a relationship between sleep duration and snacking. For each one-hour increase in sleep duration, the odds of consuming a high amount of calories from snacks decreased by an average of 21 percent. Analyses of sleep duration and timing of nutrient intake revealed that a significantly greater proportion of teens who slept less than eight hours per weeknight consumed food in the early morning between 5 a.m. and 7 a.m.
"Altered timing of eating in shorter sleepers also may be a metabolic stress that contributes to metabolic dysfunction," said Redline.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2010/09/100901072854.htm
Faulty Body Clock May Make Kids Bipolar
November 13, 2009
Science Daily/BioMed Central
Malfunctioning circadian clock genes may be responsible for bipolar disorder in children. Researchers writing in the open access journal BMC Psychiatry found four versions of the regulatory gene RORB that were associated with pediatric bipolar disorder.
Alexander Niculescu from Indiana University School of Medicine, Indianapolis, US, worked with a team of researchers at Harvard, UC San Diego, Massachusetts General Hospital and SUNY Upstate Medical University to study the RORA and RORB genes of 152 children with the condition and 140 control children.
They found four alterations to the RORB gene that were positively associated with being bipolar. Niculescu said, "Our findings suggest that clock genes in general and RORB in particular may be important candidates for further investigation in the search for the molecular basis of bipolar disorder".
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/11/091111200213.htm
Sleep Patterns In Children And Teenagers Could Indicate Risk For Depression
August 14, 2009
Science Daily/UT Southwestern Medical Center
Sleep patterns can help predict which adolescents might be at greatest risk for developing depression, a researcher at UT Southwestern Medical Center has found in a five-year study.
Sleep is a biological factor known to be associated with adult depression. Depressed adults experience rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep earlier in the sleep cycle than people who are not depressed. Until this study, available online and in the July edition of Neuropsychopharmacology, it had been unclear whether this relationship held true in adolescents.
At the start of the study involving 96 adolescents with no evidence of depression or other psychiatric disorders, researchers monitored the sleep cycles of participants for three days and collected saliva and urine samples to record cortisol levels. The teens were then monitored for up to five years.
In addition to the sleep finding, researchers found that at the end of the five-year study period, adolescents with higher cortisol levels were more likely than others to develop depression.
"Depression is not mediated by sleep alone," Dr. Rao said. "If we can identify factors such as sleep and cortisol and their role, we could start the prevention process before the disease leads children and teenagers down a path well behind their peers educationally and socially."
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/08/090813083335.htm
Better Sleep is Associated with Improved Academic Success
June 15, 2009
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
Getting more high-quality sleep is associated with better academic performance, according to a research abstract that will be presented on Wednesday, June 10, at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies. The positive relationship is especially relevant to performance in math.
Results indicate that higher math scores were related to greater sleep quality, less awakenings and increased sleep efficiency. Higher English and history scores were associated with less difficulty awakening. Increased sleep-onset latency over the weekend was associated with worse academic performance.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090610091232.htm
Being A Night Owl in High School is Linked with Lower College GPA
June 11, 2009
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
According to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9, at Sleep 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, students who consider themselves to be evening types (that is someone who feels more alert and does their best work later in the day) have poorer sleep hygiene scores than morning and intermediate types.
Sleep hygiene is the group of behaviors linked to good sleep and alertness. Examples include having a regular bedtime routine, a regular wake time, a regular bed time, and sleeping in a comfortable bed.
The researchers found that this poor sleep hygiene was related to poorer academic performance and a decline in grade point average (GPA) during the transition from high school to college.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/06/090609072813.htm
ADHD Linked to Sleep Problems in Adolescents
May 6, 2009
Science Daily/American Academy of Sleep Medicine
A new study shows that adolescents with a childhood diagnosis of Attention Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) are more likely to have current and lifetime sleep problems and disorders, regardless of the severity of current ADHD symptoms. Authors suggest that findings indicate that mental health professionals should screen for sleep problems and psychiatric comorbidities among all adolescents with a childhood diagnosis of ADHD.
Results indicate that adolescents with a childhood diagnosis of ADHD, regardless of persistent ADHD were more likely to have current sleep problems and sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep terrors, nightmares, bruxism and snoring. Of the total sample, 17 percent of children with ADHD were currently suffering from primary insomnia, versus 7 percent of controls; lifetime primary insomnia occurred in 20 percent of children with ADHD, compared to 10 percent of controls.
Nightmare disorder affected 11 percent of children with ADHD and lifetime nightmare disorder affected 23 percent, versus 5 and 16 percent of controls. The presence of at least one psychiatric comorbid condition increases the risks for insomnia and nightmares.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/05/090501090914.htm
Inadequate Sleep Leads to Behavioral Problems
April 28, 2009
Science Daily/University of Helsinki
A recent Finnish study suggests that children's short sleep duration even without sleeping difficulties increases the risk for behavioral symptoms of ADHD.
"We were able to show that short sleep duration and sleeping difficulties are related to behavioral symptoms of ADHD, and we also showed that short sleep, per se, increases behavioral symptoms, regardless of the presence of sleeping difficulties", says researcher Juulia Paavonen, MD, PhD.
"The findings suggest that maintaining adequate sleep schedules among children is likely to be important in preventing behavioral symptoms. However, even though inadequate sleep seems to owe potential to impair behaviour and performance, intervention studies are needed to confirm the causality," Paavonen continues.
http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2009/04/090427131313.htm