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Sleep disorders news

Sleep disorders

Oxytocin may reduce mood changes in women with disrupted sleep

Oxytocin, often called "the love hormone," may play a protective role in mood disturbances triggered by sleep loss and hormonal shifts during key reproductive transitions like postpartum and menopause, according to a study ...

Addiction

Effects of poor sleep may contribute to alcohol problems in college students

Certain behavioral effects of not getting enough sleep may explain why people who have insomnia are at risk for problems with alcohol. A study of college students, published in Alcohol: Clinical and Experimental Research, ...

Sleep disorders

Verbal response time reveals hidden sleepiness in older adults

A new study led by UCLA investigators shows that Verbal Reaction Time (VRT), the amount of time it takes a person to respond verbally, can be a marker of sleepiness in older adults. The study, which measured participants' ...

Health

How dairy might disrupt your sleep and dreams

Ebenezer Scrooge tried to wave away the ghost of Jacob Marley by blaming the apparition on "an undigested bit of beef … a crumb of cheese." Charles Dickens might have been writing fiction, but the idea that late-night dairy ...

Psychology & Psychiatry

Cheese may really be giving you nightmares, scientists find

Scientists have found that eating too much dairy could ruin your sleep. Researchers questioned more than 1,000 students about the quality of their sleep, their eating habits, and any perceived link between the two, and found ...

Health

Why frequent nightmares may shorten your life by years

Waking up from a nightmare can leave your heart pounding, but the effects may reach far beyond a restless night. Adults who suffer bad dreams every week were almost three times more likely to die before age 75 than people ...

Sleep disorders

Silent night: Anatomical solutions for snoring

Snoring is often dismissed as a harmless quirk—or the punchline of bedtime jokes—but it can signal deeper issues that go beyond mere acoustic annoyance.

Neuroscience

Blinding lights: The hidden science behind gambling's glow

There's a reason casinos rarely have windows or clocks, they're engineered to make you lose track of time. But what if it's not just time you're losing? New research suggests that the lighting used in gambling environments ...

Health

Q&A: The importance of sleep regularity

Americans have become increasingly aware of the fact that they just don't get enough sleep. However it turns out that's not the whole story. Duration is important but so is regularity.

Neuroscience

How bright-light treatment improves sleep in stressed mice

Chronic stress is associated with sleep disturbance. In their new study, Lu Huang and colleagues identify the neural pathway behind this behavior, and at the same time, explain how bright-light treatment is able to counter ...

Health

How to get better sleep on long-haul flights

For most of us, the prospect of a long-haul flight is exciting, mixed with a few nerves. We're off somewhere different—perhaps a holiday, maybe to catch up with friends or family. Even work can be more interesting when ...

Neuroscience

When sleep disorders presage something more serious

Early one morning, while checking on a slumbering patient at the Center for Sleep Medicine, Erik St. Louis, M.D., noticed something peculiar. The patient, a woman in her early 60's, had started running beneath her bedsheets. ...