The relationship between sleep and of weight

Studies ostentation that skimping on sleep may lead to superiority gain. But can getting shut-eye help you dissipate weight? We all know that diet and disturb are the cornerstones of a weight-loss program. But can siesta also help you maintain a health avoirdupois or even drop a few pounds?
"There are more and more studies showing that not getting ample supply sleep or not getting good quality of saw wood can to weight gain," says Raj Kakar, MD, MPH, the medical manager at the Dallas Center for Sleep Disorders in Plano, Texas.
Sleep and Body Weight: What the Research Says
  Precisely as obesity has become a worldwide rampant over the past few decades, more people have on the agenda c trick also become chronically be in the land of Nod-deprived. According to National Slumber Foundation surveys, 35 percent of Americans were sleeping for eight hours a shades of night in 1998, compared with justified 26 percent in 2005. Researchers be convinced of that the growing obesity and catnap deprivation epidemics may be related.
A up to date study followed a group of 40- to 60-year-old women for five to seven years and tracked their bulk and sleep disorder patterns. The researchers build that women who reported having unrest falling asleep, waking up again at night, or having trouble staying asleep were significantly more likely to entertain "major weight gain" (get further of 11 pounds or more).
Another about examined the eating and exercise habits of a sort of young healthy men after sleeping for eight hours and four hours on two consecutive nights. The researchers establish that the men ate significantly more (an customary of 560 excess calories in their regular diet) during the day after they were siesta-deprived, compared to what they ate after having a integrity night's sleep.
Researchers feel that insomnia children may be at strikingly high risk of having albatross problems. Studies have firmly found that getting less nod off than recommended is associated with girlhood obesity. In fact, based on drop studies in children, researchers sire calculated that a child's imperil of being overweight or obese is reduced by close by 9 percent for each additional hour of nap per night. 
The Link Between Sleep and Diet
 Kakar says that it is reason that sleep is associated with masses weight for two reasons. Anything else, people who are sleep-badly off may have less zing throughout the day and therefore less motivation to utilize regularly. In fact, people who don't drop enough report getting less gymnastics than people who get passably sleep apnea every gloaming. Second, the amount of drop you get seems to affect the proclivity-controlling hormones ghrelin and leptin, which can flit you reaching for high-carbohydrate, calorie-obtuse foods when you haven't gotten adequately sleep.
Studies display that sleep deprivation can fool to elevations in ghrelin, which is predilection-stimulating, and reductions in leptin, which is disposition-suppressing. "Those hormones are thrown out of whack, so as ghrelin gets ramped up and leptin gets pushed down, you are more proper to go for high-carbohydrate foods and cheerful-energy foods, which occasion you a boost of energy, but can then chain to weight gain," says Kakar. 
Can Sleep Help You Lose Weight? 
 While mounting confirmation indicates that your sleeping habits are affiliated to your body weight, researchers calm don't know for sure whether getting more catch could actually help you lose avoirdupois.
Currently, researchers at the National Institutes of Well-being are conducting a study to determine whether sleeping for a fine fettle amount of time each night (in 7.5 hours) can help sleep-badly off people lose excess weight.
Until more inquire into is conducted on the sleep-weight loss confederation, it makes sense to put "get enough sleep" on your checklist of habits to back up a healthy weight, buy Ambien and keep from gaining unwanted pounds.

Sleep Problems Plague Men and Women Soldiers

Soldiers deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan experience significant sleep problems, with new data showing they are 28 percent more likely to have insomnia than nondeployed soldiers. A sub-analysis found that women with children and pregnant women suffer more sleep problems than their peers in civilian life.

Deployment has a significant impact on soldiers’ sleep

Investigators gathered data from 41,225 military service personnel regarding the quality and quantity of their sleep. The information was collected via two surveys: one conducted between 2001 and 2003, and a follow-up survey given between 2004 and 2006. The final results were based on the 27 percent (11,035) of soldiers who completed the second survey during or after deployment.
Among the researchers’ findings was that soldiers were 28 percent more likely to have symptoms of insomnia--difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep—than their fellow soldiers who had not been deployed. The soldiers who completed the follow-up survey after deployment also were 21 percent more likely to experience sleep problems.
Another significant finding was that sleep problems were more common among soldiers who also had mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or depression, or if they said they were in fair or poor health. Earlier studies have shown that PTSD and depression are serious problems for soldiers who return home from Iraq and Afghanistan.
A 2006 report in the Journal of the American Medical Association, for example, noted that one-third of US military personnel from the Iraq war accessed mental health services when they returned home. A 2010 study in the Archives of General Psychiatry reported that an average of 10 percent of returning soldiers suffer from PTSD or depression, with many displaying violent behavior as well.
Ringing in the ears, or tinnitus, is a major cause of long-term sleep problems. Tinnitus is the most common injury suffered by soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan, according to a report in the November 2009 issue of the Journal of Clinical Nursing.
Among the other significant findings in the new study was that female soldiers--mothers of young children and pregnant women—were averaging less than six hours of sleep per night. According to lead author Amber D. Seelig, data analyst for the Department of Deployment Health Research at the Naval Health Research Center, “We were surprised to see how little sleep pregnant and postpartum women were getting.”
Researchers pointed out that “women in our study were reporting much shorter sleep than civilian pregnant women.” They speculated that the stress of pregnancy and motherhood was exacerbated among female soldiers who face the possibility of future deployment and being away from their children.
The new study, which appears in the December 1 issue of Sleep, suggests that one way to address the sleep problems that plague men and women soldiers is to promote healthier sleep patterns for military personnel. Whether such measures could have a positive impact on sleep among soldiers who suffer the traumas of war is unknown.

U-M To Explore Sleep, Biological Rhythms, Mental Health Links

One of the world’s first laboratories devoted solely to research on how sleep and biological rhythms influence depression, substance abuse and other aspects of mental well-being has opened at the University of Michigan Health System.
The U-M Sleep %26amp; Chronophysiology Laboratory, based at the U-M Depression Center, welcomed the first research volunteers to its new eight-bed facility this month, and is seeking many more participants for a number of research studies.
And even though the comfortable beds, fluffy down comforters and muted lighting make it look more like a cozy hotel than a research lab, the new facility is home to a number of highly scientific studies on sleep and the daily cycles known as circadian rhythms.
Two of the bedrooms, in fact, are located within suites that may be unique in the world. Called Temporal Isolation Labs, they’re designed so that a research volunteer can be closed off entirely from the outside world, unable to tell what time of day it really is.
These suites are specially equipped with banks of lights on the walls and ceiling that can be adjusted precisely by the center’s staff to simulate all times of day or night. This can allow a volunteer’s innate circadian rhythms — patterns of rest and activity in both body and mind — to be monitored or even altered temporarily. The facility can also be used for light therapy to combat problems such as depression.
Now that the laboratory has opened, on the second floor of the Rachel Upjohn Building on U-M’s East Medical Campus, director Roseanne Armitage, Ph.D., foresees that her team and colleagues will be able to discover a wealth of new knowledge about how the mind, body and brain interact to produce sleep irregularities and off-kilter circadian rhythms.
"Already, we know that people with depression, seasonal affective disorders, anxiety disorders, alcoholism, and many more conditions suffer terrible disruptions to their sleep patterns, and that in turn, a lack of good-quality sleep worsens their conditions," says Armitage, a professor of psychiatry at the U-M Medical School. "But there are so many unanswered questions about why this happens, how early in life it begins, and how it might be treated or prevented. This lab will help us do just that."
In all, about 80 percent of adults and teens with depression report that they have severe sleep disturbances, and those with prolonged sleep problems also tend to have worse depression over time, and a higher risk of committing suicide.
Conversely, having even a two-week period of insomnia is associated with a higher risk of developing depression later in life. Sleep problems also interfere with recovery from alcohol dependence and postpartum depression, and in children can be a risk factor for later depression.
Armitage, and the center’s associate director Robert Hoffmann, Ph.D., have been studying sleep, circadian rhythms and mood disorders for decades, including the past five years at U-M. But the new facility doubles the space for their laboratory team, and other U-M researchers, to perform such studies in infants, children, teens and adults.
The new sleep lab complements U-M’s Sleep Disorders Center, which operates outpatient sleep-disorders treatment clinics and two facilities where patients can have overnight sleep tests to diagnose sleep-breathing problems such as sleep apnea, to detect other sleep disorders, or to take part in clinical trials. Psychologist Todd Arnedt, Ph.D., a member of the faculty at both the Sleep Disorders Center and the new sleep research lab, and Director of the Behavioral Sleep Medicine Program, specializes in treating sleep disorders through cognitive behavioral techniques.
The new lab will be staffed seven days a week, with volunteers arriving in the early evening through a special secure entrance and staying until morning, when they can shower and have breakfast before heading to work, home or school. Some might come for several nights in a row, while Temporal Isolation volunteers might stay for several days or even weeks.
Each volunteer has his or her brain waves monitored and recorded overnight, using a technique called electroencephalography or EEG, which can monitor brain activity through small electrodes pasted temporarily to the face and scalp, and linked to a sandwich-sized portable digital recorder. Some volunteers may also wear wristwatch-like devices called actigraphs during the day, to measure their movements and light exposure.
The researchers can then look at all the collected data to see if, for example, a person’s circadian rhythms are out of sync with normal clock time and the daily cycle of day and night — or if their patterns during different sleep stages are abnormal.
Research by the U-M group and others has already revealed that adolescents with depression exhibit highly irregular brain-wave patterns during sleep, and so do teens who are at risk of depression because they have a family history of it. Even babies born to mothers who have depression appear to have altered sleep and circadian rhythms, the team has found.