Thursday, October 1, 2009

WUSTL Research Finds Individual Cells Isolated From The Biological Clock Can Keep Daily Time, But Are Unreliable

WUSTL Research Finds Individual Cells Isolated From The Biological Clock Can Keep Daily Time, But Are Unreliable
Alexis Webb enters a small room at Washington University in St. Louis with walls, floor and ceiling painted dark green, shuts the door, turns off the lights and bends over a microscope in a black box draped with black cloth. Through the microscope, she can see a single nerve cell on a glass cover slip glowing dimly. The glow tells her the isolated nerve cell is busy keeping time. Webb, a graduate fellow in the Neuroscience Ph.D. Program, working with Erik Herzog, Ph.D.

Insomnia: Studies Confirm Calcium And Magnesium Effective
According to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), almost six out of ten Americans report having insomnia and sleep problems at least a few nights a week. Insomnia is defined as "An inability to fall asleep or remain asleep long enough to feel rested, especially when the problem continues over time." In an effort to combat this, as many as 25 percent of the people in the United States use medications to help them sleep.

What Is Jet Lag? What Causes Jet Lag? How Do You Prevent Jet Lag?
Jet lag is also known as time zone change syndrome or desynchronosis. It is considered a sleep disorder that can affect everybody who travels across multiple time zones in airplanes. Jet lag effects largely reflect de-synchronization between the body's internal time clock and local environmental cues.

Insomniac Mice Created With Gene Variation That Lets People Get By On Less Sleep
A University of Utah sleep expert has joined with researchers at the University of California, San Francisco (UCSF), and Stanford University to identify a genetic variation in humans, which the scientists also developed in mouse models, that allows a rare number of people to require less sleep than others. Published in the Aug.

Temple-Led Study Finds Weight Loss Has Significant Impact On Sleep Apnea
More than 12 million people in the U.S. suffer from sleep apnea, most common among the overweight and obese. More than just loud snoring, it can lead to high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease and a poor quality of life. For years, doctors have told patients with sleep apnea that their best bet for alleviating it would be to lose weight, but there's been very little research-based evidence to prove that.

2-Way Communication Between Common Biological Pathways And Body's Daily Clock Revealed By Gene Screen
While scientists have known for several years that our body's internal clock helps regulate many biological processes, researchers have found that the reverse is also true: Many common biological processes - including insulin metabolism - regulate the clock, according to a new study by investigators at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, the Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, and the University of California at San Diego.

Sleeplessness Worse for Women

Beware of Late-Night Eating