Say It Isn’t So – Less Sleep Means Less Testosterone? Yep, it’s true – give healthy young men less sleep time and down goes the testosterone. The data come from the University of Chicago, where checking hormone changes wrought by partial sleep deprivation has become a minor research industry by itself (http://news.consumerreports.org/health/2011/06/sleep-deprivation-may-lower-testosterone.html). The guys […]
Let the kids sleep (6/3/11)
Rest Changes Through the Life Cycle Rest is required for growth and maturation, but the requirements change over the life cycle. We need separate kinds of rest for special purposes at every stage of life – infancy, childhood, adolescence, and adulthood. Recent work points out some of what’s required for growing kids: Infancy […]
Diet and exercise won’t solve obesity (5/27/11)
The Missing Link That Explains Obesity? It’s front-page news – the missing link to explain why we’re so fat. In the May 26th New York Times, Tara Parker-Pope reports on a new study led by Timothy Church that “a sizable portion of the national weight gain can be explained by declining physical activity during the […]
Is business travel unhealthy? (5/20/11)
Business Travel May Be Hazardous to Your Health Worried about airplane safety? Thinking of air traffic controllers and pilots who fall asleep, birds flying into engine intakes, intrusive and radioactive TSA body scanners, suicide bombers with explosives knitted into their underwear? Relax. Heavy personal business travel is far more likely to lead to your early […]
How to get the perfect nap Part II (5/16/11)
Sleep Inertia Ever wake up feeling that you’re not waking up? That parts of your brain do not want to and cannot rise from slumber, that alertness is far away? Welcome to the problem of sleep inertia. Sleep inertia can and often occurs when people wake up not feeling fully rested. In theory, if we’re […]