How much sleep do you need? There are over seven billion propers answers to that question. Some people function beautifully on three. Quite a few, particularly ill folk, need eight or nine hours or more. To rebuild the body takes time. It takes different amount of sleeping rest for different people. But when the American […]
Is Your Brain Like a Muscle?
Grow your muscle, grow your brain. For decades it’s getting clearer – physical activity leads to more brain cells. But how? And why? A recent paper in Cell Metabolism, ably reported by Gretchen Reynolds, shows the advantages of cross-species research. Work with mice, monkeys and humans demonstrated something jocks sensed long ago – your legs talk […]
When Sleep Is Not Enough
When You Can’t Sleep Like depression, insomnia used to be treated as a symptom of “something else.” Not anymore. At this year’s national sleep meetings in Denver, it became clearer how big a national and international problem insomnia is – as well as how to fix it. As insomnia researcher Charles Morin pointed out, the […]
Noisy Anxiety
Anxiety is all around us, the air noisily electric with it. The environment is filling with noxious sound. And an era stuffed with massacres of the innocents does not induce calm. So it’s instructive to see how one major sense – hearing – affects our ability to rest and self-soothe. And to see how we do it, […]
What Happened to Sleep Medicine?
Terminal Decline? Academic and clinical fields have their booms and busts just like economies. Sleep Medicine is no exception. A field that took off from the 1990s until the 2010s is now in palpable decline. This year a total of 112 sleep fellowships were filled in the nationwide medical match. America is presently training one potentially certifiable […]