Next time you head off to bed to get a good night’s sleep, your brain’s memory bank is likely to thank you for it.

American research presented at the Australasian Sleep Conference in Adelaide yesterday showed that far from resting while people sleep, the brain uses this time to store and remember important information and discard useless details.

Associate Professor Robert Stickgold, from Harvard Medical School, said sleep played a more important role in memory processing than previously had been thought.

Professor Stickgold’s research showed that sleep not only strengthened recently formed memories, it could also blend them into networks of older memories.

He said the brain also used sleep to sift through memories such as scenes people saw that day, to remember the important “emotional” memories and dismiss unimportant ones.

And when people were given a task to finger-tap out a difficult-to-remember code and then sent home to “sleep on it”, the next morning they were 15-20 per cent faster at performing the task and had 30-40 per cent fewer errors.

“So while you’re sleeping, your brain is actually improving on the memory that you formed while you were awake, and if people don’t get enough sleep, say more than six hours, then you won’t see that improvement,” Professor Stickgold said.

Source: The West Australian
http://www.thewest.com.au/default.aspx?MenuID=2&ContentID=100927

Headaches around the topic of children and sleep tend to be par for the course when you’re a parent. Everything from enforcing bedtimes and pre-sleep routines to making sure they sleep through the night is enough to overwhelm any parent.

The Better Sleep Council Canada offers these tips to ease the sleep stresses:

Set a good example. Kids learn by example. Parents should establish proper, consistent sleep habits themselves as a model for their children.

Regularly check what you and your kids are sleeping on. While mattresses should generally be replaced every eight to 10 years, a child’s mattress may need to be replaced sooner than that. Your child’s body is growing and changing quickly; a mattress that was beneficial just a few years ago may not big or comfortable enough now.

Set and adhere to a steady sleep routine. Going to bed and waking at the same time will help your child realize that all of us, regardless of age, have bedtimes that we should stick to.

Make your bed. Show pride in maintaining an ordered bedroom that is a relaxing retreat.

Be patient. Don’t be discouraged if it takes a few weeks for your kids to entirely embrace their new sleep routine. Good sleep habits are formed over time. Consistency and commitment to your sleep and health are vital.

Source: Canada.com
http://tinyurl.com/4yfr4m

We had only one house rule when my daughter was born — sleep when the baby sleeps.

But as an anthropologist who has looked at parenting from an evolutionary view and across cultures, it made no sense to me at all. Human babies, I knew, are physically and emotionally entwined with their caretakers, so you might as well sleep together or there will be hell to pay.

Recent research on infant sleep and depressed mothers by Roseanne Armitage of the University of Michigan Medical School underscores the strength of that adult-baby entrainment. Armitage and colleagues asked mothers who were depressed during pregnancy, as well as mothers who had a newborn and were not depressed, to wear a wristwatch device called an actigraph which measured sleep, rest and activity. The researchers also put tiny versions of the actigraph on the mothers’ 2-week-old babies. Turns out, the babies with happy mothers often came with an inborn sense of circadian rhythm, meaning they innately distinguished between day and night, and soon adjusted the major portion of activity accordingly. But the babies of depressed mothers had no such rhythm, and their sleep and activity patterns were all over the place all the way to the end of the study eight months later.

Although the researchers were adamant that all babies should be put on a sleep schedule to “fix” any “irregularities” in circadian rhythms caused by maternal mood disorders, that suggestion misses the mark.

Human infants are born neurologically unfinished and therefore designed to be constantly attached to an adult who is attuned to their needs. The problem with depressed mothers is not so much that their babies have sleep “problems” but that the mothers, day and night, are emotionally and physically affecting their infants in ways they may not even notice.

Responding to the endless needs of a helpless baby in a culture where most of us have no experience with kids can be a shock to even the most psychologically balanced person. Just imagine being depressed about the baby, or something else, and then being faced with this screaming infant who won’t sleep when she’s “supposed” to. And then read that one “should” put that baby in a crib, alone, and let her cry it out until she sticks to a sleep schedule, by gum. It would make any parents near the edge fall over into depression.

Surely there’s a more humane approach to helping sad mothers and fussy babies that addresses both their needs,

Oh, yeah, I’ve got it: Sleep when the baby sleeps and you’ll both get enough sleep.

Source: LiveScience.com, NY
http://www.livescience.com/culture/080905-baby-sleep.html

Sleep appears to strengthen connections between communicating nerve cells in the brain - a process thought to form the basis of learning and memory.

Scientists in Switzerland studied a group of volunteers who were taught a new skill or shown images they would later have to remember.

The skill tasks included trying to follow a moving dot on a computer screen using a joy stick. One group of participants was then allowed to sleep normally for eight hours, while others were deprived of sleep or only permitted a nap.

The next day they were asked to repeat the tasks or recall the images while their brains were scanned using a technique known as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI).

Those who had slept properly performed better, and this was reflected in their brain activity.

Dr Sophie Schwartz, from the University of Geneva, who led the study, said: “Our results revealed that a period of sleep following a new experience can consolidate and improve subsequent effects of learning from the experience. “This improvement comes from changes in brain activity in specific regions that code for relevant features of the learned material.”

Sleep helped the brain consolidate learned experiences and transform weak memories that might fade in time into more permanent fixtures, she said.

But how long it was necessary to sleep for the brain to benefit from this process was still unknown.

“Everybody sleeps, but some people sleep less than the average population, others have an abnormal sleep structure, and some drugs may change the duration of specific sleep stages,” said Dr Schwartz. “We also need to better study the impact of sleep on brain development in children.”

Brain scans should make it possible to assess the neuronal impact of sleep disturbances on patients with insomnia, sleep apnoea, depression or narcolepsy, she added.

“We now want to know which brain circuits are involved in these learning effects during the night and if we can experimentally enhance such effects,” said Dr Schwartz. “We want to assess how sleep disorders affect emotional and cognitive functioning, and what are the biological factors responsible for these effects.”

The research was presented today (mon) at the Forum of European Neuroscience meeting in Geneva, Switzerland.

Source: Telegraph.co.uk, United Kingdom
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2008/07/14/easleep114.xml

Re: Sharing bed with infant can be fatal, warns top coroner, June 5.

I was most dismayed to read this story. Not because I fear for the life of my baby, but because the coroner’s conclusions are not supported by the existing research on the topic.

There are no documented cases of a healthy, nursing mother smothering the baby she sleeps with. Many more babies die alone in cribs than with their parents.

The problem is quite clearly not with “co-sleeping” and bed-sharing in general, but with “unsafe sleeping environments.” There is a great deal of difference between a safe, planned co-sleeping environment, and “couches, armchairs” and “surface(s) cluttered with … objects.”

The article mentions “controversy,” but offers little information from the other side. There is a casual reference to an “author” named James McKenna. Professor McKenna is the director of the “Mother-Baby Behavioral Sleep Laboratory” at the University of Notre Dame. And what does he say about sleeping with your baby? “During my many years of studying infant-parent co-sleeping/bed-sharing, I am unaware of even one instance in which, under safe social and physical conditions, a mother, aware that her infant was in bed with her, ever suffocated her infant.”

There is an admission that “further research… is warranted.”

Pediatrician Dr. William Sears, a widely respected parenting expert, writes that “not only is sleeping with your baby safe, but it is actually much safer than having your baby sleep in a crib. Research shows that infants who sleep in a crib are twice as likely to suffer a sleep-related fatality (including SIDS) than infants who sleep in bed with their parents.” Canadian breastfeeding authority Dr. Jack Newman devotes a section of his book to encouraging nursing mothers to sleep with their babies, titled “You will not roll over on your baby.”

If 12.8 per cent of parents can be persuaded to admit to routinely sharing their beds with their babies we can easily conclude that: a lot of parents are co-sleeping; a lot of parents will be unnecessarily frightened by these unscientific reports; and given 41 deaths, advice on how to keep babies safe in beds is called for. Dramatic warnings of fatal bed-sharing must emphasize the usual causes of intoxicated parents, excess bedding, and other obvious hazards. It should be made quite clear that of all the worries that accompany a new baby, murder via maternal cuddles is not something that need be one of them for parents taking basic safety precautions.

It should also be emphasized that cribs are just pieces of furniture, not magical life-sustaining apparatuses. Many infants who die sleeping die in cribs, bouncers, playpens, etcetera. “Little, wee vulnerable” children are not somehow protected by sleeping alone and it takes a strange agenda to suggest otherwise.

Source: Ottawa Citizen, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/3l5o8f

Teens whose high schools have a delayed start time sleep longer and report less daytime sleepiness, say researchers at Norwalk Hospital’s Sleep Disorders Center in Connecticut.

The study included 259 high school students who reported sleeping about 7.03 hours per school night, with a mean bed time of 10:52 p.m. and a mean wake-up time of 6:12 a.m. when school started at 7:35 a.m.

After the school start time was switched to 8:15 a.m., the students’ total sleep time on school nights increased 33 minutes, mainly due to a later rise time. Their bedtime on school nights was slightly later, and there was a slight decrease in weekend sleep time. After the change in school start time, more students reported having no problem with daytime sleepiness.

“Following a 40-minute delay in start time, the students utilized 83 percent of the extra time for sleep. This increase in sleep time came as a result of being able to ’sleep in’ to 6:53 a.m., with little delay in their reported school night bedtime. This study demonstrates that students given the opportunity to sleep longer, will, rather than extend their wake activities on school nights,” study corresponding author Dr. Mary B. O’Malley said in a prepared statement.

The research was expected to be presented at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, in Baltimore.

In other study results expected to be presented at the meeting, researchers found that teens who don’t get enough sleep suffer lower school grades and lack of motivation and are increased risk for serious emotional and behavioral problems.

The University of Kentucky study of 882 high school freshmen found that they slept an average of 7.6 hours per school night, with 48 percent reporting less than eight hours.

The researchers found a strong association between hours of sleep per school night and GPA, level of motivation, emotional disturbance and attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). Each additional hour of sleep on school nights reduced the risk of scoring in the clinically significant range of emotional disturbance and ADHD by 25 percent and 34 percent, respectively.

“Since these findings are based on associations rather than direct experimental manipulation, they cannot conclusively prove that insufficient sleep causes a loss of motivation, poor grades, ADHD and emotional disturbance during adolescence,” study author Fred Danner said in a prepared statement.

“These results, however, are consistent with a growing body of research that many adolescents do not get sufficient sleep, and that even mild chronic sleep deprivation has serious effects on their psychological functioning. Lack of sleep should no longer be considered a traditional adolescent rite of passage, because it can have serious consequences,” Danner said.

Source: U.S. News & World Report, DC
http://tinyurl.com/3hcehl

Electronic gadgets too distracting, scientist says

British teenagers are damaging their health by not getting enough sleep because they are distracted by electronic gadgets in their bedrooms, according to a survey released Tuesday.

Advice body The Sleep Council said “junk sleep” could rival the consumption of unhealthy junk food as a major lifestyle issue for parents of teenage children.

Its poll of 1,000 youngsters aged 12 to 16 found that 30 per cent managed just four to seven hours of sleep as opposed to the recommended eight or nine hours.

Almost a quarter said they fell asleep more than once a week while watching TV, listening to music or using other electronic gadgets.

“This is an incredibly worrying trend,” said Dr. Chris Idzikowski of the Edinburgh Sleep Centre.

“What we are seeing is the emergence of Junk Sleep — that is sleep that is of neither the length nor quality that it should be in order to feed the brain with the rest it needs to perform properly at school.”

However, just 11 per cent said they were bothered by the lack or quality of their sleep.

“I’m staggered that so few teenagers make the link between getting enough good quality sleep and how they feel during the day,” Idzikowski said.

“Teenagers need to wake up to the fact that to feel well, perform well and look well, they need to do something about their sleep.”

Source: Canada.com, Canada
http://tinyurl.com/57k22g

Darling, that was wonderful: British couples reveal the quantity of sex after parenthood may be down but the quality is up

Do people’s sex lives start to fizzle out after they have children? Does their arrival mark the end of romance and the start of fantasising about other sexual partners - or even a night of uninterrupted sleep?

Shining a light on this deeply private area of couple’s lives is not always easy. So when we posted a questionnaire on Times Online, we were not entirely sure what to expect.

So far nearly 1,700 men and women have answered questions that range from how often they have sex and how long it lasts, to how many children they have and whether the children have affected the quality of their sex lives. Many also wrote at length about their own experiences.

David Thompson - the only one of those we contacted who agreed to give his real name - spoke with lyrical nostalgia about a long walk in the woods with his girlfriend. The weather was perfect, no one else was around and they had nothing on their minds but each other; so they made love beneath the trees.

Now aged 37, Thompson is married to his girlfriend and a father of three. “Making love spontaneously outdoors is something we would never do now,” he said. “We’re too busy running after the kids, making sure they don’t beat each other with sticks.”

His experience seemed typical: most of the respondents to our survey agreed that having children meant having less time for love-making. Yet despite recent reports about the rise in sexless marriages, the overwhelming majority still had a sex life – and few complaints about its quality.

“Frequency has gone down because we are both constantly tired and frazzled with the demands of our jobs and looking after the family,” wrote a married mother of two, who said she had sex two to three times a month. “But quality has gone up, as we have got closer after the birth of our child . . . We trust each other more and so are more open with each other.”

In all, 1,675 respondents - 54% of them male - filled in the survey on the Times Online’s Alpha Mummy blog. While not strictly scientific - because the respondents were self-selected - it painted a reassuring picture of what happens to romance after having children. The majority of parents said they had sex more than once a month; and 63% said the frequency of their love-making ranged from several times a week to two to three times a month. For 46%, love-making sessions lasted 20-45 minutes, while 34% made love for up to 20 minutes and 3% for more than an hour.

Tiredness was the chief reason given for having less sex now than before having a family; causes of this included the sheer physical energy needed to look after children, disturbed nights, early starts, pressures at work and general stress.

One pregnant mother, who has one child, said the reason why she was having sex only two or three times a month was, in fact, nothing to do with having a baby. “Running our own business does more damage,” she wrote. Other reasons for less frequent sex included sharing a bed with children or sleeping in separate beds - in some cases so that fathers were not woken up when a baby needed to be breast-fed.

One mother of three complained that it was hard ever to escape from children - “I’m worried about little hands opening bedroom doors,” she wrote.

Sex with his wife was described by one father as “quick, covert, much like a military strike . . . My daughter seems to have been born with a built-in radar which informs her any time my wife and I try to get close . . . even if she’s in the other room . . . at two in the morning”.

Some parents said they stole private moments while the children were playing in the garden or when the nanny was on duty. “We have to make the most of the opportunities, but the quality seems to get better with age and experience,” wrote a father of three, who described sex with his girlfriend as “better than ever” after 13 years together.

It was striking just how many parents had a positive view of their sex lives - whatever the frequency. “The sex we have is really great. It is maybe not as saucy as it was when we first got together, but it is more effective in that we both know what the other likes and what works for us both,” said a mother of one, who has been with her husband for eight years. They still have sex several times a week: “Although sometimes I am tired and think I can’t be bothered, afterwards I always think how much fun it was and am so pleased that I made the effort.”

Another mother, who has three children, said: “Being constantly tired and busy with activities after school made it hard to feel ‘in the mood’. Once the kids were older and more independent, we could return to more intimacy, and now that the kids have left home it is great.”

Some in long-term relationships admitted that the ebb and flow of their sex lives did not necessarily have anything to do with having children.

“We thought children affected our sex life when they were very little; but looking back, it was better then than now,” wrote a mother of two, whose relationship has so far lasted 11 years. “It may be our age, or we may have just got lazy.”

According to Frank Furedi, professor of sociology at Kent University and author of Paranoid Parenting, mothers in particular can find parenting a desexualising experience. After a baby is born, he said, “there’s a sense that the baby becomes the priority; the body is given over to the child. And that is sometimes slightly contradictory to the woman as a sexual being”.

Esther Perel, author of Mating in Captivity, says that there can be a tension between “the erotic and the domestic. Family life thrives in an atmosphere of consistency and stability. The erotic crumbles under routine”.

Several respondents recognised these strains in their relationships. “I believe that my partner saw me as a mother/housewife rather than as being a sexually attractive, interesting woman,” said a mother of one.

And a father wrote: “Being in the birthing room was very traumatic for me. Taking second place to our child hurt our sex life . . . I think we both withdrew from the sex part of the relationship.”

One father of two, who had been in a relationship for five years, said: “After the second child, desire just disappeared and never really came back to full strength - and it’s been three years.” The couple’s love-making - two to three times a month - was, however, “great when you get it”.

Another father said that his love life had dwindled to having formulaic sex several times a year: “It was never the right moment so I gave up trying . . .”

On the other hand, many felt that pregnancy and parenthood had put renewed energy into their relationships. “It’s great now because she’s pregnant and has a sex craving,” said a father who has sex about once a week.

Perel said this was not uncommon. “There are lots of women who actually discover through pregnancy, through birth, nursing and bonding with a child, a whole new sense of themselves as women - physically, sexually and sensually.”

The iron bonds of parenthood can often reinforce a relationship, according to Furedi. “Having kids and having some very positive shared experiences bring people together,” he said. “A good sex life for a couple depends on there being a kind of bond, a friendship - it’s what gives you confidence to relax.”

What can be done if the sexual spark between a couple has simply fizzled out? Scheduling time to be alone together is vital, advises Suzi Godson, author of The Sex Book. Perel advises going out for a meal, dancing - anything that the couple will both enjoy. “Just don’t talk about the kids,” she says.

However, one desperate parent asked: but what else is there to talk about by that stage in a relationship?

Source: Times Online, UK
http://tinyurl.com/5a5wbp

There are 70 million Americans with sleep disorders who would like nothing more than to relax at night. Now there’s more reason to keep you up late.

People who sleep fewer than six hours or more than nine hours a night are more likely to have health problems, according to the largest government study linking obesity to irregular sleep.

Health problems also include higher rates of smoking and alcohol use among those who sleep too little or too much.

The report finds that restorative value of sleep has been underappreciated in public health recommendations.

In time of stress, the body is known to hold onto fat stores. That’s why diets often result in weight gain. The lack of sleep may also create a similar stressful situation. Expect to see more emphasis on eight hours a night as a key to good health.

The CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics surveyed 87,000 Americans from 2004 to 2006.

Among the findings:

* Smoking rates were highest for those who got under six hours of sleep a night. 31 percent were smokers. Heavy sleepers included 26 percent who smoked. The average rate of U.S. smokers is 21 percent. Among those who slept an average of eight hours, 18 percent were smokers.

* Obesity rates for light sleepers were 33 percent, for heavy sleepers 26 percent and 22 percent for normal sleepers.

* Alcohol use among the light sleepers was the heaviest. Regular and heavy sleepers have about the same rate of alcohol use.

* Exercise rates were low for those who slept a lot, worse than regular or light sleepers. Health problems or being elderly age may account for that

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine finds an increasing number of obese youth are not getting enough sleep. Obesity rates among children and teens have doubled in the last 30 years and AASM says sleep may be as important a component in fighting fat as diet and exercise.

Infants to 11 months need 14 to 15 hours of sleep a night; toddlers 12-14 hours; preschool children 11-13 hours and adolescents 9 hours. Adults should get seven to eight hours of sleep a night.

For those who have trouble falling to sleep follow these rules:

* Find a consistent bed time to go to sleep and wake up

* Keep the room completely dark free of lights from clocks or cable boxes

* Keep the room cooler

* Do not consume caffeine, colas or chocolate before bed or in the evening

* Take a break of at least an hour before bedtime from electronics

Also for children:

* Avoid videos or TV shows that are not age appropriate

* Use a half hour before bedtime for a bedtime routine and to read, interact and be close

* Do not let your child fall asleep while being held, rocked or nursed

* Avoid hunger at bedtime

Source: InjuryBoard.com, FL
http://www.injuryboard.com/national-news/cdc-sleep.aspx?googleid=238656

Returning to work after maternity leave is one of the most difficult aspects of raising a baby, the results of a new nationwide survey of mothers indicate.

Of those surveyed, 29% cited returning to work after maternity leave as the most difficult aspect of raising a baby, while over half cited it as one of the most difficult aspects.

Not surprisingly, sleep deprivation was found to be the second most difficult aspect of having a baby. Other concerns faced by new parents included worrying about the health of a child and searching for quality childcare.

The results indicated that there are still a number of issues which parents would like to receive further information on. Altogether, 37% of respondents said they would like more information on child development, 30% wanted more information on caring for a sick baby, while 20% wanted more information on weaning.

When it came to the issue of bottle or breastfeeding, an almost equal number of respondents were in favour of each option. A significant number meanwhile opted for a combination approach, suggesting that many mothers no longer feel tied into making an ultimate choice and feel comfortable practising both bottle and breastfeeding.

However when it came to choosing the method of feeding, people with influence, such as healthcare professionals, family and friends, were found to play a large role in the decision making process.

Among those who chose to bottlefeed their child, the most important factor behind the decision was the return to work.

Meanwhile a number of factors were found to influence the decision to breastfeed, the main one being the health and wellbeing of the baby. Some mothers also opted for breastfeeding in the hope of developing a closer bond with their child in the early stages of life.

The survey was conduced by SMA Nutrition in association with Rollercoaster.ie

Source: Irish Health, Ireland
http://www.irishhealth.com/?level=4&id=13443