Care For Your Sleep

Some babies do not like sleeping and do not let their parents sleep as well. Some babies, on the contrary, are very good sleepers and always totally satisfy their needs of sleeping up to 10 hours a day. Recently, s group of the experts from the department of anthropology at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia, conducted a research trying to find out whether sleeping is linked to growing up in babies, just like our grandmas tended to believe. It turned out that – yes, the old notion does have scientific background and after a good sleep, a baby always wakes up taller.

The study involved working with 23 families with newborn babies, average 12 days. The parents were asked to keep tracks of their babies’ sleep patterns and waking up routine. All other details, like whether the baby was breast-fed or formula-fed, or whether the baby displayed the symptoms like vomiting, gas, diarrhea, high fever and so on, were also taken into account. Also, the scientists regularly measured the length of the babies, as often as twice a week.

The findings were really interesting and exciting. Every change in the baby’s sleep patterns, or every time the baby had a tendency to sleep more, a substantial growth spurt was following. The scientists estimated that 43% of babies experienced an obvious growth spurt with every extra hours of sleep they took.  20% of babies displayed growth spurt when they were taking increased number of naps on a day-to-day basis. At that, the scientists reported that baby girls were more likely to take less number of naps that baby boys. Also, those babies who were fed with formula tended to have longer but less frequent naps compared to the breast-fed babies.

These findings turned out to be first of the kind that confirmed the links between sleep patterns and growing up in babies. “Little is known about the biology of growth spurts. Our data opens the window to further scientific study of the mechanisms and pathways that underlie salutatory growth,” says Michelle Lampl, one of the research team leaders. “Sleep irregularities can be distressing to parents,” the specialist adds. “However, these findings give babies a voice that helps parents understand them and show that seemingly erratic sleep behavior is a normal part of development. Babies really aren’t trying to be difficult.”

Marital problems and misunderstandings are reported to be linked to serious sleep problems in infants and toddlers, the scientists say. It was well known before that instability and unhealthy relationships between parents usually cause certain behavioral and psychological problems in their kids, but according to the findings of the research published recently in the journal Child Development, marital conflicts very often lead to developing serous sleep problems in infants as well. The combination of all the mentioned factors caused by marital instability and problems between parents can lead to serious outcomes for children, including behavioral and social issues, problems in school, psychological disorders and so on.

The study conducted by a group of specialists at Oregon Social Learning Center involved close analysis of the situation in about 350 middle class families with children between 9 and 18 months. To rule out the chances that sleep disorders in infants can be caused by genetic predisposition, only the families with adopted infants were invited to participate the study. The degree of marital problems was evaluated by using a standard four-grade measure, with the highest point given to those couples who gave positive answer to the question about possible divorce or separation.

The facts have proven that prolonged instability and conflicts between parents when the children are 9 months old are strictly linked to sleep problems (including inability to fall asleep, problems with staying asleep at night, night walking and so on) when children become 18 months old.  “Our findings suggest that the association between marital instability and children’s subsequent sleep problems emerges earlier in development than has been demonstrated previously,” says Anne Manning, one of the Oregon State University study group leaders.

“Parents should be aware that stress in the marriage can potentially impact their child even at a very young age,” underlines Anne Manning in the statement of the scientists. Now, the Oregon study group is planning to get focused on studying the links between marital conflicts and the emergence of sleep problems or disturbances in children after the age of 2. So, if you are a mom or father of an infant, remember about healthy parenting, the role of parent-child relationship and the above mentioned effects of marital problems and instability on your infants. Remember that sleep problems in infants can lead to very serious and unstoppable consequences.

Many parents suffer because their infants and toddlers can’t go to sleep on time, can’t fall asleep or want to sleep in the parents’ bed. Many moms and dads tent to blame themselves for such “habits” of their toddlers. Or, they believe, there can be genetic causes of this problem as moms and dads also tend to go to sleep late and can’t fall asleep sometimes. However, according to the findings of a study carried out by a group of Italian specialists the secret most likely is in the specifics of the sleeping environment that moms and dads choose for their babies. Let’s take a closer look at the conclusions and finding of this research which were published recently in an online version of the Journal Pediatrics.

Italian specialists found out an interesting strategy to study sleep patterns of children and toddlers. They studied the sleep and the sleeping environment of 127 pairs of identical twins and 187 pairs of fraternal twins, who presumably shared the same environment while sleeping. Also, the scientists interviewed their parents on the following issues:  do twins like sleeping in their own room or rather in parents’ room, do they like having daytime naps, do they fall asleep easily and so on.

Here is a brief summary of the findings:

• All studied pairs of twins, both identical and fraternal, sleep in average 9.7 hours at night and complement their night sleeps with 2.1 hour of day sleep.
• About 53% of all twin pairs sleep in their parents’ room.
• Genetics had nothing to do with toddlers who tend to rather sleep in the room with their parents. However, the scientists are convinced that genetics plays a role in children waking up at night. Only 19% of fraternal twins were reported waking up at night (up to 6-7 times), at that 31% identical twins were reported to do so.

Similar results were received earlier by Canadian and Japanese scientists. The best thing about these scientific explanations are the true fact that if you suffer from your child’s sleeplessness at night, you should start changing the sleeping environment of your child, like the color of the bedroom, the location of the child’s bed, or trying to make him fall asleep in another room, etc. This way there are chances that your child’s sleep routine will improve.

It is possible to say that childhood cancer survivors are very special people because they are both very lucky and very unlucky. It’s a great luck to survive any type of this terrible disease, and at the same time its a great misfortune to live all difficulties and sadness of cancer in the childhood. Certainly, such conditions are supposed to have not only psychological consequences, but also other serious prolonged outcomes. Those include fatigue, attention and memory problems, sensitivity, and many others. According to recent study, published recently in Cancer, a peer-reviewed journal of the American Cancer Society, impaired cognitive health and constant sleep problems are very common among childhood cancer survivors.

The conclusions were based on interviewing about 1,426 people who survived various types of childhood cancer between 1970 and 1986. All of them were treated and later on supervised by the specialists of the Childhood Cancer Survivor Center which was the main institution responsible for the study. Other experts were invited, including Kevin Krull, of St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis.

According to the publication, about 20% of the childhood cancer survivors had certain cognitive health problems, mainly impaired memory and attention losses. At that, the specialists found out that those patients who reported about poor sleep, chronic insomnia and fatigue, are from three to four times at higher risks of suffering from attention and memory problems than the survivors that have no sleep disorders. Besides, it seems that the mentioned cognitive problems are not linked to the effects of chemotherapy, radiation, as well as the age of the patient. “These findings suggest that improved sleep quality and reduced fatigue may help to improve attention and memory functions in survivors,” Dr. Krull comments on the findings of the research.

It is a very common syndrome to feel sleepy after eating. especially if we eat some really considerable amount of foods. Many people experience this, and for many it becomes a subject of curiosity. Why do we feel so sleepy after eating? Many would suppose that this condition is actually not normal. If we look at it, we can see that we should actually feel more alive, energetic and awake after having a meal as our body receives a new portion of energy and nutrients. Some funny people believe that after eating our body needs great amount of energy to digest the foods consumed, and that is why we tend to sleep after eating. Sounds excellent! Let’s examine the problem at a closer and more scientific look.

Did you notice that you feel more sleepy or less sleepy after eating certain foods? For example, most people report feeling especially sleepy after they eat sweet foods, bakery or heavy meals like read meat or poultry. However, if we eat fruit, veggies, salads, stews, seeds, fish, nuts and so on, we usually feel less sleepy or even do not feel sleepy at all.

It is quite easy to explain this phenomenon. When we eat sweet foods, our body starts very actively producing serotonin, a neurotransmitter which helps us fall asleep in a natural way, for example, every night. In addition, when we consume sweet foods or the ones rich in flour, our pancreas start producing more insulin, which is linked to increased amounts tryptophan in our blood. This element is easily converted to serotonin and causes sleepiness. The same effects (rise in tryptophan in our blood) takes place when we eat large amounts of turkey or red meat. That is why we have our best sleeps exactly after our annual Thanksgiving dinner, right?

There is another scientific theory which attempts to explain the phenomena why we usually feel so sleepy after eating meals. It is based on the idea that sleepy condition can be caused by incorrect food combining practice which we use. In particular, it is known that for digesting carbs and proteins we need different digestive enzymes: protease for proteins and lipase for carbs. Therefore, eating the foods rich in proteins and carbs in a combination causes certain conflict in digestive enzymes required for digestion, and as a result we start feeling drowsy. If you want to avoid feeling sleepy after eating and feel more energetic, learn more about correct ways to combine foods. For example, proteins should be combined with non-starch veggies, and carbs should be combined with fruits, grains, and so on.