Lifespan and sexual maturity depend on your brain more than your body

'Brain Soup' research connects number of neurons to longevity

October 30, 2018

Science Daily/Vanderbilt University

New research finds how long humans and other warm-blooded animals live -- and when they reach sexual maturity -- may have more to do with their brain than their body. More specifically, it is not animals with larger bodies or slower metabolic rates that live longer; it is animals with more neurons in the cerebral cortex, whatever the size of the body.

"Whether you're looking at birds or primates or humans, the number of neurons that you find in the cortex of a species predicts around 75 percent of all of the variation in longevity across species," said study author associate professor of psychology and biological sciences Suzana Herculano-Houzel.

Body size and metabolism, in comparison, to usual standards for comparing animals, only predicted between 20-30 percent of longevity depending on species, and left many inconsistencies, like birds that live ten times longer than mammals of same size.

Most importantly, humans were considered to be a "special" evolutionary oddity, with long childhood and postmenopausal periods. But this research, published in the Journal of Comparative Neurology, finds that's not accurate. Humans take just as long to mature as expected of their number of cortical neurons -- and live just as long as expected thereafter.

THE STUDY

In the study, Herculano-Houzel examined more than 700 warm-blooded animal species from the AnAge database which collects comprehensive longevity records. She then compared these records with her extensive data on the number of neurons in the brains of different species of animals.

Herculano-Houzel color-coded the data for hundreds of species and found that parrots and songbirds, including corvids, live systematically longer than primates of similar body mass, which in turn live longer than non-primate mammals of similar body mass.

"Likewise, for similar specific basal metabolic rates, parrots and songbirds live longer and take longer to reach sexual maturity than many mammalian species, especially non-primates," said Herculano-Houzel.

She had seen that pattern before: her previous studies determining what brains are made of showed that parrots and songbirds have more cortical neurons than similar-sized primates, which have more cortical neurons than any other mammal of comparable body size.

Her new analysis confirmed her suspicion: that longevity increases uniformly across warm-blooded species together with the absolute number of neurons in the cerebral cortex.

"The more cortical neurons a species has, the longer it lives -- doesn't matter if it is a bird, a primate or some other mammal, how large it is, and how fast it burns energy," says Herculano-Houzel.

ARE HUMANS UNIQUE? ASK GRANDMA

Anthropologists and researchers interested in evolution and human behavior have been working under the assumption that one of the ways the human species is unique is that humans have an uncommonly long childhood and adolescent period to allow for learning and social interactions. If larger animals live longer, then gorillas should live longer than humans -- but they don't: humans outlive them. One favored hypothesis is that being cared for by grandmothers could have led humans to delayed sexual maturity and increased postmenopausal longevity beyond the expected.

But Herculano-Houzel's new data show that humans are not an exception from other mammalian species. Given the number of neurons in our cortex, humans take as long as they should to reach sexual maturity -- and live just as long as expected for their number of neurons. Body size, it turns out, is irrelevant in matters of longevity.

"Now we can say that humans spend just as long in childhood and live exactly as long after reaching maturity as you would expect for the number of neurons in our cerebral cortex," said Herculano-Houzel.

Which is longer, compared to other species -- gorillas included -simply because humans have the most neurons in the cerebral cortex.

"It makes sense that the more neurons you have in the cortex, the longer it should take a species to reach that point where it's not only physiologically mature, but also mentally capable of being independent," says Herculano-Houzel. "The delay also gives those species with more cortical neurons more time to learn from experience, as they interact with the environment."

And if longer lives also accompany more cortical neurons, those species will also enjoy a greater overlap between generations, and so more opportunities to pass along what they learned.

"Which means that grandma is still fundamental in the lives of those with plenty of cortical neurons; she's just probably not the reason why our species is long-lived," argues Herculano-Houzel.

FUNCTION OF THE CORTEX

What is the link between having more neurons in the cortex and living longer lives? Herculano-Houzel says that's the new big question researchers need to tackle.

"The data suggest that warm-blooded species accumulate damages at the same rate as they age. But what curtails life are damages to the cerebral cortex, not the rest of the body; the more cortical neurons you have, the longer you will still have enough to keep your body functional," she says.

Contrary to the rest of the body, which gets new cells that replenish old ones, cortical neurons are thought to have to last a lifetime.

While the cortex is usually associated with cognition, Herculano-Houzel believes a much more basic function of the cortex is key to longevity.

"The cortex is the part of your brain that is capable of making our behavior complex and flexible, yes, but that extends well beyond cognition and doing mental math and logic reasoning," said Herculano-Houzel. "The cerebral cortex also gives your body adaptability, as it adjusts and learns how to react to stresses and predict them. That includes keeping your physiological functions running smoothly and making sure your heart rate, your respiratory rate, and your metabolism are on track with what you're doing, with how you feel, and with what you expect to happen next. And that, apparently, is a key factor that impacts longevity," she adds.

BRAIN SOUP

Herculano-Houzel pioneered the method for rapidly and accurately measuring the number of neurons in brains. She creates "brain soup" by taking brain tissue and breaking down the cells, then applying fluorescent tags to the nuclei floating in the "brain soup" and counting them.

In collaboration with Vanderbilt Distinguished Professor of Psychology Jon Kaas, she studied how many neurons compose different primate brains, including great apes. With colleagues in Brazil, she produced the first accurate count of the number of neurons in the human brain -- an average 86 billion, which makes it simply an enlarged primate brain.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR BRAIN!

Aging starts once humans and other species reach adolescence, and there's no way to gain back neurons. In fact, research shows humans can lose neurons in the prefrontal cortex. So Herculano-Houzel says taking good care of your mind, and keeping those cortical neurons healthy and busy, is the best bet to live long and well.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181030150718.htm

Low resilience puts men at risk for depression

October 24, 2018

Science Daily/Florida State University

Men who lack resilience are exponentially more vulnerable to becoming severely depressed after their spouse dies, according to a new study.

Brittany King, a graduate student in the Department of Sociology, along with Assistant Professor Dawn Carr and Associate Professor Miles Taylor, examined the symptoms of depression in older men and women before and after they experienced the loss of their spouse.

Their findings were recently published in The Gerontologist.

"People are living longer," King said. "Successful aging is important, and these findings add to the knowledge base that will help us have a more robust and healthy older adult population."

The research team used data from the Health and Retirement Study which surveyed married people, ages 51 and older, between 2006 and 2012. They examined the changes in depressive symptoms among men and women who lost their spouse and those who remained married. Their survey sample included 2,877 women, 335 of whom became widowed, and 2,749 men, 136 of whom became widowed, within a four-year time span.

Researchers used survey responses to give each participant a Simplified Resilience Score based on 12 questions, such as "if something can go wrong for me it will," or "I have a sense of direction and purpose in my life."

They found that if a man became widowed and had a high resilience score, they experienced no increase in depressive symptoms. Despite the loss of a spouse, their level of well-being almost mirrored that of their married counterparts.

However, men with a low resilience score faired much worse. Males who became widowed and had low levels of resilience experienced an increase of about three additional depressive symptoms -- their married counterparts only experienced about one additional depressive symptom over a four-year period.

For women it was different.

They found women who had a low resilience score of four or below experienced a slight increase in depressive symptoms whether they became widowed or stayed married. Widowed women with high resilience scores also experienced a slight increase in depressive symptoms.

"For widowed women, high levels of resilience did little to reduce increases in depression following spousal loss," Carr said. "In contrast, men with these high levels of internal resources overcome all of that, they recover really well within a four-year period and move on. Yet having low resilience appears to be particularly bad for men who on average experienced three additional depressive symptoms out of eight."

Women who were continuously married with high levels of resilience experienced a small decrease in depressive symptoms within four years.

Researchers speculate external resources, such as social networks, could be one explanation for the gender divide. Women tend to have more external resources in terms of social support such as friends and family. On the other hand, older men may be more vulnerable after losing their main social contact and source of care.

FSU scholars suggest additional research could examine gender differences following the loss of a spouse, specifically examining internal resources that may aid in the absence of social resources. They also said finding ways to bolster resilience earlier in life should be explored further.

"It's becoming increasingly evident through our research on resilience that the things that happen to us early in our lives play an important role in influencing how we respond to difficult life events over our life course," Carr said. "Our early life experiences seem to have a persisting influence on our psychological resources, ultimately shaping how well we handle the loss of a spouse even 50 years later. In future research, we are hoping to learn more about whether we can improve psychological resilience in later life to help people who are especially vulnerable to a major loss."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181024122408.htm

Air pollution and noise increase risk for heart attacks

October 24, 2018

Science Daily/Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute

Air pollution and transportation noise are both associated with an increased risk of heart attacks. Studies on air pollution, which do not take into account traffic noise, tend to overestimate the long-term effect of air pollution on heart attacks.

Where air pollution is high, the level of transportation noise is usually also elevated. Not only air pollution negatively impacts on health, but also car, train and aircraft noise increases the risk for cardiovascular diseases and diabetes, as previous research has demonstrated. Studies investigating the effect of air pollution without sufficiently taking into account the impact that noise exhibits on health, might overestimate the effect of air pollution. These are the results of a comprehensive study conducted by the Swiss Tropical and Public Health Institute (Swiss TPH), which was published today in the peer-reviewed European Heart Journal.

The study looked at the combined effects of air pollution and transportation noise for heart attack mortality, by considering all deaths that occurred in Switzerland between 2000 and 2008. Analyses that only included fine particulates (PM2.5) suggest that the risk for a heart attack rises by 5.2% per 10 ?g/m³ increase in the long-term concentration at home. Studies which also account for road, railway and aircraft noise reveal that the risk for a heart attack attributable to fine particulates in fact increases considerably less; 1.9% per 10 ?g/m³ increase. These findings indicate that the negative effects of air pollution may have been overestimated in studies which fail to concurrently consider noise exposure.

"Our study showed that transportation noise increases the risk for a heart attack by 2.0 to 3.4% per 10 decibels increase in the average sound pressure level at home." said Martin Röösli, Head of the Environmental Exposures and Health Unit at Swiss TPH, and lead author of the published research. "Strikingly, the effects of noise were independent from air pollution exposure."

Effect of noise and air pollution are additive

The study also found that people exposed to both air pollution and noise are at highest risk of heart attack. Hence, the effects of air pollution and noise are additive. "Public discussions often focus on the negative health effects of either air pollution or noise but do not consider the combined impact." said Röösli. "Our research suggests that both exposures must be considered at the same time." This has implications for both policy as well as future research. Hence, Röösli and co-researchers recommend including transportation noise exposure in any further research related to air pollution and health to avoid overestimating the negative effects of air pollution on the cardiovascular system.

Data from across Switzerland

The study included all deaths (19,261) reported across Switzerland from the period 2000 to 2008. The air pollution (PM2.5) was modelled using satellite and geographic data, calibrated with air pollution measurements from 99 measurement sites throughout Switzerland. Nitrogen dioxides (NO2) were also modelled using 9,469 biweekly passive sampling measurements collected between 2000 and 2008 at 1,834 locations in Switzerland. Transportation noise was modelled by well-established noise propagation models (sonRoad, sonRAIL and FLULA 2) by Empa and n-sphere. The air pollution and the transportation noise models were applied for each address of the 4.4 million Swiss adult citizen (aged 30 years and above).

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181024112244.htm

Brain wave device enhances memory function

October 22, 2018

Science Daily/University of California - Davis

The entrainment of theta brain waves with a commercially available device not only enhances theta wave activity, but also boosts memory performance, according to new research.

Electrical activity in the brain causes different types of brain waves that can be measured on the outside of the head. Theta waves occur at about five to six cycles per second, often associated with a brain that is actively monitoring something -- such as the brain of a rat navigating a maze.

In an earlier study, Charan Ranganath, professor of psychology, and colleagues at the Center for Neuroscience found that high levels of theta wave activity immediately before a memory task predicted better performance.

"Entrainment" devices use a combination of sound and lights to stimulate brain wave activity. The idea is that oscillating patterns in sensory inputs will be reflected in brain activity. The devices are marketed to address a range of problems such as anxiety, sleep issues, "low mood" and learning. However, there is very little published scientific evidence to support these claims.

Brooke Roberts, a postdoctoral researcher in Ranganath's lab, obtained a theta wave entrainment device and decided to test it. She had 50 volunteers either use the device for 36 minutes, or listen to 36 minutes of white noise, then do a simple memory test.

Improved memory performance

The subjects who had used the device showed both improved memory performance and enhanced theta wave activity, she found.

Roberts showed her results to Ranganath, who was intrigued but cautious and suggested new controls. They repeated the experiment with another 40 volunteers, but this time the control group received beta wave stimulations. Beta waves are a different type of brain wave pattern, occurring at about 12 to 30 cycles per second, associated with normal waking consciousness.

Once again, theta wave entrainment enhanced theta wave activity and memory performance.

Ranganath's lab also conducted a separate study using electrical stimulation to enhance theta waves. However, this actually had the opposite effect, disrupting theta wave activity, and temporarily weakened memory function.

Ranganath said he's surprised the devices work as well as they appear to do.

"What's surprising is that the device had a lasting effect on theta activity and memory performance for over half an hour after it was switched off," he said.

There is debate among neuroscientists over the function and role of these brain waves. Some researchers argue that they are simply a product of normal brain function with no particular role. Ranganath, however, thinks that they may play a role in coordinating brain regions.

"The neurons are more excitable at the peak of the wave, so when the waves of two brain regions are in sync with each other, they can talk to each other," he said.

Other authors on the paper are Alex Clarke, now at the University of Cambridge and Anglia Ruskin University, U.K.; and Richard Addante, now at California State University San Bernardino. Roberts is now a research scientist at QUASAR Inc., San Diego. The work was supported by a Guggenheim Fellowship and a Vannevar Bush Fellowship from the Office of Naval Research.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181022172959.htm

The smell of lavender is relaxing

October 23, 2018

Science Daily/Frontiers

A new review reveals how lavender mellows us out -- and why some day psychiatrists and surgeons might be prescribing patients a whiff of the purple stuff.

Research published in Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience shows for the first time that the vaporized lavender compound linalool must be smelt -- not absorbed in the lungs- to exert its calming effects, which could be used to relieve preoperative stress and anxiety disorders.

Soothing scents

"In folk medicine, it has long been believed that odorous compounds derived from plant extracts can relieve anxiety," says co-author Dr Hideki Kashiwadani of Kagoshima University, Japan.

Modern medicine has overlooked these scented settlers, despite a need for safer alternatives to current anxiolytic (anxiety-relieving) drugs like benzodiazepines.

Numerous studies now confirm the potent relaxing effects of linalool, a fragrant alcohol found in lavender extracts.

"However, the sites of action of linalool were usually not addressed in these studies," Kashiwadani points out.

Many assumed that absorption into bloodstream via the airway led to direct effects on brain cell receptors such as GABAARs -- also the target of benzodiazepines. But establishing the true mechanism of linalool's relaxing effects is a key step in moving towards clinical use in humans.

A nose for success

Kashiwadani and colleagues tested mice to see whether it is the smell of linalool -- i.e. stimulation of olfactory (odor-sensitive) neurons in the nose -- that triggers relaxation.

"We observed the behavior of mice exposed to linalool vapor, to determine its anxiolytic effects. As in previous studies, we found that linalool odor has an anxiolytic effect in normal mice. Notably, this did not impair their movement." This contrasts with benzodiazepines, and linalool injections, whose effects on movement are similar to those of alcohol.

However, crucially there was no anxiolytic effect in anosmic mice -- whose olfactory neurons have been destroyed -- indicating that the relaxation in normal mice was triggered by olfactory signals evoked by linalool odor.

What's more, the anxiolytic effect in normal mice disappeared when they were pretreated with flumazenil, which blocks benzodiazepine-responsive GABAA receptors.

"When combined, these results suggest that linalool does not act directly on GABAA receptors like benzodiazepines do -- but must activate them via olfactory neurons in the nose in order to produce its relaxing effects," explains Kashiwadani.

Coming to theaters near you

"Our study also opens the possibility that relaxation seen in mice fed or injected with linalool could in fact be due to the smell of the compound emitted in their exhaled breath."

Similar studies are therefore needed to establish the targets, safety and efficacy of linalool administered via different routes, before a move to human trials.

"These findings nonetheless bring us closer to clinical use of linalool to relieve anxiety -- in surgery for example, where pretreatment with anxiolytics can alleviate preoperative stress and thus help to place patients under general anesthesia more smoothly. Vaporized linalool could also provide a safe alternative for patients who have difficulties with oral or suppository administration of anxiolytics, such as infants or confused elders."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181023085648.htm

Eating leafy greens could help prevent macular degeneration

October 19, 2018

Science Daily/Westmead Institute for Medical Research

A new study has shown that eating vegetable nitrates, found mainly in green leafy vegetables and beetroot, could help reduce your risk of developing early-stage age-related macular degeneration (AMD).

Researchers at the Westmead Institute for Medical Research interviewed more than 2,000 Australian adults aged over 49 and followed them over a 15-year period.

The research showed that people who ate between 100 to 142 mgs of vegetable nitrates each day had a 35% lower risk of developing early AMD than people who ate less than 69mgs of vegetable nitrates each day.

Lead Researcher Associate Professor Bamini Gopinath from the Westmead Institute and the University of Sydney said the link between vegetable nitrates and macular degeneration could have important implications.

"This is the first time the effects of dietary nitrates on macular degeneration risk has been measured.

"Essentially we found that people who ate 100 to 142 mgs of vegetable nitrates every day had a reduced risk of developing early signs of macular degeneration compared with people who ate fewer nitrates.

"If our findings are confirmed, incorporating a range of foods rich in dietary nitrates -- like green leafy vegetables and beetroot -- could be a simple strategy to reduce the risk of early macular degeneration," Associate Professor Gopinath said.

Spinach has approximately 20mg of nitrate per 100g, while beetroot has nearly 15mg of nitrate per 100g.

The research did not show any additional benefits for people who exceeded 142mgs of dietary nitrate each day. It also did not show any significant connections between vegetable nitrates and late stage AMD, or between non-vegetable nitrates and AMD risk.

One in seven Australians over 50 have some signs of macular degeneration.

Age is the strongest known risk factor and the disease is more likely to occur after the age of 50.

There is currently no cure for the disease.

The research compiled data from the Blue Mountains Eye Study, a benchmark population-based study that started in 1992.

It is one of the world's largest epidemiology studies, measuring diet and lifestyle factors against health outcomes and a range of chronic diseases.

"Our research aims to understand why eye diseases occur, as well as the genetic and environmental conditions that may threaten vision," Associate Professor Gopinath concluded.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181019100558.htm

People who commute through natural environments daily report better mental health

This association is even stronger among active commuters

October 18, 2018

Science Daily/Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal)

People who commute through natural environments report better mental health. This is the main conclusion of a research based on questionnaires answered by nearly 3,600 participants from four European cities.

According to a new study led by the Barcelona Institute for Global Health (ISGlobal) -- a centre supported by the "la Caixa" Foundation -- , people who commute through natural environments report better mental health. This is the main conclusion of a research based on questionnaires answered by nearly 3,600 participants from four European cities and published in Environment International.

The study was conducted within the Positive Health Effects of the Natural Outdoor Environment in Typical Populations in Different Regions in Europe project (PHENOTYPE). The 3,599 participants from Barcelona (Spain), Doetinchem (the Netherlands), Kaunas (Lithuania) and Stoke-on-Trent (UK) answered a questionnaire about their commuting habits and their mental health. The statistical analysis showed that respondents commuting through natural environments on a daily basis had on average a 2.74 point higher mental health score compared to those who commuted through natural environments less frequently. This association was even stronger among people who reported active commuting (i.e. walking or cycling). In this case, natural environments were defined as all public and private outdoor spaces that contain 'green' and/or 'blue' natural elements such as street trees, forests, city parks and natural parks/reserves, and also included all types of waterbodies.

Other results showed that there were more active commuters among those who declared commuting through natural environments daily. However, the quality of the natural environments in which commuting took place did not influence the results.

"From previous experimental studies we knew that physical activity in natural environments can reduce stress, improve mood and mental restoration when compared to the equivalent activity in urban environments. Although this study is the first of its kind to our knowledge and, therefore, more research will be needed, our data show that commuting through these natural spaces alone may also have a positive effect on mental health," says Wilma Zijlema, ISGlobal researcher and first author of the study.

"Mental health and physical inactivity are two of the main public health problems associated with the life in urban environments. Urban design could be a powerful tool to confront these challenges and create healthier cities. One way of doing so would be investing in natural commuting routes for cycling and walking," states Mark Nieuwenhuijsen, coordinator of the ISGlobal Initiative of Urban Planning, Environment and Health and last author of the study.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181018095349.htm

World's largest sleep study shows too much shut-eye can be bad for your brain

October 9, 2018

Science Daily/University of Western Ontario

Preliminary results from the world's largest sleep study have shown that people who sleep on average between 7 to 8 hours per night performed better cognitively than those who slept less, or more, than this amount.

Neuroscientists from Western University's Brain and Mind Institute released their findings today in the high-impact journal, SLEEP.

The world's largest sleep study was launched in June 2017 and within days more than 40,000 people from around the world participated in the online scientific investigation, which includes an in-depth questionnaire and a series of cognitive performance activities.

"We really wanted to capture the sleeping habits of people around the entire globe. Obviously, there have been many smaller sleep studies of people in laboratories but we wanted to find out what sleep is like in the real world," says Adrian Owen, Western's superstar researcher in Cognitive Neuroscience and Imaging. "People who logged in gave us a lot of information about themselves. We had a fairly extensive questionnaire and they told us things like which medications they were on, how old they were, where they were in the world and what kind of education they'd received because these are all factors that might have contributed to some of the results."

Approximately half of all participants reported typically sleeping less than 6.3 hours per night, about an hour less than the study's recommended amount. One startling revelation was that most participants who slept four hours or less performed as if they were almost nine years older.

Another surprising discovery was that sleep affected all adults equally. The amount of sleep associated with highly functional cognitive behaviour was the same for everyone (7 to 8 hours), regardless of age. Also, the impairment associated with too little, or too much, sleep did not depend on the age of the participants.

"We found that the optimum amount of sleep to keep your brain performing its best is 7 to 8 hours every night and that corresponds to what the doctors will tell you need to keep your body in tip-top shape, as well. We also found that people that slept more than that amount were equally impaired as those who slept too little," says Conor Wild, Owen Lab Research Associate and the study's lead author.

Participants' reasoning and verbal abilities were two of the actions most strongly affected by sleep while short-term memory performance was relatively unaffected. This is different than findings in most scientific studies of complete sleep deprivation and suggests that not getting enough sleep for an extended period affects your brain differently than staying up all night.

On the positive side, there was some evidence that even a single night's sleep can affect a person's ability to think. Participants who slept more than usual the night before participating in the study performed better than those who slept their usual amount or less.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181009135845.htm

Day-time naps help us acquire information not consciously perceived

'I'll sleep on it' proves scientifically sound advice

October 4, 2018

Science Daily/University of Bristol

The age-old adage 'I'll sleep on it' has proven to be scientifically sound advice, according to a new study which measured changes in people's brain activity and responses before and after a nap. The findings support the advice which suggests that a period of sleep may help weighing up pros and cons or gain insight before making a challenging decision.

The Medical Research Council-funded study, led by University of Bristol researchers, aimed to understand whether a short period of sleep can help us process unconscious information and how this might affect behaviour and reaction time.

The findings further reveal the benefits of a short bout of sleep on cognitive brain function and found that even during short bouts of sleep we process information that we are not consciously aware of.

While previous evidence demonstrates that sleep helps problem solving, resulting in enhanced cognition upon awaking; it was not clear whether some form of conscious mental process was required before or during sleep to aid problem solving. In this study, researchers hid information by presenting it very briefly and "masking" it -- so it was never consciously perceived -- the masked prime task. The hidden information, however, was processed at a subliminal level within the brain and the extent to which it interferes with responses to consciously perceived information was measured.

Sixteen healthy participants across a range of ages were recruited to take part in an experiment. Participants carried out two tasks -- the masked prime task and a control task where participants simply responded when they saw a red or blue square on a screen. Participants practiced the tasks and then either stayed awake or took a 90-minute nap before doing the tasks again.

Using an EEG, which records the electrical activity naturally produced in the brain, researchers measured the change in brain activity and response pre-and-post nap.

Sleep (but not wake) improved processing speed in the masked prime task -- but not in the control task -- suggesting sleep-specific improvements in processing of subconsciously presented primes.

The findings suggest that even a short bout of sleep may help improve our responses and process information. Therefore, the results here suggest a potentially sleep-dependent, task-specific enhancement of brain processing that could optimise human goal-directed behaviour.

Importantly, while it is already known that the process of acquiring knowledge and information recall, memory, is strengthened during sleep. This study suggests that information acquired during wakefulness may potentially be processed in some deeper, qualitative way during sleep

Dr LizCoulthard, Consultant Senior Lecturer in Dementia Neurology at the University of Bristol Medical School: Translational Health Sciences, said: "The findings are remarkable in that they can occur in the absence of initial intentional, conscious awareness, by processing of implicitly presented cues beneath participants' conscious awareness.

"Further research in a larger sample size is needed to compare if and how the findings differ between ages, and investigation of underlying neural mechanisms."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181004095929.htm

Even light drinking increases risk of death

At any age, daily drinkers 20 percent more likely to die prematurely than less frequent drinkers

October 3, 2018

Science Daily/Washington University School of Medicine

Analyzing data from more than 400,000 people, researchers have found that consuming one to two drinks four or more times per week -- an amount deemed healthy by current guidelines -- increases the risk of premature death by 20 percent.

Drinking a daily glass of wine for health reasons may not be so healthy after all, suggests a new study from Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

Analyzing data from more than 400,000 people ages 18 to 85, the researchers found that consuming one to two drinks four or more times per week -- an amount deemed healthy by current guidelines -- increases the risk of premature death by 20 percent, compared with drinking three times a week or less. The increased risk of death was consistent across age groups.

The study is published online Oct. 3 in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research.

"It used to seem like having one or two drinks per day was no big deal, and there even have been some studies suggesting it can improve health," said first author Sarah M. Hartz, MD, PhD, an assistant professor of psychiatry. "But now we know that even the lightest daily drinkers have an increased mortality risk."

Although some earlier studies have linked light drinking to improvements in cardiovascular health, Hartz said the new study shows that those potential gains are outweighed by other risks. Her team evaluated heart disease risk and cancer risk and found that although in some cases, drinking alcohol may reduce risk of heart-related problems, daily drinking increased cancer risk and, as a result, mortality risk.

"Consuming one or two drinks about four days per week seemed to protect against cardiovascular disease, but drinking every day eliminated those benefits," she said. "With regard to cancer risk, any drinking at all was detrimental."

The new study comes on the heels of research published in The Lancet, which reviewed data from more than 700 studies around the world and concluded that the safest level of drinking is none. But that study looked at all types of drinking -- from light alcohol consumption to binge drinking. The Washington University team analysis focused on light drinkers: those who consumed only one or two drinks a day.

The Washington University study focused on two large groups of people in the United States: 340,668 participants, ages 18-85, in the National Health Interview Survey, and another 93,653 individuals, ages 40-60 who were treated as outpatients at Veterans Administration clinics.

"A 20 percent increase in risk of death is a much bigger deal in older people who already are at higher risk," Hartz explained. "Relatively few people die in their 20s, so a 20 percent increase in mortality is small but still significant. As people age, their risk of death from any cause also increases, so a 20 percent risk increase at age 75 translates into many more deaths than it does at age 25."

She predicted that as medicine becomes more personalized, some doctors may recommend that people with family histories of heart problems have a drink from time to time, but in families with a history of cancer, physicians may recommend abstinence.

"If you tailor medical recommendations to an individual person, there may be situations under which you would think that occasional drinking potentially could be helpful," she said. "But overall, I do think people should no longer consider a glass of wine a day to somehow be healthy."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181003102732.htm

Link between hunger and mood explained

The sudden drop in glucose we experience when we are hungry can impact our mood

September 25, 2018

Science Daily/University of Guelph

The study used rats to examine the impact on emotional behavior of a sudden drop in blood sugar. When the rats were given a glucose blocker, researchers found they had higher levels of cortisol. They also showed signs of stress and sluggish behavior similar to a poor mood. To prove the behavior wasn't just a lack of glucose to the muscles, researchers then gave them a common antidepressant and the behavior disappeared.

It seems "hangry" isn't just a made-up term.

University of Guelph researchers have revealed that the sudden drop in glucose we experience when we are hungry can impact our mood.

"We found evidence that a change in glucose level can have a lasting effect on mood," said Prof. Francesco Leri, Department of Psychology. "I was skeptical when people would tell me that they get grouchy if they don't eat, but now I believe it. Hypoglycemia is a strong physiological and psychological stressor."

Published in the journal Psychopharmacology, the study examined the impact of a sudden glucose drop on emotional behaviour by inducing hypoglycemia in rats.

"When people think about negative mood states and stress, they think about the psychological factors, not necessarily the metabolic factors," said PhD student Thomas Horman, who led the study. "But we found poor eating behaviour can have an impact."

The rats were injected with a glucose metabolism blocker causing them to experience hypoglycemia, and were then placed in a specific chamber. On a separate occasion, they were given an injection of water and placed in a different chamber. When given the choice of which chamber to enter, they actively avoided the chamber where they experienced hypoglycemia.

"This type of avoidance behaviour is an expression of stress and anxiety," said Leri. "The animals are avoiding that chamber because they had a stressful experience there. They don't want to experience it again."

The researchers tested blood levels of the rats after experiencing hypoglycemia and found more corticosterone, an indicator of physiological stress.

The rats also appeared more sluggish when given the glucose metabolism blocker.

"You might argue that this is because they need glucose to make their muscles work," said Leri. "But when we gave them a commonly used antidepressant medication, the sluggish behaviour was not observed. The animals moved around normally. This is interesting because their muscles still weren't getting the glucose, yet their behaviour changed."

This finding supports the idea that the animals experienced stress and depressed mood when they were hypoglycemic, he said.

For people who experience anxiety or depression, the study results have implications for treatment, said Horman.

"The factors that lead someone to develop depression and anxiety can be different from one person to the next. Knowing that nutrition is a factor, we can include eating habits into possible treatment."

These findings also provide insight into the connection between depression and diseases such as obesity, diabetes, bulimia and anorexia, Horman said.

Having established that hypoglycemia contributes to negative mood states, the researchers plan to determine whether chronic, long-term hypoglycemia is a risk factor for developing depression-like behaviours.

While missing one meal may make you "hangry," Horman said, these findings suggest your mood could be impacted if meal-skipping becomes a habit.

"Poor mood and poor eating can become a vicious cycle in that if a person isn't eating properly, they can experience a drop in mood, and this drop in mood can make them not want to eat. If someone is constantly missing meals and constantly experiencing this stressor, the response could affect their emotional state on a more constant level."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180925115218.htm

8 Secrets to Younger Looking Skin

Paige A. Mitchell
paige.a.mitchell18@gmail.com

As we age, we want our minds and bodies to stay sharp and active and we want our skin to maintain it’s wrinkle-free, youthful glow. Basically, we are all searching for the fountain of youth. 

The skincare industry is a billion-dollar business with products promising to reduce wrinkles, rewind aging, and miraculously present healthy, younger looking skin. While there are some products that are essential to protect our skin, such as sunscreen and moisturizer, the first step and most influential factor in improving and maintaining an outward appearance is to focus on taking care of the wholebody. Below is a guide with daily tips you can incorporate into your lifestyle to help your skin look younger from the inside out.

1. Improve sleep quality

One of the most important yet overlooked acts of self care is a focus on improving sleep in order to let your body heal. Utilizing the MindSpa personal development system allows you to do just that. By using a stimulating technology to mimic a meditative state, users are able to relax and improve focus, sleep, and mood. 

2. Reduce stress

Research has shown that stress levels directly impact skin condition and influence mental health. How many times have you experienced a break out prior to an important, but stressful event? Research actually showsthat the correlation is not just anecdotal. Rather, in his research, Dr. Granstein said experimental data support the idea that the nervous system and stress affect inflammatory skin conditions in humans, such as acne, psoriasis, and rosacea. 

 College students in particular experience a lot of skin conditions and breakouts related to stress, depression, and anxiety. This studyaimed to assess the relationship between perceived psychological stress and the prevalence of various skin symptoms in a large, randomly selected sample of undergraduate students. 

 Both of these studies focus on the benefits you can receive by focusing on improving restorative sleep, thereby reducing stress and helping improve skin.

3. Wash your face every night

Even if you don’t wear makeup daily or use harsh products, it’s important to wash the daily environmental impacts off your skin. With all the soaps and lotions and serums out there today, washing your face can actually be overwhelming at times. The American Academy of Dermatology Associationrecommends a simple approach to face-washing. With your fingertips, gently apply a non-abrasive cleanser, wash away with lukewarm water, and pat dry with a clean, fluffy towel.

4. Hydrate and moisturize your skin daily

Drink plenty of water throughout the day and find a good moisturizer that works with your skin type. If you’ve diligently hydrated and moisturized but your skin is still dry, check your home’s humidity levels. Humidity lower than 40% can take a toll on your health. One solution to this is investing in a portable humidifier or hire a technicianto install or service your whole-house humidifier.

5. Wash your hands often

Not only will this help prevent the spread of germs, but it also keeps dirt and other pore cloggers off your face and skin. Again, use gentle hand soap and warm—not scalding—water. Beware of hand sanitizer too. “By constantly using hand sanitizer, you eliminate the bacteria that helps build up your immune system, allowing antibiotic-resistant bugs to enter your system and make you very sick,” according to Samer Blackmon, M.D.

6. Wear sunscreen

Apply a broad spectrum minimum SPF 30 daily to protect skin. Applying sunscreen daily is important despite the weather and the season. It’ll protect your skin from short-term exposure to UV light, even on a cloudy day. Sunscreenprevents sunburn, early skin aging, and skin cancer. 

 An argument to wearing sunscreen is that most of us don’t get an adequate amount of vitamin D through our diet and one way of doing so is through direct sunlight. You can—and should—get your vitamin D through supplements rather than the tanning bed. Adults should get at least 600 IU per day of vitamin D, according to the Mayo Clinic, however, 1,000 to 2,000 IU per day from a supplement is generally safe.

7. Consider your diet

We’re sorry to say, but you’ve got to cut back on your vice—be it sugar, alcohol, or caffeine. Eating a lot of sugar causes collagen breakdown while alcohol and caffeine dehydrate the skin. This recent study highlights the positive benefits of participating in Dry Januarycan have on your skin and overall wellness. 

8. Don’t smoke

It’s bad for your health and your skin. If you haven’t found a good reason to quit yet, perhaps one of these points will do the trick: 

●     Smoking cigarettes can lead to poor sleep quality and result in undereye circles. 

●     It accelerates aging too. The average smoker looks 1.4 years older than nonsmokers. 

●     Nicotine stains your fingers and your teeth. 

●     Not to mention, the toxic chemicals in cigarettes make your hair thinner and grayer. 

●     Nicotine causes vasoconstriction, which limits oxygen-rich blood flow to the tiny vessels in the face or other parts of the body.  If you have any visible scars on your body, you can expect them to appear larger and redder.

 Consider your whole body and all of your lifestyle habits to figure out their impact on your skin. Regular sleep, consistent exercise, meditation, a balanced diet—all of these factors will provide the biggest results in younger looking skin. 

Sleeping Well in the Age of Stress

Bridget Cassidy Sep 25, 2018

It’s 3:00 a.m. and you’re wide awake.

In six hours you’re going to give the biggest presentation of your career. That is, after you get your kids out of bed, dressed, and off to school. Oh, right. You have to drop your husband at the airport. What else? You start your to-do list. Did you pay your water bill? What about the kids’ camp fees? Did you buy cereal yesterday?

Stop! If only you could nod off. You close your eyes, hoping that action in itself stops the wheels in your brain from turning. Suddenly, you hear a drip of water. Your tired mind turns toward the leaky bathroom faucet.

Drip.

Drip.

Pause. Wait for it.

Drip.

We’ve all been there right? It’s terrible. On the other hand, we know what a big night of sleep can do for you. Our energy levels reset, allowing us to invite new possibilities into our lives. There’s nothing like it, especially when you can get the big sleep every night.

Unfortunately, many of us are not getting enough sleep. The American Sleep Association estimates that as many as 70 million adults in the United States could suffer from some kind of sleep disorder that either shortens the duration of their sleep or makes them wake up unrested.

Sleep deprivation can have several different causes, including health conditions, lifestyle choices, and stress. Stress is a big one. There are now different treatment options based on scientific research available for various sleep disorders. Sleep hygiene, for instance, suggests establishing a bedtime routine and schedule, and adopting other good sleep habits could improve the incidence of sleep disorders like insomnia. Bear in mind, however, that sleep hygiene alone may not be enough to treat such conditions.

We Learned From The Best

We wanted to find out more about the world of sleep and how it regenerates our bodies, as well as the common causes of sleep deprivation and available treatment options. So we spoke to a leading expert in the field of sleep medicine.

Dr. Rohit Budhiraja is an assistant professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, the director of Brigham and Women's Hospital's sleep clinic, and a faculty member in Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders and Division of Pulmonary and Critical Care Medicine in Boston, MA.

Budhiraja’s main field of study is sleep apnea and other sleep-related breathing disorders. However, he was able to go over everything from how sleep helps regenerate the body and mind. He also explained how temperature, light, and calming (what he calls TLC) is so important to get a good night’s sleep. “On average, most people need seven or eight hours of sleep,” says Budhiraja.

Let us share what we learned with you, starting with the basics.

Tiger peacefully sleeping in snowfall (source)

What is Sleep?

Animals as small as the honeybee and as large as the blue whale fall asleep every day and perform noticeably better when well-rested. But what exactly causes us to feel sleepy and doze off? And how did most of the animal kingdom evolve the need for sleep in the first place?

Here’s the succinct definition of sleep taken from the Merriam-Webster Medical Dictionary, “...the natural periodic suspension of consciousness during which the powers of the body are restored.”

There is evidence that sleep was handed down to most animals from a common ancestor nearly 700 million years ago. According to a New York Times profile on a 2014 study, “our nightly slumbers evolved from the rise and fall of our tiny oceangoing ancestors, as they swam up to the surface of the sea at twilight and then sank in a sleepy fall through the night.”

There are many reasons why this adaptation evolved. For one, it’s possible that sleep is meant to keep animals inactive at times when they were unlikely to find food and when their predators were most active. Sleep also affords the benefit of repairing and restoring the body, which allows animals to avoid predators more effectively and find food in their waking hours. Take a look at honeybees, which perform a “waggle dance” to tell other bees where food can be found. When bees are sleep-deprived, their dance is not as precise, making it more difficult for other bees to follow their directions.

35.2% of adults 18 and older report sleeping less than 7 hours every night.
- Center for Disease Control (CDC)

“Some historians and researchers believe that, centuries ago, humans followed biphasic or polyphasic schedules,” says Budhiraja. Biphasic sleep is when someone sleeps two separate times during a 24-hour period whereas polyphasic sleep is when someone sleeps multiple times (more than twice) in a 24-hour period. “Industrial Revolution and artificial lighting may have forced people to adopt monophasic schedules.” He went on to clarify that there is little evidence to suggest a polyphasic schedule is a good idea. As for biphasic sleep, there are several countries and cultures which still practice an afternoon nap or ‘siesta’. 

How Sleep Works

While the exact mechanism for how sleep happens in humans is still unclear, the broad strokes are these: the hypothalamus generates the circadian rhythm—the inner clock that says we should sleep at night and be awake during the day—and triggers the release of melatonin, a compound that signals to our brain when we should be asleep.

Meanwhile, as our brain works hard during the day, another compound called adenosine is released by astrocytes. Adenosine accumulates in the brain and eventually reaches levels that trigger drowsiness. Melatonin and adenosine work together—and sometimes independently—to make us feel tired and crave sleep. When we’re asleep, adenosine levels decrease while melatonin stays high. When the circadian rhythm says it’s time to wake up, melatonin decreases and we become alert.

Why We Sleep

Memories

We know much more about why humans need sleep than other animals. One of the benefits humans get from sleep is the consolidation of memories. When we’re awake, we’re receiving sensory input from the things we see, hear, feel, and our brain forms connections between what is happening to us in real time and what we remember. According to Budhiraja, when we fall asleep our brains work on reclassifying the information we received during the day and cataloging our memories.

Much like a librarian takes the books in the return cart and places them in the correct shelf, the brain sorts through the events of the day and classifies the information into new areas. Not only does the brain place the information in the correct areas during sleep, it also removes unnecessary information by getting rid of those superfluous neural connections.

The woods are lovely, dark and deep, And I have promises to keep, But neither the woods nor those promises Are as important as some restorative sleep. - Dr. Budhiraja's variation on Robert Frost's poem

Restoration

Another reason we need sleep is to restore our bodies. “During sleep,” says Budhiraja, “our bodies relax and muscle tone decreases.” And when our muscles relax, the damaged tissue regenerates more efficiently. That’s why a good night’s sleep feels so good after an exhausting workout session.

Budhiraja goes on to explain that research points towards REM (rapid-eye-movement) sleep as the stage where much of the muscle recovery and memory consolidation happens. REM sleep—also called Stage R—is characterized by being the stage at which we dream. Typically, REM sleep happens 90 minutes after we first fall asleep.

First, we cycle through non-REM (NREM) stages of sleep—N1, N2, and N3—which bring us deeper and deeper into rest as our brain activity slows down. Once the REM stage is over, the cycle from stage N1 to stage R restarts, in a repetitive process that lasts approximately 90 minutes and happens multiple times per night.

“Your genes decide if you’re a 6-hour sleeper or a 9-hour sleeper,” says Budhiraja. Though doctors do recommend getting between 7 and 8 hours of sleep every night, there is no one-size-fits-all answer.

The body loses its rhythm without a fixed sleep and wake-up schedule.
-Dr. Rohit Budhiraja 

Common Sleep Disorders

Though there are dozens of sleep disorders, as listed by the third edition of the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD-3), below we will discuss the three most common sleep disorders: insomnia, sleep apnea, and restless leg syndrome.

Insomnia

An individual is said to suffer from insomnia if they have trouble falling asleep or staying asleep throughout the night, if they wake up too early in the morning, or if the sleep they have is non-restorative. Almost 60 million Americans suffer from insomnia every year.

While primary insomnia—that is, insomnia that doesn’t appear to be caused by another disorder—is a problem for many people, in most cases, it is caused by or appears alongside a wide range of conditions, such as depression, heart disease, diabetes, and chronic pain. 

Dr. Rohit Budhiraja with patient

Treatments for Insomnia Bad habits or poor lifestyle choices are some of the main causes of insomnia. Stress, no bedtime routine, irregular work schedules, and side effects from prescription medications can be the primary causes of this sleep disorder.

Sleep Hygiene is a collection of lifestyle changes that can improve sleep. These include: establishing a bedtime routine, eliminating the consumption of caffeine, alcohol, nicotine, and certain foods close to your bedtime, getting regular exercise and losing weight, limiting daytime nap times to 30 minutes, creating a welcoming sleep environment, and getting a lot of natural light during the day. 

If you continue to suffer from insomnia, other treatments include cognitive therapy such as light therapy or relaxation techniques. Finally, prescription or over-the-counter sleep medications can help you get to sleep but may also bring on other side effects.

One in three over 30 year olds have sleep apnea.

– Dr. Rohit Budhiraja

Sleep Apnea

Budhiraja then discussed sleep apnea. About one in three people over the age of 30 may have some degree of sleep apnea, with 13% of men and 6% of women having moderate to severe sleep-disordered breathing. “During an apnea episode, the muscles at the back of the throat and the tongue block the airway, causing the sleeper to stop breathing for seconds at a time,” says Budhiraja.

The Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School reports obstructive sleep apnea, which is the most common type of sleep apnea, raises your heart rate and increases your blood pressure, putting stress on your heart.

One of the most notable symptoms of OSA is snoring. “It’s extremely rare for this condition to be fatal,”says Budhiraja. However, OSA is related to a host of other issues, such as high blood pressure, obesity, diabetes, heart attacks, stroke, increased traffic accidents, depression, anxiety, and, of course, insomnia. Treating sleep apnea, affirms Budhiraja, can alleviate the symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Treatments for OSA The treatments for mild cases of sleep apnea focus more on making lifestyle changes that may be interrupting your sleep. These include losing weight (if you are obese or overweight), exercising on a regular basis, reducing alcohol consumption (if not stopping altogether), and quitting smoking. Other suggested treatments include changing your sleep position and using a nasal decongestant or allergy medication. The most common treatment for severe OSA is continuous positive airway pressure (CPAP) therapy, prescribed by your physician. The CPAP machine facilitates the constant flow of air into your throat so your airway remains open while you sleep.

Restless Leg Syndrome

The third sleep disorder is Restless Leg Syndrome (RLS) that frequently disrupts sleep and affects 2-15% of the population. Sufferers describe an unpleasant and sometimes painful tingling or cramping sensation in the legs when resting or falling asleep at night. Moving the legs alleviates the symptoms but they quickly return when the movement stops.

The pain and discomfort often keeps people from sleeping at night. Researchers are still investigating what causes RLS, but there may be a link to iron deficiency, diabetes, high blood pressure, and ADHD, among other conditions. “Some types of antidepressants may also cause RLS,” says Budhiraja. 

Treatments for RLS 

Budhiraja recommends massaging your legs, taking a warm bath or shower, and doing light exercise and stretching to relieve the symptoms. More strenuous exercise, however, can worsen RLS symptoms and sleep quality, and should be avoided within 5-6 hours of bedtime. He also recommends making certain lifestyle changes including the elimination of caffeine, alcohol, and smoking cigarettes from your daily routine.

There are prescription medications available to treat RLS. One class of such medications are dopamine agonists that mimic the neurotransmitter, dopamine, in the brain. 

I Can't Sleep (source)

Sleep Deprivation in Adults

In 2014, the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) classified sleep deprivation as an epidemic in the United States with more than 70 million adults currently suffering from the condition. That’s one third of the U.S. adult population.

Groups with the highest percentage of sleep deprivation are Native Hawaiians/Pacific Islanders at 46.3% and Blacks at 45.8% then Asians at 37.5%, Hispanics at 34.5%, and Whites at 33.4%.

- CDC

Sleep deprivation can affect all aspects of our lives, and some effects are much more serious than simply nodding off at work or being irritable. For one, there is evidence that losing sleep regularly is associated with chronic conditions like heart disease, diabetes, and high blood pressure.

According to the CDC, heart attack, coronary heart disease, stroke, asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD), cancer, arthritis, depression, chronic kidney disease, and diabetes occurrences were higher in U.S. adults who suffer from sleep deprivation or what CDC calls “Short Sleep Duration,” which is less than 7 hours of sleep per night.

Recently, John Hopkins published an infographic with four categories of effects of sleep deprivation. They are: weight, health, brain effects, and safety. For instance, did you know the risk of developing Type 2 diabetes is three times as high for those who are chronically sleep deprived?

Health & Weight

Some study findings show that lack of sleep doubled the risk of death from all causes including cardiovascular disease.

You are also more at risk for obesity due to the hormonal imbalance introduced by sleep deprivation. You crave sweet, salty, and starchy foods because you have higher levels of the hunger hormone ghrelin and lower levels of leptin, the appetite-control hormone. Sleep deprivation can also affect your brain. You have a 33% higher risk for dementia if you suffer from lack of sleep.

Safety

Sleeplessness is also connected to other severe consequences. It is estimated that drowsy driving causes 1,550 deaths and 40,000 injuries annually in the United States.

There is even evidence that sleep deprivation may make you less empathetic.

Lack of Sleep in Kids and Young Adults

The Little One is Tired

According to the Children’s Sleep Apnea Association, an estimated 1 to 4% of children suffer from sleep apnea, including kids between the ages of 2 and 8 years old. It is a common belief that children will eventually grow out of pediatric sleep disorders, but new evidence suggests that may not be the case. Studies have shown sleep apnea is linked to childhood obesity, attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), and cognitive functioning ability.

Some mommy bloggers made suggestions on how to establish and keep an ongoing bedtime routine with your youngsters. Most bloggers agree you should stick with a nightly schedule and sleep hygiene routine that includes taking a bath, brushing teeth, cleaning the bedroom, and dimming the lights.

We start our routine at 7:30 pm. I don’t like to rush them, so I try to get them to relax and wind down at least an hour before the desired bedtime...my kids take a bath or shower, have a snack (no chocolate or sweets!), brush their teeth, read, and then it’s time for me or Dad to tuck them in.
- Jeannette Kaplun, Mommy Blogger at Hispana Global and mother of two.

Sleepless in School

The recommended amount of sleep for high school and college students is 8-10 hours per night, with anything from 8½ (short sleep duration) to 11 hours considered appropriate. According to the CDC, nearly 69% of high school students sleep less than 8 hours a night, with an astounding 76.6% of seniors not getting enough sleep.

Additionally, up to 60% of college students do not get enough sleep on a regular basis.

Another study found that sleep-deprived students were more likely to engage in unhealthy behavior such as drinking, fast driving, and getting into physical fights. Sleep deprivation is also a good predictor of poor academic and athletic performance and drowsy driving.

College students who experienced even one additional night of poor sleep per week were more likely to drop a course (10%) and see a drop in their cumulative GPA (by 0.02). Sleep deprivation ranked the same if not higher than other factors that negatively affect academic success including binge drinking and drug use.

To get better sleep, it is recommended that high school and college students make the following changes:

• Set and stick to a bedtime routine and sleep schedule
  

• Practice sleep hygiene
  

• Create a peaceful sleep environment
  

• Eliminate caffeine three hours before bedtime
  

• Avoid using mobile devices, computer, or tv 1-2 hours before going to sleep
  

• Don’t go to bed hungry, instead eat a small snack
  

• Avoid working out right before bedtime
  

• Meditate or practice light yoga to relax
  

Other age groups affected by sleep loss include the elderly and people with certain diseases including Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, and dementia. Aging can affect our sleep patterns due to a number of factors including hormonal changes associated with aging and the increased likelihood of taking more medications and experiencing side effects. It is recommended that you work with your primary care physician to determine the best course of treatment.

Sleep graph (source)

Work Productivity Takes A Hit

The average U.S. worker loses 11 days of productivity per year due to insomnia. That’s $2,280 per year. The total loss is a whopping $63.2 billion per year. What this could mean for you is missing out on a promotion or a superior performance review.

Unfortunately, our corporate culture only contributes to this by promoting the idea that sleep is not a required commodity. In other words, we think sleep is a luxury saved for vacations and weekends, not something we need for proper health.

A few companies have begun to pay attention to the field of sleep medicine and recent research that has shown the negative effects of poor sleep on employee health, work productivity, and ballooning insurance costs. A recently Fatigue Cost Calculator developed by Brigham and Women’s Hospital for the National Safety Council can provide estimates of the cost of poor sleep health for an employer. Google, Goldman Sachs, and Johnson & Johnson, to name a few, are some of these companies.

At Google, for instance, sleep experts have been invited to the company's locations to share information with employees regarding sleep deprivation, jet lag, and the restorative power of deep sleep.

Light is the enemy of sleep.
- Dr. Budhiraja

More From The Best

Budhiraja says that sleep works to regenerate our bodies including our brains and our muscles. The brain progresses through different stages of sleep every 90 minutes or so: light sleep, deep sleep, and REM stage, which is the dream phase of sleep.

“During sleep, muscle tone goes down,” says Budhiraja. “Relaxation of muscle is even greater during the dream stage of sleep.” He explains that many areas of the brain also relax during the sleep and the rate of brain metabolism decreases, except in REM phase, where the brain activity and energy use may be even higher than when awake. REM and non-REM sleep may be responsible for different aspects of memory consolidation.

A Little TLC

Based on his research, Budhiraja recommends you make three lifestyle changes scientifically proven to improve your sleep. He calls it TLC or temperature, light, and calming your mind to get better sleep.

The cooler your body, the better sleep you can get.
-Dr. Budhiraja

First, there is temperature. When you go to sleep, you do not want your room too warm or too cold. The ideal room temperature to promote better sleep is between 65 and 70 degrees.

Light is another factor proven to affect sleep. If there is too much light in your bedroom, especially artificial light, it can stop the production of melatonin in your brain, the hormone related to sleep. “Light is the enemy of sleep,” says Budhiraja. Cellphones and other mobile devices are blue light sources and major disruptors of sleep. “Smartphones are shown to decrease sleep by up to half an hour.” Budhiraja suggests putting your phone down one to two hours before you go to bed.

Calming your mind completes the treatment trio and is also something we can control, although it may be difficult for some to do. Meditating or deep breathing before going to sleep has been found to decrease anxiety and depression. In fact, studies report meditation is associated with decreased activity in the default mode network or DMN, which is a part of the brain related to mind wandering and thinking about the self.  

Source: RNIB (source)

Finally, not having a regular sleep routine, i.e., going to bed at the same time each night, can throw off your sleep pattern. Our bodies naturally start increasing melatonin a few hours before our scheduled bedtime. If you keep changing that time, you can affect your body’s natural sleep hormone production.

Medication and Treatments

Holistic

Some popular holistic supplements include melatonin, valerian root, and herbal teas such as chamomile tea. According to Budhiraja, melatonin is likely the most studied sleep supplement. As a sleep hormone produced naturally in the body, it tells the brain when it’s time to fall asleep. The dosage is up for debate—over the counter pills are usually available in 1mg or 3mg or higher doses—starting at a lower dose and increasing the dose if needed is a good idea. Melatonin is considered to be a fairly well-tolerated sleep treatment; however, it is not a cure-all for sleep disorders and may only be effective for certain individuals. It is more likely to be effective in individuals who have delayed sleep phase syndrome- a condition in which people fall asleep late and wake up late. It can be also effective in preventing or treating jet lag.

Other alternative solutions include making the bedroom as dark as possible and/ or the addition of a white noise machine to your sleep routine. It is estimated that nearly 75% of Americans said that a quiet room is important to getting good sleep. Lastly, there is taking your grandmother’s age-old advice: drink a warm cup of milk before going to bed.

Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I) is a very effective therapy where a psychologist or another trained professional can help you identify and address your thoughts and behaviors that may be contributing to poor sleep. It even can be delivered through online programs.

Over-The-Counter

Over-the-counter medications include diphenhydramine (Benadryl, Aleve PM, etc.) or doxylamine succinate (Unisom). These sleep aids have side effects including drowsiness and leaving you feeling groggy the next day. Furthermore, the body can quickly develop tolerance to some of these medications.

Prescription Medication

Finally, there are prescription medications. According to Budhiraja, medications should generally be your last resort in seeking help to get better sleep, and if used, should usually be used over short-term. They can cause several side effects- drowsiness, dizziness, diarrhea, grogginess or feeling as if drugged. In addition, after taking some of these medicines, people may get up out of bed while not being fully awake and do an activity that they do not know they are doing- including driving. The next morning, they may not remember that they did anything during the night. “The body can also develop tolerance to these medications, requiring progressively increasing doses or more potent medicines,” he says.

Image: (source)

Before Turning Off the Lights

Most of us have faced a sleepless night or two in our lifetimes. We’ve laid awake and listened to a leaky faucet go drip, drip, drip into the wee hours of the night. Worse, we are one of the 70 million people in the United States who suffer from a lack of sleep or who have a sleep disorder.

We’re tired new parents, or college students cramming for an exam, or a software engineer who works 60 hours or more a week, or are getting older and are finding it harder to sleep.

Seventy million: that’s more than a third of the population across the nation.

Scientific studies have proven the health ramifications of sleep deprivation and what it does to our bodies, minds, and everyday lives. It is an epidemic that not only affects us as adults but is also affecting our nation’s kids.

We can take countermeasures to get more and better sleep, steps that have been proven to work by scientific studies. We can give ourselves some TLC to promote better sleep, which can, in turn, restore us to our full capacity. Because really, don’t we just want our best sleep every night, especially in this age of high stress? We want that great sleep where we wake up refreshed and ready to take on the day.

Co-Authors: Scott Smith, Community Editor, and Mayra Paris, Associate Editor

https://www.consumersadvocate.org/features/better-sleep-health-habit

Say Hello to a Healthy Gut and Goodbye to Digestive Problems

By Scott Sanders

www.cancerwell.org

<info@cancerwell.org>

Some people can eat whatever they want without any issues. Others have negative reactions to certain foods and diets. If you’re one of many people who experience occasional digestive problems, it’s time to learn about how you can use the food you consume to heal you from the inside out. 

Digestive ailments hit everyone at some point in their lives, and they can be temporary inconveniences or chronic conditions. Who hasn’t had diarrhea, constipation, bloating, vomiting, or an upset stomach at some point? But there are many who suffer from serious conditions like gallstones, celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, irritable bowel syndrome, and more. According to Everyday Health, 20 percent of Americans are affected by GERD, over 25 million have gallstones, and approximately 10 to 15 percent are affected by irritable bowel syndrome. Disruptive stomach conditions can be caused by what you eat, but they can also be treated by what you eat. 

Nutrition

Eating whole, unprocessed foods is the best way to heal the gut. Learn to read nutrition labelsto see what ingredients make up your food. Preservatives and additives make your digestive system work harder and cause other health issues. Some foreign ingredients simply shouldn’t be eaten. Buy your food fresh rather than from packages. The more ingredients in the food, the more you should avoid it.

Food Elimination

Digestive conditions and autoimmune diseases generally call for special diets. To see which foods affect you in negative ways, try an elimination diet that removes specific foods for one month. You can start by cutting out the foods that typically cause issues (such as gluten, dairy, corn, soy, sugar, and alcohol) and reintroduce them slowly to see how they affect you. Another option is to cut out one thing at a time to monitor any differences. If you’re willing to stick with a strict diet, the autoimmune protocoldiet helps reduce intestinal inflammation. 

Gut Health

Since your gut processes all of your body’s nutrients, the health of your digestive tract is important to your overall wellbeing. When things are off in your gut, the rest of your body feels off, too. Gut healthcould affect everything from your brain to your skin to your weight-loss efforts. 

Your gut contains both good bacteria and bad bacteria. Known as microbiomes, these microorganisms live inside your digestive tract. The friendly bacteriain your gut include Bifidobacterium, Lactobacillus, Saccharomyces Boulardii, Bacillus Coagulans, and Akkermansia microbes. They protect against harmful microbes, promote digestive health, aid in digestion, improve the immune system, produce vitamins, impact the metabolism, and have other positive effects on intestinal health. 

Disease

The good bacteria may prevent and treat diseases, such as inflammatory conditions, heart disease, and even cancer. Gut health is linked to cancer in many ways. Digestive issues are often due to cancer and side effects of treatments. Constipation, nausea, stomach cramps, weight loss, and digestion problems can occur as a result of pain medication, chemotherapy, or the cancer itself. 

Sometimes, it’s the gut health that helps treat cancer. An immunotherapy called Checkpoint Inhibition can shrink tumors, but studieshave shown that gut health could have something to do with the patient’s response to it. By altering the gut microbiome, patients develop a better response to the immunotherapy. More good bacteria means better immune cells to kill the cancer cells. 

Probiotics

Healthy people who don’t have underlying medical problems may want to consider adding probioticsto their daily routine. Probiotics contain the same helpful microorganisms that are present in our bodies. You can ingest probiotics through supplements or in foods such as yogurt, kefir, kimchi, sauerkraut, tempeh, and kombucha (which also has antioxidants).

Exercise

Let’s not discount the importance of exercise for overall health. A healthy diet can heal your body, but never underestimate the role of physical fitness in a holistic approach to healing digestive ailments. Any form of cardiovascular exercise can help move digestive waste through your system. Yogais a great activity to practice, especially when it comes to reducing bloat.

There is no one-size-fits-all approach to intestinal health and treating digestive disorders. Each body is different. It takes trial and error, listening to your body, and seeing a doctor when natural methods don’t provide results. When the solutions finally do come, you’ll get to relish in the joy of eating again.

K9s For Warriors - Because Together We Stand

Scott Smith
Sep 14, 2018

Soldier, take me from this shelter’s cage.
Give me back my life. In return, I’ll cover your back.
I’ll be your canine warrior, your sixth sense.
I’ll stand guard into the night and chase the demons away,
the uninvited, cloaked in night sweats and darkness. 

I will help you open your cage of solitude
then walk tall by your side into the light of day. 
Together, our faith will rise as tall as your soldier’s pride. 
We are now family in this post-911 world. 
Because together, we stand.

-Bridget Cassidy

MEET JAMES AND DUNKIN

James Rutland is a 12-year Army veteran who served a tour of duty in Iraq in 2004, followed by two more tours in South Korea. He left the military in 2014, suffering from multiple medical conditions related to his service, including mild traumatic brain injury (TBI), sleep apnea, and hearing loss, to name a few.

Most importantly, he suffered from depression and often thought about suicide. Thinking he could do it alone, Rutland tried healing from the trauma on his own. That wasn’t working. “If you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you always got,” says Rutland.

What Life Without Dunkin?

  - James Rutland of K9s For Warriors 

In 2016, Rutland finally rounded the bend of recovery when he was paired with his service dog, Dunkin. “I started focusing on "we instead of "me”, says Rutland. 

He has a semi-colon tattoo on his right wrist, a known symbol of taking a pause when thinking about suicide. Unlike a “period” which ends a sentence, the semicolon creates a pause, for the reader, then continues the story. Rutland wears it proudly. "It's a great conversation starter," Rutland says. 

He goes on to explain that breathing, family, friends, and the program that gave him Dunkin are what keeps him going.

THE PROGRAM: K9S FOR WARRIORS

K9s For Warriors is a BBB accredited charity organization located in Ponte Vedra, Florida, that has been pairing rescue dogs with traumatized soldiers since 2011. The dogs are trained to be service dogs, specifically performing tasks to quiet the symptoms of war trauma disabilities in soldiers. 

“The skillsets our dogs learn help these warriors with anxiety, isolation, depression, and nightmares,” says Shari Duval, the founder of K9s For Warriors. “So, the warriors can function again in public.”

Specifically, the dogs are trained to deal with symptoms of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), traumatic brain injury (TBI), or military sexual trauma (MST), as a result of military service on or after 9/11.

K9s For Warriors sees it as two battles: fighting the past of the dog and fighting the past of the warrior. We’re saving two lives here. 

-Brett Simon 

K9s For Warriors veterans walking with their service dogs

Duval started the program after watching her son Brett Simon suffer from PTSD after he returned from Iraq. Simon did two tours, developing PTSD during the first one. Watching her son suffer from the debilitating condition motivated Duval to research alternative treatments to the standard talk therapy and medication, neither of which worked for her son.

“On average, soldiers take 14 meds a day to treat PTSD, TBI, or MST,” says Duval. If treatment is not working, she says veterans are prescribed more and more drugs. “I even knew one soldier who was taking 44 meds per day.”

After two years of researching alternative PTSD treatments, Duval came upon a program that paired service dogs to alleviate their PTSD symptoms in veterans. 

According to Simon, “Mom was the one that suggested I use a service dog to deal with my PTSD when nothing else worked.” Duval saw her son’s symptoms begin to improve. She then wanted to help other veterans do the same.

Thus, the K9s For Warrior program was born. With her son’s background in training dogs, including 13 years as a canine police officer, Duval convinced Simon to start the nonprofit together.

To date, the program has rescued more than 850 dogs and 440 military service members, with an astounding 99% program success rate.

Based on a recent Purdue study, the organization’s mission seems to be making a difference in the lives of warriors.

WHAT IS PTSD?
PTSD is classified as a mental disorder that develops after a person experiences severe trauma as a result of a traumatic event such as warfare, sexual assault, auto accident, or other severely traumatic events. PTSD symptoms are re-experiencing, avoidance, arousal, and negative changes in beliefs and feelings. The disability manifests itself in depression, anxiety, night terrors, and social embarrassment resulting in isolation. Many individuals have initial symptoms while others can worsen, requiring treatment.

According to the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), it is common to have reactions such as upsetting memories of an event, increased anxiety, or trouble sleeping after experiencing a traumatic event. If these reactions do not go away or worsen, then the individual may have PTSD.

Along with TBI and MST, PTSD is recognized under the American Veterans Aid (AVA), the Department of Justice through the American Disabilities Act (ADA), and the Veteran’s Association of America (VA). The Department of Defense (DoD) is also strongly committed to providing service members and families with access to quality mental health care and resources for all mental health conditions including PTSD. 

I appreciated the willingness of K9s for Warriors to open their doors to research and science.

-Dr. Maggie O'Haire

PILOT STUDY AFFIRMS ANTICIPATED OUTCOME

K9s For Warriors recently partnered with Purdue University College of Veterinary Medicine on a pilot study testing the effectiveness of service dogs as a complementary treatment for military members and veterans who suffer from PTSD. Dr. Maggie O'Haire, assistant professor of human-animal interaction, along with Kerri E. Rodriguez, research assistant, conducted the study and published the findings earlier this year.

The study had a total of 141 participants from the K9s For Warriors’ program or individuals on the program’s waiting list. Half of the program's participants had service dogs; the other half did not.

The study found that PTSD symptoms were significantly lower in veterans with service dogs, demonstrating that service dogs are associated with lower PTSD symptoms among war veterans. “The initial findings showed lower depression, lower PTSD symptoms, lower levels of anxiety, and lower absenteeism from work due to health issues,” says Dr. O'Haire.

Each morning, she measured levels of cortisol - a stress hormone, in each participant; an increase of the hormone in the morning is indicative of a healthy level or curve. We tend to see a rise in cortisol immediately after waking up. “We call it the morning rise”, says Dr. O'Haire. 

Dr. Anantha Shekhar, Director of Indiana Clinical and Translational Sciences Institute, and professor at Indiana University School of Medicine was the lead researcher on the grant at the university. "Service dogs are a great resource for veterans to modulate their own reactions and to cope better with symptoms of PTSD,” says Dr. Shekhar.

Dr. Timothy Hsiao, a Yale graduate, as well as the Program Director of the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences (NCATS) at the National Institute of Health (NIH) awarded the NCATS award to Dr. O’Haire as a KL2 Scholar under the CTSA Career Development Award.

“This is an innovative approach to a serious medical issue,” said Dr. Hsiao. “This study highlights the unique skills that the CTSA Program Hubs and their KL2 Scholars bring to address difficult conditions like PTSD.”

Other key findings (in a related study) included a significant reduction in suicidal thoughts, required medication (not suggested by K9s For Warriors),  night terrors, and an increase of three to four more hours of sleep per night. That is, in part, due to the fact that the service dogs are trained to wake up the warriors when experiencing night terrors. Purdue University is currently studying this behavior and although it hasn't been substantiated scientifically, it has been reported by K9s For Warriors anecdotally. 

Dr. O’Haire has been granted additional funding from NIH to perform a large-scale study on the efficacy of service dogs as a complementary treatment of PTSD symptoms in military members and veterans. The study is scheduled to be completed in 2019.

THEY RESCUED EACH OTHER

Her senses were always up, in a constant state of fight or flight, ever since that day in May of 2012. Tiffany Baker, an Army National Guard soldier, was traveling in a Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected (MRAP) vehicle while stationed in Afghanistan when it hit a 250-pound IED. The bomb was so powerful, it rolled the heavily-enforced vehicle.

Baker sustained major physical injuries, requiring four hip surgeries the next year. She also suffered a traumatic brain injury because of the attack. “I was taking 17 medications between being overseas and then coming back,” says Baker. She was frequently going to the VA, seeing a counselor, psychiatrists, and psychologists. “They were constantly giving me medications.” She was feeling more and more isolated.

In February 2015, Baker medically retired, saying goodbye to her unit, the 1157 Transportation Company. That same year, she met Buddy through K9s For Warriors.

Buddy had been badly abused and neglected by his owner. Before being rescued, he was found tied to a tree without any food or water. “K9s For Warriors is great at pairing the dog with veterans,” says Baker. She explains that Buddy always covers her back. He’s "got her 6", and he creates a safe barrier between her and other people, allowing her to function in public.

Just as Buddy is my service dog, I am Buddy's service human.

-Tiffany Baker, K9s For Warrior graduate and advocate 

Baker was so taken with Buddy and the K9s For Warriors program that she got involved in supporting the PAWS (Puppies Assisting Wounded Service Members) Act of 2017 that got the VA on board with service dogs helping veterans. The bill directs the VA to carry out a five-year pilot program, providing grant funding to qualifying nonprofits that provide service dogs to military members or veterans who suffer from PTSD after they finalize other traditional treatments. 

Baker actually spoke at a press conference in support of the act. “Going into the public was very difficult,” says Baker. “I’m always watching over my back.”

But Buddy has helped Baker to get back out into the public. Tiffany graduated this past May from Waukesha County Technical College with a degree in business management, and an emphasis in social media marketing.  As Baker puts it, she is like every other broken person whose service dog keeps them going. She says, “I need to get out of bed to take care of him.”

The two rescued each other.

Service dog gazing up at veteran

WAR TRAUMA: THE MONSTER IN THE ROOM

Seventeen years at war with a volunteer military has resulted in U.S. soldiers being deployed multiple times more than any other time in modern history. According to a recent Rand Corporation report, 2.77 million service members have been deployed on 5.4 million deployments since 9/11, with around 225,000 Army soldiers having been deployed at least three times or more.

The DoD reported that between 2000 and September 2017, about 173,000 active-duty service members were diagnosed with PTSD in the military health system, with about 139,000 of those being diagnosed following a deployment of 30 days or more.

According to the DoD, PTSD is treatable, and many service members will recover with appropriate treatment. However, many do not.

It is invisible and causes panic attacks, survivor guilt, anger, etc.

-Brett Simon 

Dr. Andrea Roberts, Research Scientist with the T.H. Chan School of Public Health at Harvard University says PTSD is common in civilian life. “Most PTSD goes untreated,” says Roberts. “Individuals suffering from PTSD have higher tendencies for cardiovascular disease, high-blood pressure, and autoimmune disease (Lupus).”

Roberts went on to explain there are effective treatments for PTSD, including talk therapy or exposure therapy (where a patient is led through the trauma to understand that the event is part of the past and not in the present). Another treatment is prescription medication on its own or in combination with talk or psychotherapy.

HOW K9S FOR WARRIORS IS SAVING LIVES

Take Me from the Shelter’s Cage

According to the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA), 670,000 dogs are euthanized each year in the United States. “We take shelter or rescue dogs and turn them into warriors,” says Duval. K9s For Warriors rescues dogs from animal shelters across the United States, particularly local ones including the Alachua County Humane Society, Putnam County Shelter, and Lake City County Shelter.

It takes K9s For Warrior six months to train a dog. They train a total of 120 dogs per year. They rescue most breeds except full-bred Pitbulls, Dobermans, Chow Chows, Rottweilers, or Dalmatians due to insurance restrictions or state sanctions. The service dogs have full public access (with papers) but are not emotional support dogs or pets.

Once the dogs are fully trained, they are ready to be paired with their warrior. As Duval says, “When the dog's healthy, the warrior is healthy.”

As of May 2018, K9s has rescued 870 dogs with 434 dogs becoming service dogs, and the remaining rescues placed for adoption with loving families.

I Got Your 6

The K9s For Warriors program trains rescue or shelter dogs to perform four specific tasks: averting panic attacks, waking warriors from nightmares, creating personal space comfort zones in public situations by standing in front of the veteran (barrier) and reminding warriors to take their medications.

Dogs also learn two other commands: brace and cover. Many warriors suffer physical disabilities as well, so the brace command prepares the dog to assist the warrior with standing, sitting or kneeling. The cover command is used to cover the warrior’s back.

Many soldiers with PTSD do not like people coming up from behind them. In the field, soldiers say to one another, “I got your back” or “I got your 6.” The cover command does just that. The service dog literally becomes the warrior’s sixth sense, by sitting and facing the opposite way the warrior is facing. When someone approaches from behind, the dog wags its tail.

According to Moira Smith of the ASPCA, service animals can also boost the handler’s social and emotional life, in addition to providing safety and autonomy in public. “The dog acts as a bridge for social interaction,” says Smith. She explains that most Americans can’t relate to war experiences, but they are familiar with taking care of a dog as a pet. “It also adds another dimension to their identity.”

Dogs and Warriors Together: Let the Healing Begin

The three-week program is open to veterans or military members who became disabled while serving in the U.S. Armed Forces on or after 9/11. The program costs $27,000 per participant but at no cost to the warrior. If one cannot cover travel costs, K9s pays for travel to and from the facility. To Duval, every military member or veteran who walks through her door is family and is treated with honor and respect. “We bring the warrior home to heal, to a place to regroup, to hit the reset button,” says Duval.

To qualify, a warrior must submit an application and have a verified clinical diagnosis of PTSD, TBI, or MST. All applications go through a full vetting process that takes 2-4 weeks to complete. During that time, a trained service dog is identified that matches the applicant’s specific situation and needs. The organization stays in constant contact with applicants throughout the entire application process, including after approval or while a warrior is put on the waiting list. The waiting period is currently one year.

The dog doesn’t know or care about their diagnoses - they love the handler unconditionally. 

-Moira Smith of the ASPCA

If accepted into the program, the warrior must reside at Camp K9, the organization’s Florida facility, for three weeks. There is one program per month with 12 warriors in attendance. Warriors arrive on a Sunday and are introduced to their canine warriors within 24 hours. “After that, you go nowhere without your dog,” says Simon.

K9s For Warriors believes their program is unique. In addition to matching warriors with service dogs and providing training, certifications, seminars, legal instruction, and housing, they also offer what Duval calls “wrap-around services.” These include lifelong health care and food for the service dogs and ongoing unconditional love and support of the warrior pair.

The program includes grooming, health care, and command classes, among others. Public access classes take warriors out in public with their dogs, to Costco, to the Jacksonville Zoo, to downtown St. Augustine or a restaurant. “They go to places in a high-stress environment to force them to use their dogs,” says Simon. At the end of the program, warriors and their dogs go to a local park and practice all the commands. Before graduating, the pairs take a Public Access test regulated by the Assistance Dogs International (ADI).

ADI sets the standards for training guide, hearing, and service dogs. Sheila O’Brien, the President of the North America Chapter, says, “This is a rigorous process, holding organizations to the highest standards.” According to O’Brien, the committee was formed (with ADI) nine years ago to look at programs that are placing dogs with vets and persons with PTSD to develop best practices.

She went on to explain that the initial purpose of ADI was to meet the physical needs of veterans. “After speaking with vets, we understood they could handle the physical disabilities, but it was the PTSD that was with them 24/7, and that’s where the service dogs provided the most value.”

There are now 72 ADI-accredited programs throughout North America with a total of 17,502 service dog teams formed from accredited programs. Each team must be recertified every five years.

We Are Family

Duval is all about family and serving those she vehemently sees as our nation’s greatest asset: our country’s military members.

Each month, a new family is formed when a warrior takes his or her first step onto the grounds at Camp K9 in Florida. In addition to meeting their dog and dog trainer, warriors meet the “Housemoms,” volunteers who stay in the facility day and night and talk with the warriors about everyday things instead of their military service.

The Housemoms run errands, grocery shop, and take warriors on outings. After graduation, Housemoms continue to stay in touch with the warriors by phone and on social media.

Apart from the Housemoms, K9s For Warriors relies heavily on its volunteers, local businesses, and support from Florida's veteran community. Many of the meals donated to the program come from local restaurants, neighbors, and organizations. Whether it be offering emotional aid to our veterans or helping with kennel enrichment, K9s is readily available to accept new Volunteer Ambassadors.

Service dogs are prescriptions on four legs

-Shari Duval 

At the start, K9s For Warriors operated out of two houses with the dogs in the garages and vets sleeping on couches. "Then our humble beginnings were transformed by Summit Contracting. They believed in our program and built us a beautiful 17,000 square foot facility on nine acres. It was the most incredible gift in the world" said Simon. 

In 2017, Steve Gold and family, gifted The Gold Family Campus to K9s For Warriors. The campus is a 67-acre property featuring a 9-bedroom and 7-bath house. It will be powered by solar panels (worth $1 million), making the campus energy-independent. The facility is currently under construction and will be operational in 2019.

It will allow four more veterans to attend each monthly program, bringing the total number of warriors graduating per month to 16. The campus will also function as the primary facility for female military members and veterans.

An additional facility means more space for Duval and Simon to save lives.

STANDING TOGETHER FOR A BETTER TOMORROW

There are good things in K9s For Warriors’ future.

As previously stated, Dr. O’Haire is partnering again with K9s For Warriors on a more extensive study funded by NIH. The findings will be published in 2019.

The VA is also running a Congressionally-mandated PTSD service dog study that will be completed in 2019. A total of 180 veterans have received either a service dog or an emotional support dog as part of the study. According to a VA spokesperson, after peer reviews, the VA will submit the study and results to the National Academy of Sciences for review, as required by the authorizing legislation (Section 1077 of the 2010 National Defense Authorization Act).

On the legislative side, Simon is working to secure public access identification from Service Dog Credentials, so K9s For Warriors’ service dogs will be recognized by airlines, hotels, and restaurants, bypassing the need for the warriors to provide paperwork or visit the disability office.

The future for K9s For Warriors looks promising as Duval and Simon continue to fight to save lives, both of soldiers and their canine warriors.

Because together, they stand.

https://www.consumersadvocate.org/features/k9s-for-warriors

--------------------------------------------

For more information on PTSD treatment options, visit the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, PTSD: National Center for PTSD or the DoD, which encourages service members to ask for help by affirming that seeking help is actually a sign of strength.

Co-Author Bridget Cassidy, Associated Editor

Insufficient sleep associated with risky behavior in teens

Mental health issues, substance abuse, accidents more likely for high school students sleeping less than six hours per night

October 1, 2018

Science Daily/Brigham and Women's Hospital

Researchers examined a national data sample of risk-taking behaviors and sleep duration self-reported by high school students over eight years and found an association between sleep duration and personal safety risk-taking actions.

Adolescents require 8-10 hours of sleep at night for optimal health, according to sleep experts, yet more than 70 percent of high school students get less than that. Previous studies have demonstrated that insufficient slsleep eep in youth can result in learning difficulties, impaired judgement, and risk of adverse health behaviors. In a new study, researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital examined a national data sample of risk-taking behaviors and sleep duration self-reported by high school students over eight years and found an association between sleep duration and personal safety risk-taking actions. Results are published in a JAMA Pediatrics research letter on October 1.

"We found the odds of unsafe behavior by high school students increased significantly with fewer hours of sleep," said lead author Mathew Weaver, PhD, research fellow, Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Brigham and Women's Hospital. "Personal risk-taking behaviors are common precursors to accidents and suicides, which are the leading causes of death among teens and have important implications for the health and safety of high school students nationally."

Compared to students who reported sleeping eight hours at night, high school students who slept less than six hours were twice as likely to self-report using alcohol, tobacco, marijuana or other drugs, and driving after drinking alcohol. They were also nearly twice as likely to report carrying a weapon or being in a fight. Researchers found the strongest associations were related to mood and self- harm. Those who slept less than six hours were more than three times as likely to consider or attempt suicide, and four times as likely to attempt suicide, resulting in treatment. Only 30 percent of the students in the study reported averaging more than eight hours of sleep on school nights.

The Youth Risk Behavior Surveys are administered biannually by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) at public and private schools across the country. Researchers used data from 67,615 high school students collected between 2007 and 2015. Personal safety risk-taking behaviors were examined individually and as composite categories. All analyses were weighted to account for the complex survey design and controlled for age, sex, race, and year of survey in mathematical models to test the association between sleep duration and each outcome of interest.

"Insufficient sleep in youth raises multiple public health concerns, including mental health, substance abuse, and motor vehicle crashes," said senior author Elizabeth Klerman, MD, PhD, director of the Analytic Modeling Unit, Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders, Brigham and Women's Hospital. "More research is needed to determine the specific relationships between sleep and personal safety risk-taking behaviors. We should support efforts to promote healthy sleep habits and decrease barriers to sufficient sleep in this vulnerable population."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/10/181001114300.htm

Mitigating stress, PTSD risk in warfighters

September 27, 2018

Science Daily/U.S. Army Research Laboratory

Researchers have developed a technique that has the potential to provide measures that facilitate the development of procedures to mitigate stress and the onset of conditions such as post-traumatic stress disorder in warfighters.

A U.S. Army Research Laboratory scientist has collaborated with a team of researchers from the University of North Texas to develop a new data processing technique that uses electroencephalogram, or EEG, time series variability as a measure of the state of the brain.

The researchers say such a technique has the potential to provide measures that facilitate the development of procedures to mitigate stress and the onset of conditions such as Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder in warfighters.

"The human brain is considered by many to be the most complex organ in existence, with over a billion neurons and having in excess of a trillion interconnections," said Dr. Bruce West, senior scientist of mathematics and information science at the U.S. Army Research Office and ARL Fellow.

According to West, it is the operation of this extraordinary complex network of neurons that hosts human thinking, and through the central nervous system, enables the functioning of most, if not all, of the physiologic networks, such as the respiratory, motor control and cardiovascular.

However, according to the researchers, even with this central role the brain plays in enabling our existence, remarkably little is known about how it does what it does.

Consequently, measures for how well the brain carries out its various functions are critical surrogates for understanding, particularly for maintaining the health and wellbeing of military personnel.

A small but measureable electrical signal generated by the mammalian brain was captured in the electrocardiogram of small animals by Caton in 1875 and in human brains by Berger in 1925.

Norbert Wiener, a half century later, provided the mathematical tools believed necessary to penetrate the mysterious relations between the brain waves in EEG time series and the functioning of the brain.

According to West, progress along this path has been slow, and after over a century of data collection and analysis, there is no taxonomy of EEG patterns that delineates the correspondence between those patterns and brain activity....until now!

The technique developed by West and his academic partners generalizes Evolutionary Game Theory, a mathematical technique historically used in the formulation of decision making in war gaming.

Their findings are reported in a paper published in the August edition of Frontiers in Physiology.

In the paper, titled "Bridging Waves and Crucial Events in the Dynamics of the Brain," West, along with Gyanendra Bohara and Paolo Grigolini of the University of North Texas, propose and successfully test a new model for the collective behavior within the brain, which bridges the gap between waves and random fluctuations in EEG data.

"The work horse of decision making within the military has historically been Game Theory, in which players cooperate or defect, and with pairwise interactions receive various payoffs so that under given conditions certain strategies always win," West said. "When the game is extended to groups in which individual strategy choices are made sequentially and can change over time, the situation evolves offering a richer variety of outcomes including the formation of collective states in which everyone is a cooperator or a defector, resulting in a collective state."

It turns out, West said, that the technique developed to process EEG data, the self-organized time criticality method, or SOTC method, incorporates a strategy that is an extension of Evolutionary Game Theory directly into the modeling of the brain's dynamics.

"The collective, or critical, state of the neural network is reached spontaneously by the internal dynamics of the brain and as with all critical phenomena its emergent properties are determined by the macroscale independently of the microscale dynamics," West said.

This macroscale can be directly accessed by the EEG spectrum.

The EEG spectrum, obtained by the SOTC method, decays like Brownian motion at high frequencies, has a peak at an intermediate frequency (alpha wave) and at low frequencies has an inverse power law.

In the case of the brain, the inverse power law has revealed that there is a broad range of time scales over which the brain is able to respond to the demands placed on it.

This spectrum suggests a flexibility in response, reflecting a potential range from concentrating on a single task for hours to rapidly countering a physical assault.

"This means that in the foreseeable future the physical training of warriors, along with the necessary monitoring of progress associated with that training, will be expanded to include the brain," West said. "The reliable processing of brain activity, along with the interpretation of the processed EEG signal, will guide the development of reliable techniques to reduce stress, enhance situational awareness and increase the ability to deal with uncertainty, both on and off the battlefield."

West said that the research team even speculates that such understanding of brain dynamics may provide the insight necessary to mitigate the onset of PTSD by early detection and intervention, as is routinely done for more obvious maladies.

According to West, going forward with this research can proceed in at least two ways.

"One way is to apply these promising results to data sets of interest to the Army," West said. "For example, quantify how the EEG records of warriors with PTSD differ from a control group of warriors and how this measure changes under different therapy and medication protocols. The other way is to refine the technique, for example, locate where on the scalp it is the most robust, while retaining sensitivity."

However this research proceeds, these Army scientists are focused on bringing the technology to fruition to help the Soldier of the future succeed in an ever-changing world and battlefield.

Earlier this year, the research team published on work that look at the processing heart rate data and how heart rate was indirectly influenced by meditation through the dynamics of the brain. That work examined how the brain influences the operation of the body by directly measuring how the physiologic system (cardiovascular in this case) responds to changes in the brain (by means of meditation).

This current work focuses on processing EEG data and directly interpreting the dynamics of the brain; it examines how the rhythmic behavior of brain waves (alpha, beta, gamma, etc. waves) can be understood to be compatible with the fluctuations in brain wave data.

Both papers are part of an ongoing ARL-University of North Texas study to determine if the fluctuations in all the physiological systems are produced by a previously unidentified mechanism that we call crucial events.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180927091010.htm

Postnatal depression could be linked to fewer daylight hours during late pregnancy

Shortening days during third trimester of pregnancy may add to risk of postpartum depression

September 27, 2018

Science Daily/Springer

Women in late pregnancy during darker months of the year may have a greater risk of developing postpartum depression once their babies are born. This is consistent with what is known about the relationship between exposure to natural light and depression among adults in the general population.

Although reduced exposure to natural light has been associated with depression among adults in the general population, there is not yet a consensus about whether light exposure or seasonality influences the development of depression during and after pregnancy.

In this study, Goyal and her colleagues at the University of California San Francisco analysed available information from 293 women who participated in one of two randomized controlled clinical trials about sleep before and after pregnancy. The participants were all first-time mothers from the US state of California. Data included the amount of daylight during the final trimester of their pregnancy, along with information about known risk factors such as a history of depression, the woman's age, her socioeconomic status and how much she slept.

Overall, the participants had a 30 per cent risk of depression. The analysis suggested that the number of daylight hours a woman was exposed to during her final month of pregnancy and just after birth had a major influence on the likelihood that she developed depressive symptoms.

The lowest risk for depression (26 per cent) occurred among women whose final trimester coincided with seasons with longer daylight hours. Depression scores were highest (35 per cent) among women whose final trimester coincided with "short" days and the symptoms continued to be more severe following the birth of their babies in this group of women. In the northern hemisphere, this timeframe refers to the months of August to the first four days of November (late summer to early autumn).

"Among first-time mothers, the length of day in the third trimester, specifically day lengths that are shortening compared to day lengths that are short, long or lengthening, were associated with concurrent depressive symptom severity," Goyal explains.

The findings suggest that using light treatment in the late third trimester when seasonal day length is shortening could minimize postpartum depressive symptoms in high-risk mothers during the first three months of their children's lives. Goyal says that women with a history of mental health problems and those who are already experiencing depressive symptoms in the third trimester might further benefit from being outdoors when possible, or using devices such as light boxes that provide light therapy.

"Women should be encouraged to get frequent exposure to daylight throughout their pregnancies to enhance their vitamin D levels and to suppress the hormone melatonin," adds Goyal, who says that clinicians should also advise their patients to get more exercise outdoors when weather and safety permit. "Daily walks during daylight hours may be more effective in improving mood than walking inside a shopping mall or using a treadmill in a gym. Likewise, early morning or late evening walks may be relaxing but would be less effective in increasing vitamin D exposure or suppressing melatonin."

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180927105733.htm

Fish-rich diets in pregnancy may boost babies' brain development

September 20, 2018

Science Daily/Springer

Women could enhance the development of their unborn child's eyesight and brain function by regularly eating fatty fish during pregnancy. This is the suggestion from a small-scale study. The research supports previous findings that show how important a prospective mother's diet and lifestyle choices are for the development of her baby.

According to Laitinen, a mother's diet during pregnancy and breastfeeding is the main way that valuable long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids become available to a fetus and infant brain during the period of maximum brain growth during the first years of a child's life. Such fatty acids help to shape the nerve cells that are relevant to eyesight and particularly the retina. They are also important in forming the synapses that are vital in the transport of messages between neurons in the nervous system.

In this study, Laitinen and her colleagues analysed the results of 56 mothers and their children drawn from a larger study. The mothers had to keep a regular food diary during the course of their pregnancy. Fluctuations in their weight before and during pregnancy were taken into account, along with their blood sugar level and blood pressure. Aspects such as whether they smoked or developed diabetes related to pregnancy were also noted.

The team recorded the levels of nutritional long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acid sources in the mother's diet and blood serum, and the levels in the blood of their children by the age of one month. Their children were further tested around their second birthday using pattern reversal visual evoked potentials (pVEP). This sensitive and accurate, non-invasive method is used to detect visual functioning and maturational changes occurring within a young child's visual system.

The subsequent analyses of the visual test results revealed that infants whose mothers ate fish three or more times a week during the last trimester of their pregnancy fared better than those whose mothers ate no fish or only up to two portions per week. These observations were further substantiated when the serum phospholipid fatty acid status was evaluated.

"The results of our study suggest that frequent fish consumption by pregnant women is of benefit for their unborn child's development. This may be attributable to long-chain polyunsaturated fatty acids within fish, but also due to other nutrients like vitamin D and E, which are also important for development," explains Laitinen.

"Our study therefore highlights the potential importance of subtle changes in the diet of healthy women with uncompromised pregnancies, beyond prematurity or nutritional deficiencies, in regulating infantile neurodevelopment," adds Laitinen, who believes that their results should be incorporated into counselling given to pregnant women about their diets.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180920102207.htm

Household cleaning products may contribute to kids' overweight by altering their gut microbiota

September 17, 2018

Science Daily/Canadian Medical Association Journal

Commonly used household cleaners could be making children overweight by altering their gut microbiota, suggests a new study.

The study analyzed the gut flora of 757 infants from the general population at age 3-4 months and weight at ages 1 and 3 years, looking at exposure to disinfectants, detergents and eco-friendly products used in the home.

Researchers from across Canada looked at data from the Canadian Healthy Infant Longitudinal Development (CHILD) birth cohort on microbes in infant fecal matter. They used World Health Organization growth charts for body mass index (BMI) scores.

Associations with altered gut flora in babies 3-4 months old were strongest for frequent use of household disinfectants such as multisurface cleaners, which showed lower levels of Haemophilus and Clostridium bacteria but higher levels of Lachnospiraceae. The researchers also observed an increase in Lachnospiraceae bacteria with more frequent cleaning with disinfectants. They did not find the same association with detergents or eco-friendly cleaners. Studies of piglets have found similar changes in the gut microbiome when exposed to aerosol disinfectants.

"We found that infants living in households with disinfectants being used at least weekly were twice as likely to have higher levels of the gut microbes Lachnospiraceae at age 3-4 months; when they were 3 years old, their body mass index was higher than children not exposed to heavy home use of disinfectants as an infant," said Anita Kozyrskyj, a University of Alberta pediatrics professor, and principal investigator on the SyMBIOTA project, an investigation into how alteration of the infant gut microbiome impacts health.

Babies living in households that used eco-friendly cleaners had different microbiota and were less likely to be overweight as toddlers.

"Those infants growing up in households with heavy use of eco cleaners had much lower levels of the gut microbes Enterobacteriaceae. However, we found no evidence that these gut microbiome changes caused the reduced obesity risk," she said.

She suggests that the use of eco-friendly products may be linked to healthier overall maternal lifestyles and eating habits, contributing in turn to the healthier gut microbiomes and weight of their infants.

"Antibacterial cleaning products have the capacity to change the environmental microbiome and alter risk for child overweight," write the authors. "Our study provides novel information regarding the impact of these products on infant gut microbial composition and outcomes of overweight in the same population."

A related commentary provides perspective on the interesting findings.

"There is biologic plausibility to the finding that early-life exposure to disinfectants may increase risk of childhood obesity through the alterations in bacteria within the Lachnospiraceae family," write epidemiologists Dr. Noel Mueller and Moira Differding, Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health, in a related commentary.

They call for further studies "to explore the intriguing possibility that use of household disinfectants might contribute to the complex causes of obesity through microbially mediated mechanisms."

Dr. Kozyrskyj agrees and points to the need for studies that classify cleaning products by their actual ingredients. "The inability to do this was a limitation of our study."

The research study was funded by the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) with funding from the Allergy, Genes and Environment (AllerGen) Network of Centres of Excellence for the CHILD study.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/09/180917082435.htm

Men are still more likely than women to be perceived as leaders

Despite progress, gender gap in leadership persists

August 9, 2018

Science Daily/University at Buffalo

Women hold just 26 percent of executive-level positions in S&P 500 companies -- and sadly that is no accident, according to a new study.

The study, which was made available online in March ahead of publication in the August print edition of Personnel Psychology, found that, on average, men are more likely than women to emerge as leaders.

The research team -- led by doctoral student Katie Badura and Emily Grijalva, PhD, assistant professor of organization and human resources in the UB School of Management -- aggregated 59 years of research, encompassing more than 19,000 participants and 136 studies from lab, business and classroom settings.

They discovered that although the gender gap has narrowed in recent decades, it still persists.

"As a society, we've made progress toward gender equality, but clearly we're not quite there," Badura says. "Our results are consistent with the struggle many organizations face today to increase diversity in their leadership teams."

The researchers primarily attribute the gender gap to societal pressures that contribute to gender differences in personality traits. For example, men tend to be more assertive and dominant, whereas women tend to be more communal, cooperative and nurturing. As a result, men are more likely to participate and voice their opinions during group discussions, and be perceived by others as leaderlike.

"We found showing sensitivity and concern for others -- stereotypically feminine traits -- made someone less likely to be seen as a leader," Grijalva says. "However, it's those same characteristics that make leaders effective. Thus, because of this unconscious bias against communal traits, organizations may unintentionally select the wrong people for leadership roles, choosing individuals who are loud and confident but lack the ability to support their followers' development and success."

While group size and participants' ages did not affect the gender gap, the study found the length of time participants spent together was an important factor in whether men or women emerged as leaders. The longer a group spent together, the less gender influenced who emerged as the group's leader.

"The gender gap was strongest during the first 20 minutes people were together, similar to an initial job interview, but weakened after more than one interaction," Grijalva says. "During the hiring process, organizations should conduct multiple interviews to reduce gender bias and ensure they're hiring the best applicant."

For managers, the researchers suggest promoting the value of communal behaviors in performance evaluations, prompting quieter individuals to share their ideas and being mindful of any unconscious biases you or your staff may have.

"In the Obama White House, female staffers adopted a strategy of amplifying one another's comments during meetings and giving credit to the individual who said it first, to ensure that women's voices were being heard," Badura says. "Tactics like this help the most qualified individuals stand out and emerge into leadership roles -- regardless of gender."

The project was partially supported through a grant from the University at Buffalo Gender Institute.

Badura and Grijalva conducted the study with Daniel A. Newman, professor of psychology and labor and employment relations, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign; Thomas Taiyi Yan, PhD student, University of Maryland Robert H. Smith School of Business; and Gahyun Jeon, postdoctoral research associate, Northwestern University.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/08/180809144524.htm