Helping others sleep better every night!
From the category archives:
Despite recently mandated reductions in medical student workload hours, a new study reveals the widespread presence of job stress, and sleep deprivation among physicians and nurses in teaching hospitals. When asked to keep a running account of work activity, patient load, and work stress using handheld computers, physicians reported much higher levels of work stress than nurses.
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Sleep deprivation adversely affects automatic, accurate responses and can lead to potentially devastating errors, a finding of particular concern among firefighters, police officers, soldiers and others who work in a sleep-deprived state, University of Texas at Austin researchers say.
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Bruxism, the medical term for the grinding of teeth during sleep, is prevalent in Caucasians with sleep disorders, a study has found. There is a high prevalence of nocturnal teeth grinding, or bruxism, in patients with obstructive sleep apnea, particularly in Caucasians.
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Don Spence, chief executive officer of Philips Home Healthcare Solutions, has issued a written statement endorsing the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) educational initiative to increase awareness about sleep deprivation.
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A research collaboration led by biologists and neuroscientists at the University of Pennsylvania has found a molecular pathway in the brain that is the cause of cognitive impairment due to sleep deprivation.
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Individuals who get less than seven hours of sleep per night appear about three times as likely to develop respiratory illness following exposure to a cold virus as those who sleep eight hours or more, according to recent research findings.
Studies have demonstrated that sleep deprivation impairs some immune function, according to background information in the article. Research indicates that those who sleep approximately seven to eight hours per night have the lowest rates of heart disease illness and death. However, there has previously been little direct evidence that poor sleep increases susceptibility to the common cold.
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The number of patients assigned to medical residents and the complexity of care patients require has just as much impact on residents’ training as the number of hours they work, according to a study published by researchers at the University of Chicago Medical Center in the September 10, 2008 issue of JAMA.
The study is believed to be the first of its kind using information gathered objectively from medical residents who work long shifts as part of their training.
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