In this state, people are particularly vulnerable to distractions.
The sleep pattern is linked to eating more healthy foods and having steadier eating patterns.
The sleep pattern is linked to eating more healthy foods and having steadier eating patterns.
Early risers tend to be more healthy in comparison to night owls, new research finds.
People who prefer to rise early and go to bed early eat more healthy foods, like fruits and vegetables, and they have steadier eating patterns.
Night owls, though, tend to consume more sugar, alcohol and fast food.
Night owls are more likely to suffer from both heart disease and type 2 diabetes.
Dr Suzana Almoosawi, the study’s first author, said:
“We have found that your genes, ethnicity and gender determine the likelihood of you being a morning or evening type.
In adulthood, being an evening chronotype is associated with greater risk of heart disease and type 2 diabetes, and this may be potentially due to the poorer eating behaviour and diet of people with evening chronotype.
Our review also found that people who have a poorer control of their diabetes are more likely to be evening types.”
One way of shifting towards being a morning person is to get outside more.
Daylight exposure is linked to earlier sleep and waking.
Dr Almoosawi said:
“In teenagers, we also find that evening chronotype is related to more erratic eating behaviour and poorer diet.
This could have important implications to health in adulthood as most dietary habits are established in adolescence.”
The conclusions come from a review of many different studies on nutrition and sleep.
Dr Leonidas G Karagounis, study co-author, said:
“…studies suggest that an evening chronotype is associated with lower intake of fruits and vegetables, and higher intake of energy drinks, alcoholic, sugary and caffeinated beverages, as well as higher energy intake from fat.
Further research on the best methods to assess an individual’s chronotype and how this may affect their long-term cardiometabolic health can potentially guide the development of health promotion strategies aimed at preventing and treating chronic diseases based on an individual’s chronotype.”
The study was published in the journal Advances in Nutrition (Almoosawi et al., 2018).
This is how your relationship affects your sleep.
This is how your relationship affects your sleep.
Having a responsive partner is linked to better sleep, research finds.
Responsiveness means more than just listening, it is being tuned in to your partner’s needs and feeling compassion.
The most powerful way of being responsive is firstly, listening to and understanding what they are going through and secondly, responding with sympathy and compassion.
Responsiveness creates a sense of validation and feeling cared for.
Dr Emre Selçuk, the study’s lead author, said:
“Our findings show that individuals with responsive partners experience lower anxiety and arousal, which in turn improves their sleep quality.”
Sleep has the most restorative effect when it is high quality and uninterrupted.
People sleep better when they feel safe and secure, Dr Selçuk said:
“Having responsive partners who would be available to protect and comfort us should things go wrong is the most effective way for us humans to reduce anxiety, tension, and arousal.”
The conclusions come from 698 married and cohabiting couples.
All completed measures of partner responsiveness and any sleep problems.
The results revealed that those who felt the most cared for, validated and understood had the best sleep.
Dr Selçuk said:
“Taken together, the corpus of evidence we obtained in recent years suggests that our best bet for a happier, healthier, and a longer life is having a responsive partner.”
The study was published in the journal Social Personality and Psychological Science (Selcuk et al., 2016).
This sleep pattern was also linked to lower blood pressure and less risk of heart disease.
Almost half of all Americans report feeling lonely or left out.
Why 75% of depressed people also report sleep problems like insomnia or difficulties falling asleep.
The ‘melanopic display’ is able to reduce or increase the colour.
The ‘melanopic display’ is able to reduce or increase the colour.
Cyan — the greenish-blue colour that smartphones and other devices emit — could stop people sleeping properly.
People exposed to screens which emit less cyan felt more sleepy and had higher levels of the ‘sleep hormone’ melatonin in their system, new research finds.
However, those exposed to more cyan felt more awake and had lower levels of melatonin in their system.
The researchers developed a new type of visual display for their tests.
The ‘melanopic display’ is able to reduce or increase the amount of cyan, while keeping colours true.
Here are some different types of cyan:
Professor Rob Lucas, study co-author, said:
“This outcome is exciting because it tells us that regulating exposure to cyan light can influence how sleepy we feel.
Our study also shows how we can use that knowledge to improve the design of visual displays.
We built our melanopic display by adapting a data projector, but we would expect that this design could be applied to any type of display.
Such displays could, for example, help phone obsessed teenagers to fall asleep, or support alertness in people who need to use a computer at night.”
For the study, people watched a movie either with or without cyan.
Both movies looked the same as the technology balances out the other colours.
Melatonin levels were tested from saliva samples and people were asked how sleepy they felt afterwards.
Dr Annette Allen, the study’s first author, said:
“The new display design could actually have a wider benefit, as it seems that this technology also improves image appearance.
Like adding salt to food, we aren’t necessarily aware that it’s been done though we appreciate the effect.
Exploiting metamerism to regulate the impact of a visual display on alertness and melatonin suppression independent of visual appearance”
The study was published in the journal Sleep (Allen et al., 2018).
Even good sleepers frequently experience insomnia.
People slept better, awakened less in the night and felt better the next day.
People slept better, awakened less in the night and felt better the next day.
Opening the windows or doors before going to bed can improve sleep quality, new research finds.
Both measures help to decrease levels of carbon dioxide and increase air quality.
In fresher air, people sleep better, awaken less in the night and feel better the next day.
The study’s authors summarise their results:
“It has been shown that when bedroom air quality was improved in these experiments:
- Subjects reported that the bedroom air was fresher.
- Sleep quality improved.
- Responses on the Groningen Sleep Quality scale improved.
- Subjects felt better next day, less sleepy, and more able to concentrate.
- Subjects’ performance of a test of logical thinking improved.”
In the studies the fresher air was achieved first by opening the window and secondly by using a special vent.
Of course, opening the window is not always possible because of noise pollution and heat conservation.
When it is possible, though, ventilation can have a dramatic effect on air quality and on sleep, the authors write:
“There is no doubt that both interventions did improve bedroom air quality – the effective outdoor air supply rate was found to be greater by a factor of at least 10 if the window was open and by a factor of at least four if an air supply fan was covertly operated whenever the CO2 concentration was above 900 ppm.”
The study was published in the journal Indoor Air (Strøm-Tejsen et al., 2015).
It almost doubled the amount of times that people awoke during the night.
It almost doubled the amount of times that people awoke during the night.
The blue light emitted by screens damages the length and quality of sleep, new research finds.
Screens that emit redder light, though, do not damage sleep in the same way.
Professor Abraham Haim, one of the study’s authors, said:
“The light emitted by most screens — computers, smartphones, and tablets — is blue light that damages the body’s cycles and our sleep.
The solution must be the use of the existing filters that prevent the emission of this light.”
Screens are particularly damaging to sleep if used at bedtime.
The screens suppress the secretion of melatonin, the hormone that helps control the body’s sleep-wake cycle.
One of the ways blue light damages sleep, the researchers found, was by interrupting how they body regulates its temperature.
Professor Haim said:
“Naturally, when the body moves into sleep it begins to reduce its temperature, reaching the lowest point at around 4:00 a.m.
When the body returns to its normal temperature, we wake up.
After exposure to red light, the body continued to behave naturally, but exposure to blue light led the body to maintain its normal temperature throughout the night — further evidence of damage to our natural biological clock.”
Blue light compared to red light almost doubled the amount of times that people awoke during the night.
Professor Haim said:
“Exposure to screens during the day in general, and at night in particular, is an integral part of our technologically advanced world and will only become more intense in the future.
However, our study shows that it is not the screens themselves that damage our biological clock, and therefore our sleep, but the short-wave blue light that they emit.
Fortunately various applications are available that filter the problematic blue light on the spectrum and replace it with weak red light, thereby reducing the damage to the suppression of melatonin.”
The study was published in the journal Chronobiology International (Green et al., 2017).
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