Insomnia Research

People are relying on sleeping pills more than ever to get a good night's rest, but a new study by Scripps Clinic researchers links the medications to a 4.6 times higher risk of death and a significant increase in cancer cases among regular pill users.

Individuals with chronic insomnia have an elevated risk of death, according to a research abstract presented June 7, 2010, in San Antonio, Texas, at SLEEP 2010, the 24th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC.

A study in the April 1 issue of the journal SLEEP is the first to demonstrate that chronic insomnia with objectively measured short sleep time is an independent and clinically significant risk factor for hypertension.

Individuals with insomnia and objective short sleep duration are at increased risk for developing diabetes, according to a research abstract that will be presented on June 9, at Sleep 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

ndividuals 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 a report in the January 12 issue of Archives of Internal Medicine, one of the JAMA/Archives journals. Studies have ...

Drugs commonly taken for a variety of common medical conditions including insomnia, allergies, or incontinence negatively affect the brain causing long term cognitive impairment in older African-Americans, according to a study appearing in the July 13, 2010 print issue of Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology.

Sleep deprivation impairs cAMP signalling in the hippocampus. Millions of people regularly obtain insufficient sleep. Given the effect of sleep deprivation on our lives, understanding the cellular and molecular pathways affected by sleep deprivation is clearly of social and clinical importance. One of the major effects of sleep deprivation on the brain is to produce memory deficits in learning models that are dependent on the hippocampus. Here we have identified a molecular mechanism by which brief sleep deprivation alters hippocampal...

A study in the Sept. 1 issue of the journal Sleep found an elevated risk of death in men with a complaint of chronic insomnia and an objectively measured short sleep duration. The results suggest that public health policy should emphasize the diagnosis and appropriate treatment of chronic insomnia.

Sleeping worms have much to teach people, a notion famously applied by the children's show "Sesame Street," in which Oscar the Grouch often reads bedtime stories to his pet worm Slimy. Based on research with their own worms, a team of neurobiologists at Brown University and several other institutions has now found that "Notch," a fundamental signaling pathway found in all animals, is directly involved in sleep in the nematode C. elegans.

A team from the Research Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (RI-MUHC) and McGill University has made a major breakthrough by unraveling the inner workings of melatonin, also known as the "sleep hormone." The research, conducted in collaboration with scientists in Italy,...

Adequate sleep is an important part of a weight loss plan and should be added to the recommended mix of diet and exercise, states a commentary in CMAJ (Canadian Medical Association Journal).

A new study shows that both length of time and percentage of overall sleep spent in different sleep stages are associated with decreased metabolic rate, increased hunger, and increased intake of calories (specifically from fat and carbohydrates). The findings suggest an explanation for the association between sleep problems and obesity.