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I always slept with the book under my head before a test (never helped!).  But a new study has found that sleep after learning strengthens connections between brain cells and improves memory. Sleep helps consolidate and strengthen new memories, according to newswise.com. "Sleep after learning encourages the growth of the tiny protrusions from brain cells that connect to other brain cells and facilitate the passage of information across synapses, the junctions at which brain cells meet. Moreover, the activity of brain cells during deep sleep, or slow-wave sleep, after learning is critical for such growth," the Web site reports.  The study showed for the first time how learning and sleep cause physical changes in the motor cortex, a brain region responsible for voluntary movements. “We’ve known for a long time that sleep plays an important role in learning and memory. If you don’t sleep well you won’t learn well,” says senior investigator Wen-Biao Gan, PhD, pro...

Teeth, or maybe I should say mouths, have been in the news lately.   First, vitamin D and cavities.  According to The New York Times, low levels of vitamin D in pregnancy are associated with the development of cavities in babies, researchers say. Children in the study had dental examinations when they were an average of one year old, and their mothers completed another questionnaire on  breast-feeding , introduction of solids and other health and behavioral factors, The NYT reports. "About a third of the women were deficient in vitamin D, 22 percent of the infants had deficient or thinning enamel and 23 percent had cavities," according to The Times. After controlling for other factors, they found that the lower the prenatal vitamin D level in the mother, the higher the number of cavities in the child. Defective enamel and prenatal vitamin D levels were both independent predictors of cavities. So the answer is clear.  Pregnant or planning to be?  Take...

Here's another reason to check it out if you think you might have sleep apnea: you may also develop osteoporosis . Sleep apnea is a condition that causes brief interruptions in breathing during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea, the most common form, occurs when a person’s airway becomes blocked during sleep. If sleep apnea goes untreated, it can raise the risk for stroke, cardiovascular disease and heart attacks. “Ongoing sleep disruptions caused by obstructive sleep apnea can harm many of the body’s systems, including the skeletal system,” newswise.com quotes one of the study’s authors, Kai-Jen Tien, MD, of Chi Mei Medical Center in Tainan, Taiwan. “When sleep apnea periodically deprives the body of oxygen, it can weaken bones and raise the risk of osteoporosis. The progressive condition can lead to bone fractures, increased medical costs, reduced quality of life and even death.” As someone who broke her wrist in December falling on ice and heard a doctor say, "If you wer...

We all know what it's like not to be able to sleep.  We get irritable, cranky, and stressed-out.  But research is finding that sleep isn't just something we do at night.  It's something that could kill us, too.   OK, OK, so I'm getting dramatic.  But my husband, who's a dentist, has been branching out into the treatment of sleep apnea, a disorder where you stop breathing up to hundreds of times a night.  In some cases, you can even die. “There is growing awareness of the role of sleep in health, disease and performance,” newswise.com quotes Howard Hindin, D.D.S., co-founder of  The American Academy of Physiological Medicine and Dentistry (AAPMD).  “Upper airway obstruction and resulting sleep disordered breathing can be a factor in heart disease, hypertension, stroke and diabetes in adults, as well as childhood development, learning and behavior. This is especially important for children, who will benefit most.” “There can be serious health...

We've all seen the commercials, the handsome middle-aged man taking his wife's hand and the next shot is of a slowly filling bathtub or, in the old days, a couple smoking side by side on the terrace with smiles on their faces. But medications like Viagra and Cialis are on the air all the time, as are ads for testosterone .  Now, while most men don't really need this hormone, did you know that men with truly low levels may suffer from sleep apnea?  And that sleep apnea can kill? Sleep apnea is a disorder that can happen to anyone but usually affects those who are overweight or obese. What happens is that, when you're sleeping, you stop breathing, as many as hundreds of times a night.  You don't know you're doing this because you're asleep, but it can hurt your heart, even over time cause heart attacks, and it can be a silent killer. According to the the NIH's National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute, breathing pauses can last from a few seconds to...

So it's true, what we've known all along.   Sleep better, look better.  According to a story at newswise.com, it's not just getting rid of the bags under the eyes (or, in my case, brown puddles), over time it actually has "shown specific improvement in facial appearance after at-home treatment for sleep apnea, a condition marked by snoring and breathing interruptions." Sleep apnea affects millions of adults – most undiagnosed -- and puts them at higher risk for heart-related problems and daytime accidents. Some people stop breathing as many as 120 times an hour. Researchers used a sensitive “face mapping” technique usually used by surgeons, and a panel of independent appearance raters, and they "detected changes in 20 middle-aged apnea patients just a few months after they began using a system called CPAP to help them breathe better during sleep and overcome chronic sleepiness." It stands to reason that if you're getting enough sleep, yo...

Have you had to move to another bedroom because of your spouse's snoring?  It's possible he (or she) has  sleep apnea , a period of not breathing during the night that can happen hundreds of times during the night.   Not only does this not allow the person to get real sleep, it can also kill him. Experts estimate that between 10 and 20% of the population who are middle-aged suffers from sleep apnea, where breathing is briefly interrupted or becomes very shallow during sleep. But here's where the death part comes in. Sleep apnea can lead to serious health problems over time, including diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, stroke, and weight gain. And now they're even connecting it to Alzheimer's Disease (AD). Markers for the disease are present 15 to 20 years in people with sleep apnea, before the disease manifests itself, according to newswise.com. You just have to know what you're looking for. Strangely enough, markers for AD were only found in...

It's true.  We all know sleep deprivation robs us of health and energy.  But did you know it can also kill? It's called sleep apnea and it sneaks up on you in the middle of the night, especially if you are overweight, male, black or Latino.  Sleep apnea is a disorder that is characterized by abnormal pauses in breathing throughout the sleep cycle, experts say.  Sometimes you even  stop  breathing.  That's where the death part comes in.  According to experts, those with this disorder can stop breathing anywhere from 10 seconds to whole minutes and can occur from five to 30 times -- a night?  An hour. Experts estimate about 12 million in the U.S. have it, including one in 10 kids Most people who have it don't even know it, though their partners do. It often results in heavy snoring or something worse, sleep paralysis, where people become so afraid of falling asleep that they can't, leading to fatigue, lack of alertness, depression, even ...