sleep

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May 13, 2016 | 5:42 PM |

Asleep At The Wheel: Drowsy Driving As A Public Health Crisis

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says there were more than 72,000 documented accidents involving drowsy drivers between 2009 and 2013. But that’s just from official police reports, so experts say it’s a gross under-estimate. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration says there were more than 72,000 documented accidents involving drowsy drivers between 2009 and 2013. But that’s just from official police reports, so experts say it’s a gross under-estimate. (Jesse Costa/WBUR)

It’s midafternoon and I’m fighting to keep my eyes open. It’s a matter of life and death. That’s because I’m northbound on I-93, going 65 miles an hour — with many cars passing me.

Once or twice on the monotonous two-hour drive, a jolt of adrenaline surges through my bloodstream as I suddenly realize I’ve actually drifted off for a micromoment. Thankfully I get home without killing myself or anybody else.

If you say you haven’t had the same experience behind the wheel, I don’t believe you.

The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration (NHTSA) says there were more than 72,000 documented accidents involving drowsy drivers between 2009 and 2013. But that’s just from official police reports, so experts say it’s a gross under-estimate.

After all, there’s no sleep-a-lyzer test for drowsiness like the blood alcohol-level test for drunk drivers. And it’s harder for a cop to spot a drowsy driver than one distracted by a smart phone.

“Twenty to twenty-five percent of all crashes could be fatigue-related — drowsy drivers,” says Dr. Mark Rosekind, the NHTSA administrator. “We could be looking at over a million crashes and potentially up to 8,000 lives lost.”

Rosekind made those remarks during a webcast this week sponsored by the Harvard T. H. Chan School of Public Health and The Huffington Post. The discussion included HuffPost editor-in-chief Arianna Huffington, Harvard sleep expert Charles Czeisler, and Jay Winsten, associate dean for health communication at the Harvard Chan School.

The forum is part of a national campaign against drowsy driving that’s just getting underway.

The idea is to treat drowsy driving as the public health issue that many believe it is and to bring to the campaign the same strategies that stigmatized drunk driving. Winsten master-minded that effort 28 years ago when he coined the term “designated driver” and nagged movie and TV producers to insinuate it into their scripts.

I moderated the online discussion. Here are some highlights:

The Brain Split

Czeisler, who’s the head of the division of sleep and circadian disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital, says the sleep-deprived brain can split itself in two. One part goes through the motions of a “highly over-learned task” such as driving. Meanwhile, cognitive centers involuntarily transition from wakefulness to sleep.

“So it’s particularly concerning that 56 million Americans a month admit that they drive when they haven’t gotten enough sleep and they’re exhausted,” Czeisler says. “Eight million of them lose the struggle to stay awake and actually admit to falling asleep at the wheel every month.”

My powerful mid-afternoon drowsiness was typical. “It used to be thought that [drowsiness-related crashes] only happened at night, but that’s because people weren’t looking,” Czeisler says. “Most sleep-deficient driving incidents happen during the daytime because there are so many more drivers on the road.”

And there’s a physiological factor. Mid-afternoon is before the brain’s internal clock “has given us a second wind to help us stay awake in the evening,” he says.

Who Falls Asleep Most?

Three groups are particularly vulnerable to falling asleep at the wheel, Czeisler says: young people, night-shift workers, and the millions of people who suffer from sleep apnea.

“Young people think that because they’re young, they’re fit, they can do anything,” the Harvard sleep researcher says. “But actually, young people are the most vulnerable. More than half of fatigue-related accidents are in people under 25 years of age.” Continue reading →

Related:

FILED UNDER: driving, public health, sleep
September 1, 2015 | 3:04 PM |

Why You Should Get Plenty Of Sleep Tonight: Avoid That Cold

Lack of sleep can lead to bad outcomes, from crankiness to extreme mental distress.

Now researchers report an association between insufficient sleep and getting sick. Specifically, they conclude that shorter sleep duration was associated with increased susceptibility to the common cold. Adults who slept fewer than 5 hours or between 5 and 6 hours were at greater risk of developing a cold compared to those sleeping more than 7 hours per night, according to the study, published in the journal Sleep.

(Seniju/Flickr)

(Seniju/Flickr)

The authors conclude:

Given that infectious illness (i.e., influenza and pneumonia) remains one of the top 10 leading causes of death in the United States, the current data suggest that a greater focus on sleep duration, as well as sleep health more broadly, is indicated.

NPR reports further on the study:

Aric Prather, a psychologist at the University of California, San Francisco, who studies how our behaviors can influence our health…wanted to document the extent to which a good night’s sleep is protective. So, he and a group of colleagues recruited 164 healthy men and women — their average age was 30 years old — to take part in a study. Using sleep diaries and a device similar to a Fitbit, the researchers assessed each participant’s sleep for a week.

Then the scientists sprayed a live common cold virus into each person’s nose.

“We infected them with the cold virus,” Prather says, then quarantined everybody and watched to see who got sick…

“What we found was that individuals who were sleeping the least were substantially more likely to develop a cold,” Prather says. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: common cold, immune system, infectious diseases, influenza, sleep
August 27, 2015 | 5:27 PM |

Sleep Alert: Bright Screens May Be More Disruptive For Tweens and Young Teens, Study Finds

If you’re the parent of a school-age child, you are probably thinking about sleep these days. More specifically, you may be wondering how you will possibly get your child back on a sleep schedule for school after a summer of late nights and mornings sleeping in.

Here’s one tip, based on a recent study on sleep led by researchers at Brown University: Get rid of bright screens at night. Especially if your child is a young teen or tween.

(Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

(Robin Lubbock/WBUR)

The study, published online in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, found that children between the ages of 9 and 15 in the early stages of puberty were particularly sensitive to light at night compared to older teens.

Researchers conclude: “The increased sensitivity to light in younger adolescents suggests that exposure to evening light could be particularly disruptive to sleep regulation for this group.”

From the Brown news release:

In lab experiments, an hour of nighttime light exposure suppressed their production of the sleep-timing hormone melatonin significantly more than the same light exposure did for teens aged 11 to 16 who were farther into puberty.

The brighter the light in the experiments, the more melatonin was suppressed. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: adolescent health, sleep, technology
June 26, 2015 | 3:46 PM |

Why Your Doctor Might Want To Track Your Tweets

The little digital breadcrumbs you blithely leave in your wake — the tweets, the online searches, and communities you join, the wearables that account for every step and bite — are beginning to coalesce into what could ultimately become a critically important portrait of your true physical and mental state.

At least that’s what John Brownstein of Children’s Hospital Boston and his colleagues argue as they analyze and collect these “breadcrumbs” amassing a wide spectrum of data to support a broad new concept of personal and public health that they call the “digital phenotype.” It’s like a contemporary extension of the more traditional phenotype — one’s observable characteristics based on a mix of genetics and the environment.

(Medisoft via Compfight/Flickr)

(Medisoft via Compfight/Flickr)

In a sort of digital phenotype manifesto published earlier this year in the journal Nature Biotechnology, Brownstein, an epidemiologist and associate professor at Harvard Medical School and chief innovation officer of Children’s Informatics program, and others, explain the idea like this:

…there is a growing body of health-related data that can shape our assessment of human illness. Such data have substantial value above and beyond the physical exam, laboratory values and clinical imaging data — our traditional approaches to characterizing a disease phenotype. When gathered and analyzed appropriately, these data have the potential to fundamentally alter our notion of the manifestations of disease by providing a more comprehensive and nuanced view of the experience of illness. Through the lens of the digital phenotype, an individual’s interaction with digital technologies affects the full spectrum of human disease from diagnosis, to treatment, to chronic disease management.

Or, put another way: the digital phenotype adds a unique, more fine-grained look at the way people actually live each day.

Here’s one real-world example: Michael Docktor, a gastroenterologist and director of clinical innovation at Children’s Hospital Boston, treats many patients with Irritable Bowel Syndrome and one thing he usually requests is a detailed food diary. “Sometimes teenagers dump a 50-page food diary on me, and it’s hard for me as a human being to comb through that and, perhaps, find that milk, for instance, is a problem.” But, he says, “if we had that information digitally, tracked by software that used algorithms and machine learning to figure out the meaningful correlations and serve it up in an easily digestible format — that could be transformative.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: digital phenotype, public health, sleep, social media, Twitter
June 12, 2015 | 11:45 AM | Marina Renton

After A Death, Crackdown On Drowsy Teen Drivers Led To Fewer Crashes, Study Finds

(KaritoGlam/Flickr)

(KaritoGlam/Flickr)

By Marina Renton
CommonHealth Intern

It was to be Maj. Robert Raneri’s last day of work before his wedding the following week. On June 26, 2002, Raneri, a member of Army Reserves, left his home in Nashua, New Hampshire for the Devens Reserve Forces Training Area in Ayer, Massachusetts. But he never arrived.

Raneri was killed by a 19-year-old drowsy driver who admitted to having stayed up through the night playing video games. Shortly after Raneri’s death, his fiancée, Maj. Amy Huther, learned she was pregnant with his child.

In accordance with Massachusetts law at the time, the teen driver faced misdemeanor charges, leading to five years probation, a 10-year license suspension and 140 hours of mandated community service, The Boston Globe reported in 2004.

Drowsy Driving

But the tragedy brought attention to the problem of drowsy driving and, in 2007, led to new rules that govern the way young drivers grow into their adult licenses: the graduated driver-licensing program.

Those rules (amendments to already existing law) included stiffer nighttime driving penalties, driver’s education on drowsy driving and tougher penalties for negligent or reckless driving. And it seems the strict new rules have worked, dramatically decreasing the number of drowsy driving accidents involving teenagers, according to a new study out this month in the journal Health Affairs.

Indeed, the results are striking: Among junior operators (ages 16-17), the overall rate of car accidents fell by 18.6 percent, the rate of night crashes decreased by almost 29 percent, and there was an almost 40 percent decrease in car crashes resulting in a fatal or incapacitating injury, researchers report. The study focused on data from one year before and five years after the implementation of the new amendments.

Legal Crackdown

This is the first study of its kind to look at the effects of individual components of a driver licensing law, such as more exacting penalties, the authors state.

The Checkup

The Checkup: a WBUR/Slate health podcast
Subscribe on iTunes | The Checkup on Slate

Dr. Charles Czeisler, chief of the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston and co-author of the study, said in an interview that researchers are “confident that these features of the law were critical in the decline in the teen fatal and incapacitating injuries as well as the overall crash rate that we observed.”

Like young drivers everywhere, Massachusetts teens don’t have the same privileges as adult drivers. They aren’t allowed to drive at certain times of night; they can’t have friends in the car right away; and they have to drive with a parent or other adult in the car when they’re first starting out. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: driving, public health, sleep
February 17, 2015 | 10:59 AM |

Study: For Sleep Problems In Older Age, Try Mindful Meditation

(Fairy Heart/flickr)

(Fairy Heart/flickr)

Insomnia is insidious, infuriating and often debilitating.

For anyone who has suffered with eyes-wide-open at 4 a.m. it’s not terribly surprising that more and more Americans (particularly older people and women) are being prescribed serious drugs to help them sleep.

But these medications, known as benzodiazepines, have been linked to numerous health problems, ranging from an increased risk of dementia, to car crashes and falls. And once you’re on them, it’s hard to stop, as I can attest from personal experience. While debate continues over the safety and effectiveness of these medications, a small study suggests that an alternative approach may offer some relief.

Research published online by JAMA Internal Medicine found that a practice of mindful meditation — basically just focusing on breathing and remaining in the present moment while observing your thoughts easily drift by — may help certain people with sleep problems. “Mindfulness meditation practices resulted in improved sleep quality for older adults with moderate sleep disturbance…” the report concludes.

The study, by researchers at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles, reflects a growing body of evidence showing that the practice of “mindful meditation” can be used as a low-cost, non-drug intervention that can, in certain cases, reduce stress and help with other physical and mental health woes.

Here’s more from the JAMA release:

Sleep disturbances are a medical and public health concern for our nation’s aging population. An estimated 50 percent of individuals 55 years and older have some sort of sleep problem. Moderate sleep disturbances in older adults are associated with higher levels of fatigue, disturbed mood, such as depressive symptoms, and a reduced quality of life… Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: aging, benzodiazepines, insomnia, mediation, mental health, mindfulness, sleep
January 15, 2015 | 11:13 AM | Dr. Marvin Wang

Sleepy Students: A Pediatrician’s Plea For Later School Start Times

(eltpics/Flickr via Compfight)

(eltpics/Flickr via Compfight)

By Dr. Marvin Wang, M.D.

Last August, the American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) issued a statement regarding school start times, really a plea to all middle and high schools to start the school day no earlier than 8:30 a.m.

The statement emerged as a result of accumulating evidence showing that earlier school start times effectively restrict an adolescent’s ability to get regular healthful sleep.

The timing of the AAP’s statement came on the heels of another sentinel event in my family’s life. Just a month after its publication, my daughter started school. No big deal, except for the fact that she has never been to school before. Until this year, she was exclusively homeschooled here in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts.

My wife and I didn’t have any major agenda driving this decision, other than the fact that we knew we could do it (we work part-time) and it seemed like it would be more family fun. The many details of our homeschooling adventures are really for another time, though.

The reason I even bring up the topic is that as a homeschooler, my daughter was able to wake up when she wanted to (usually within reason). On a regular day, she was used to getting up at 8:30ish (despite sometimes our having to pry her out later).

After a whole lifetime of this, imagine the draconian lifestyle shift of being asked to get up at 6 a.m. every weekday! This is the routine that is better known to most people as “going to school.” Now, let’s be clear about a few things: 1) our daughter wanted this. She asked to take the exam for the Boston Public Schools, in hopes of going to Boston Latin School, where she watched many of her friends attend; 2) she knew the early mornings were part of the routine; and 3) BLS actually has a relatively benign start time of 7:45 a.m., compared to many of its counterparts in the district and the state.

So what’s all the fuss? It cannot be a novel idea to most adults that the typical school teenager is a surly blob on most weekday mornings. Should we be surprised to learn that we have been breeding generations of sleep-deprived adolescents? Should we, as educators, parents and “concerned citizens” be worried about this?

First, let’s look at what’s new since the AAP statement came out.

Indeed, the movement is picking up steam in some parts of the country, as whole districts have approved later start times. In Massachusetts, districts like Sharon, Easton, Duxbury and Nauset have done so.

And there are some new studies corroborating the AAP’s stance:

In looking at the neurobehavioral issues in teens, it turns out that just one night of sleep deprivation in an adolescent has marked worsening of sustained attention, reaction speed, cognitive processing speed and subjective sleepiness. When the sleep was restored, the teens were able to significantly improve all their cognitive abilities.

One study showed that sleep restricted teens (average of five hours/night) were more likely to be lower academic quartiles than those who slept more (average 6 ½ hours/night…which is still two hours less than optimal!). But looking at the results, one also finds that the perceived sleepiness among the sleep restricted group was at least twice that the sleep appropriate group. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: adolescent medicine, pediatrics, school start time, sleep
January 2, 2015 | 8:01 AM |

Beyond Carb-Cutting: Resolutions After A Trauma — Sleep, Play, Love

(katiebordner/Flickr)

(katiebordner/Flickr)

By Rachel Zimmerman

A friend, trying to cheer me up over the holidays, suggested I find comfort in this fact: “The worst year of your life is coming to an end.”

In 2014 I became a widow, and my two young children lost their father. Needless to say our perspective and priorities have shifted radically.

Last year at this time, my New Year’s resolutions revolved around carbs, and eating fewer of them. This year, carbs are the least of my worries. My resolutions for 2015 are all about trying to let go of any notion of perfection and seek what my mother calls “crumbs of pleasure” — connection, peace and actual joy on the heels of a life-altering tragedy that could easily have pushed me into bed (with lots of comforting carbs) for a long time.

As a mom I know with stage 4 cancer put it, when your world is shaken to its core, your goals shift from things you want to “do” —  spend more time exercising, learn Italian, make your own clothes — to ways you want to “be,” knowing that your life can shift in an instant.

So, with that in mind, here are my five, research-backed, heal-the-trauma resolutions for 2015:

A Restful Sleep

Yes, at the top of my list of lofty life goals is a very pedestrian one: sleep. Lack of sleep can devastate a person’s mental health and without consistent rest, the line between emotional stability and craziness can be slim. (See postpartum depression, for one example.) In my family at least, to ward off depression and anxiety, we need good sleep and lots of it; more Arianna Huffington and less Bill Clinton.

Play, Sing, Dance

The beautiful thing about children is that despite tragedy and loss, they remain kids; they are compelled to play, climb, run and be active. Resilience, as the literature says. In their grief, they can still cartwheel on the beach, play tag or touch football in the park. Shortly after my husband died, I tried very hard to play the games my kids liked, which often felt like that scene in the “Sound of Music” where the baroness pretends to enjoy a game of catch with the children. Soon I learned to broaden my definition of play — really anything, physical, or not — that serves no other purpose other than to elicit pure joy. Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: children, death, exercise, New Years Resolutions, parenting, psychology, sleep, trauma
December 29, 2014 | 10:41 AM |

Stick To That Book. Your Tablet-Reading May Hurt More Than You Think

(eef llc/Compfight)

(eef llc/Compfight)

If the holidays brought you a device or two, here’s something to consider.  That nighttime reading from your brand new iPad?  Maybe not such a good thing.

A new study from Brigham and Women’s hospital, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, found that the use of light-emitting (LE) e-readers in the evening and even the early night may harm your sleep.

How?

The blue light produced by these specific electronic devices can actually shift your circadian rhythm by suppressing sleep hormones.  This means that that late night horror reading didn’t just give you nightmares, it actually makes you less alert in the morning. “We found the body’s natural circadian rhythms were interrupted by the short-wavelength enriched light, otherwise known as blue light, from these electronic devices,” said lead author Anne-Marie Chang, PhD,

Dr. Chang, associate neuroscientist in Brigham and Women’s Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders and an assistant professor of behavioral health at Pennsylvania State University explains that twelve participants were monitored for two weeks in the hospital. Researchers compared their sleep patterns when reading text from an iPad and reading from a printed paper book.  (Images and puzzles were never included).  Volunteers were asked to read for four hours before bed for five nights in a row.  The same process was then repeated with a printed book. Participants who read from iPads took nearly 10 minutes longer to fall asleep and their sleep had less rapid eye movement (REM) compared with when they did late-night reading from a printed book.

The real eye-opener?

In a press release, Chang said she and her team were most surprised by the morning-after–iPad readers were less alert and more groggy after waking up.  Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: blue light, Brigham & Women's Hospital, e-readers, iPads, sleep
December 15, 2014 | 12:44 PM |

Foggy Days, Sleepless Nights: When Alzheimer’s Care Goes Nocturnal

(Ronel Reyes/Flickr via Compfight)

(Ronel Reyes/Flickr via Compfight)

By Jessica Alpert

Marion Tripp was what you might call a quintessential “Yankee.” From impeccable pie crusts to crackshot deer hunting, she regularly impressed people with her wide range of skills. When her daughter and son-in-law started an organic farm in rural Maine, she’d bundle up in a snowmobile suit and sell their rutabagas at the local farmer’s market. I never knew Marion but her grandson — my husband — loves to remember her this way.

Not the way she was at the end.

Alzheimer’s ravaged Marion’s brain and left her confused, “mean,” paranoid, and violent. The last three years of her life, she had round-the-clock care since she rarely slept more than a few hours at a time. Her nocturnal habits were not unique. Indeed, in the world of Alzheimer’s, this tendency toward nighttime wakefulness is known as “sundowning.”

“Several things go awry with Alzheimer’s that affect the person’s brain chemistry and changes their circadian rhythm,” says Dr. Paul Raia, vice president of clinical services for the Massachusetts/New Hampshire chapter of the Alzheimer’s Association. He says there are various reasons for this nocturnal shift including lack of melatonin, diminished access to natural light and less rapid eye movement or REM sleep.

But it’s not just about being unable to sleep for long stretches of time. Like Marion Tripp, many Alzheimer’s patients are often agitated, angry, even violent. “During that period [of REM sleep], you are ridding the toxins from your brain and you’re stabilizing memory and you’re dreaming and essentially you are paralyzed with your body in a relaxing mode,” says Raia. “[The patients] may take a series of small naps throughout the day and when they wake up, they may not be fully awake. They can’t navigate well or negotiate well in their environment.” Continue reading →

FILED UNDER: aging, alzheimer's disease, sleep