A new study from the University of Pennsylvania is showing that ignoring sleep for work or other activities can do more than just make you feel tired: it can actually kill brain cells.
This is the first sleep study showing permanent brain damage from lack of sleep. Previous studies had only shown a drop in cognitive abilities, strength and focus without focusing on long term damage.
Dr. Sigrid Veasey, the study’s author, said that neuroscientists knew certain neurons in the brain that did not sleep as long as the person was awake. They focused on those cells because they believed fatigue in those cells impacted long-term brain health.
“This gave us an indication that maybe [the cells] needed their rest,” she says. “We hypothesized that the cells that were going to be the most likely to get injured would be some of the cells that are active during wakefulness.”
The study showed a loss of as much as 30 percent of neurons in the studied group that was kept sleepless for the longest period of time.
“You can push the system a little bit, but you can’t push it too hard and for too long or you’ll have irreversible consequences,” she says.
Millions of Americans drink excess amounts of coffee every day and many others drink energy drinks and energy shots.
Now, a study is showing that excessive use is creating addictions that lead to a dependence so strong it causes emotional problems. The problem has become so prevalent that there is now an official diagnosis for it: caffeine use disorder.
“We have people who say caffeine is interfering with their life. They keep saying they’re going to stop, but they can’t,” American University professor Laura Juliano said. “I’ve seen people who have gone to great lengths to get caffeine when it was unavailable. I knew one woman who pretty much ruined her husband’s tropical vacation because she spent half the day looking for caffeine.”
Some studies are suggesting that up to 90 percent of Americans consume caffeine on a regular basis.
Juliano said that despite the widespread use of the drug, there is very little research into the depth of the addiction problem. She speculated that because most people don’t see caffeine as a dangerous drug, it’s not a priority among researchers.
A new study shows the prevalence of smartphones, tablets and laptops are causing a problem among children with sleep patterns and quality.
The devices emit what scientists call “blue light” that works against the sleep process by hampering the body’s ability to produce melatonin, the chemical that causes the body to feel tired and enhances sleepiness.
The National Sleep Foundation has released a study showing that youth who use smartphones or computer devices before bedtime have a lower quality of sleep and sleep less than peers without the heavy use of electronic devices.
“To ensure a better night’s sleep for their children, parents may want to limit their [children’s use of] technology in the bedroom near or during bedtime,” Orfeu Buxton, PhD, of Harvard Medical School told The Fiscal Times.
The study also showed that the sleep patterns of parents have a direct impact on their children. If the parents are using electronic devices in the evening before bedtime, the children will follow their parent’s patterns.
A scientist from Temple University thinks taking an idea from China is the way to stop killer tornadoes across the Midwest.
Physicist Rongjia Tao says that building massive walls in multiple spots across the Great Plains would be an effective deterrent to tornado development.
“If we build three east-west great walls in the American Midwest …. one in North Dakota, one along the border between Kansas and Oklahoma to the east, and the third one in south Texas and Louisiana, we will diminish the tornado threats in the Tornado Alley forever,” Tao told the USA Today.
The structures would be 1000 feet high and at least 150 feet wide.
Tao attributed the major tornadoes to a lack of west-to-east mountains in the region that weakens airflow.
However, many severe weather experts are skeptical.
“It wouldn’t work,” Harold Broos of the National Severe Storms Laboratory told USA Today in an e-mail. Brooks pointed out that China receives deadly tornadoes even with their mountain ranges. He also said that Missouri, Oklahoma and Arkansas have ranges similar in size to the proposal and they have massive tornadoes.
Scientists are working on a technology that would eliminate genetic disease in newborns by combining the DNA of three people instead of two in a single embryo.
However, the announcement of the study raised the alarm that the scientists would open the door for people to create “designer babies” with special features such as eye color, hair color or skin.
Food and Drug Administration officials are meeting over the next two days with the scientists in the project to see if they will allow testing on humans. The process is currently only approved to be used on monkeys.
“Once you make this change, if a female arises from the process and goes on to have children, that change is passed on, so it’s forever,” Phil Yeske, chief science officer of the United Mitochondrial Disease Foundation, told Bloomberg. “That’s uncharted territory; we just don’t know what it means. Permanent change of the human germline has never been done before, and we don’t know what will happen in future generations.”
Four monkeys have been created using the process and have been healthy through their first three years.
If you have ever told a friend that you are craving sugar and you can’t seem to be able to stop eating it, then you may actually be addicted to sugar.
Dr. Mark Hyman told CBS “This Morning” that in animal studies they found that rats go for sugar in a manner that was eight times more addictive than cocaine. Hyman said that Americans are addicted to sugar and that most don’t know it because they see sugary food and drinks as part of their daily diet.
Hyman says that sugary foods are “deadly” to the body. He said that sugar is a direct cause of diabetes and obesity.
Hyman told the New York Daily News that the average American eats 152 pounds of sugar a year.
In a diet study conducted by Hyman that encouraged healthier eating habits and helped people cut their sugar dependence, the average person found their blood pressure falling by about 10 points.
A new research study from Columbia University shows that fatal car accidents involving marijuana have tripled in the last ten years.
One of the co-authors of the study, Dr. Guohua Li, said that currently one in nine drivers involved in fatal crashes would test positive for marijuana.
“If this trend continues, in five or six years non-alcohol drugs will overtake alcohol to become the most common substance involved in deaths related to impaired driving,” Dr. Li said.
The study comes on the heels of states such as Colorado legalizing marijuana for use by the public. Alcohol related traffic fatalities held steady at 40 percent throughout the decade but drug related deaths climbed from 16 percent in 1999 to 28 percent in 2010. The scientists fear more legalization could continue to drive up the rate of drug related crashes.
“If a driver is under the influence of alcohol, their risk of a fatal crash is 13 times higher than the risk of the driver who is not under the influence of alcohol,” Li told Breitbart. “But if the driver is under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, their risk increases to 24 times that of a sober person.”
A new technology claims to allow customers to pay for purchases by using a scan of their veins.
The program is called Pulse Wallet and the device is scanner similar to the point of sale devices where you slide your credit or debit card. Pulse Wallet links to a credit card or other payment methods so that a customer can leave all identifying information at home.
The founders say the technology has many benefits.
In addition to being used in retail locations, the device can be used by airlines as a new form of boarding pass. They say because the form and scan of veins is unique to each person…and people don’t really know what the pattern of their veins looks like…it gives them a password that no thief can steal.
The company says that there are no traces for someone to find like fingerprints and the person would have to be alive with the limb attached because blood flow is needed to perform the scan.
The Department of Health and Human Services will spend $90 million over the next five years for a drug that can help stop two bacteria which security officials believe could make a deadly bioterror weapon.
HHS officials have already released $19.8 million for the purchase of Caravance, a drug that is aimed as a countermeasure to melioidosis and glanders diseases.
According to a press release from HHS, both glanders and melioidosis are considered suitable for biological weapons. Untreated infections from the diseases have a mortality rate of 90%. The bacteria have also developed some resistance to current antibiotics meaning even if you are treated for an infection there is still a 40% mortality rate.
Glanders is a respiratory disease transmitted either airborne or when the victim comes in contact with contaminated animals. Melioidosis, which is often confused for other conditions like pneumonia, is also transmitted through air or contact.
The World Health Organization has released a report showing a dramatic increase in cancer is likely over the next 20 years and that most of the cancer cases will strike in the emerging world.
The World Cancer Report shows a jump in new cancer cases of 1.4 million in the four years between 2008 and 2012. Of the 14.1 million new cases in 2012, 58% of the patients died from their disease.
However, the most shocking part of the report is that the WHO predicts cancer rates will increase as much as 70% in the next 20 years reaching an expected level of 25 million a year. Using the 58% mortality rate from 2012, that would mean 14.5 million cancer deaths in 2032.
The biggest growth in cancer rates will not be in the countries that currently face the most cases and have the strongest medical systems. The WHO reports says emerging nations with poor economies will see surges from cancers triggered by infections like cervical cancer and from tobacco, alcohol and processed food use.
Lung cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for men while breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer death for women.
