Sleep Related Articles & Blog Posts

To reduce crying in irritable babies and to prolong sleep in babies who seem to wake up all the time, parents in many parts of the world swaddle their babies when putting them down to sleep. This custom of wrapping babies snugly in light cloths or sheets has been used for centuries. Researchers at the [...]

Some kids who snore have obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition that intermittently interrupts breathing while asleep. We know children with OSA to have a higher chance of having behavioral or emotional difficulties, including problems related to attention, anxiety, depression, aggression, and destructive behavior.

Could chocolate be more effective than codeine in treating coughs? And if so, how much chocolate would it take? Research published November 17, 2004 in FJ Express, which will appear in The FASEB Journal in January 2005, makes a strong case that dark chocolate may be a powerful cough suppressant. A cough is a healthy, [...]

Would you rather your kindergarten-age child had blood lead levels 3 times the safe limit (like children living next to a lead smelters – double the level of most kids with lead toxicity), or would your rather your child snored? The impact on the brain is about the same, according to a provocative study in [...]

Having babies sleep on their backs has successfully reduced the rate of SIDS, but has also been accompanied by reports of an increase in the number of babies diagnosed with flattening of the back of the head. Is this increase real? Or are people just paying more attention to head shape? And does it go [...]

Is it dangerous for kids to sleep with the lights on? Lots of interesting news has been coming out of the 2004 Children with Leukemia conference in London. We’re making great progress in leukemia, but also falling behind. Even though cure rates are climbing, more children are getting leukemia than ever before – especially in [...]

A SIDS Silver Lining Breastfed babies have longer sleep cycles than formula-fed babies, according to a study in the January 2004 Archives of Diseases in Childhood, but the breastfed babies are also more easily awaken. This might help to prevent SIDS. In the study, researchers used nasal air jets of varying force in an attempt [...]

One Key to Happiness, Self-Esteem, and Success The less sleep children get, the more likely they are to perform poorly in school, to become depressed, and to have a poor sense of self-worth, according to a study of 2,259 Illinois middle school students published in the January-February 2004 issue of Child Development.

SIDS rates have fallen dramatically since the 1990′s when we learned that putting babies to sleep on their backs could save lives. To understand the SIDS situation today, researchers conducted studies in 20 regions of Europe, analyzing over 60 possible influences on SIDS in over 3,000 babies. The results were published in the January 17, [...]

There is a link between snoring, asthma, and nighttime coughs in preschool children according to a study from Australia published in the August 2003 issue of Chest. We’ve known for awhile that nighttime coughs can be a sign of asthma. This study showed that children who snore are far more likely to have asthma than [...]