Sleep Related Articles & Blog Posts

You may be more exhausted than you have ever been. Whenever people are sleep deprived they are more subject to swings of emotion and to feelings of inadequacy. This, by itself, is enough to cause a blue period (ask any practicing pediatrician).

Uninterrupted hours of nighttime darkness encourage healthy melatonin levels in the blood that dramatically suppress the growth of breast tumors. On the other hand, exposure to light at night causes melatonin levels in the blood to plummet, stimulating growth of breast cancer cells – according to a groundbreaking study appearing in the December 1, 2005 [...]

Dads matter. When people think about depression soon after a baby is born, they often forget about fathers. But many new dads do get depressed, and you can read their depression in their children’s behavior! Fathers and their well-being have an important effect on their babies’ development, but this has been too little studied.

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 [...]