Bedtime for toddlers: Timing is everything

Dec. 16, 2013 The bedtime you select for your toddler may be out of sync with his or her internal body clock, which can contribute to difficulties for youngsters attempting to settle in for the night, according to a new University of Colorado Boulder study.

The study pinpointed the time when the hormone melatonin increased in the evening, indicating the start of the biological night, in a group of 14 toddlers whose sleep also was studied over the course of six days. The study showed that toddlers with later melatonin rise times took longer to fall asleep after being put to bed, said CU-Boulder Assistant Professor Monique LeBourgeois.

"There is relatively little research out there on how the physiology of toddlers may contribute to the emergence of sleep problems," said LeBourgeois, a faculty member in the integrative physiology department who led the new study. "Sleeping at the wrong 'biological clock' time leads to sleep difficulties, like insomnia, in adults."

While adults get to choose their own bedtime, toddlers rarely have this option, said LeBourgeois. "This study is the first to show that a poor fit between bedtimes selected by the parents of toddlers and the rise in their evening melatonin production increases their likelihood of nighttime settling difficulties," said LeBourgeois.

The findings are important because about 25 percent of toddlers and preschoolers have problems settling after bedtime, said LeBourgeois. Evening sleep disturbance can include difficulties falling asleep, bedtime resistance, tantrums, and episodes known as "curtain calls" that manifest themselves as calling out from bed or coming out of the bedroom, often repeatedly, for another story, glass of water or bathroom trip, she said.

Toddlers with longer intervals between the onset of nightly melatonin release and their subsequent bedtimes were shown to fall asleep more quickly and had decreased bedtime resistance as reported by their parents, according to the study.

A paper on the subject was published this month in the journal Mind, Brain and Education. Co-authors included University Children's Hospital Zurich Director of Child Development Oskar Jenni and CU-Boulder Associate Professor Kenneth Wright Jr. The National Institute of Mental Health funded the study.

Sleep problems in early childhood are predictive of later emotional and behavioral problems, as well as poor cognitive function, that can persist into later childhood and adolescence. In addition, parents of young children with sleep problems often report increased difficulties in their own sleep patterns, which can cause chronic fatigue and even marital discord, she said.

"A natural next step is to optimize our knowledge of the interactions between physiology and the environment to further understand how problems like bedtime resistance first develop and how they are maintained," LeBourgeois said.

Research in adolescents and adults has shown that exposure to light in the evening can delay the timing onset of melatonin. Whether the later rise of melatonin in some toddlers can be pushed to an earlier time by restricting evening light or by increasing morning light exposure is a question still to be answered, she said.

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Bedtime for toddlers: Timing is everything

Exercise Can Counter That Holiday Binge Eating

December 16, 2013

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

Scientists writing in The Journal of Physiology say that exercise lessens many of the harmful physiological effects that take place after Christmas binge eating.

Previous studies have shown that even a few days of eating more calories than you burn can cause detrimental health impacts, making the holidays a tough time for the tummy. However, this new study counters this thought, showing that a daily bout of exercise generates vast physiological benefits even when consuming thousands of calories more than you burn.

This new research shows that the picture is more sophisticated than energy alone: exercise has positive effects even when we are actively storing energy and gaining weight, James Betts, one of the researchers from The University of Bath, said in a statement.

The team found that after just one week of overeating, people being monitored for the study showed poor blood sugar control and their fat cells were expressing genes that lead to unhealthy metabolic changes and disputed nutritional balance. However, these negative effects due to these short bursts of binge eating were markedly less for those who were exercising.

During the study, 26 healthy young men were asked to be generally inactive in their daily activities. Half of the men were asked to exercise daily on a treadmill for 45 minutes, and everyone involved in the study was asked to overeat. The non-exercising group increased their caloric intake by 50 percent, while the exercising group increased it by 75 percent.

Our research demonstrates that a short period of overconsumption and reduced physical activity leads to very profound negative changes in a variety of physiological systems but that a daily bout of exercise stops most of these negative changes from taking place, Jean-Philippe Walhin, a researcher on the study, said in a statement.

Dr Dylan Thompson, senior author on the paper, talked about how one of the features from the teams study was critical.

A critical feature of our experiment is that we matched the energy surplus between groups so the exercise group consumed even more energy and were still better off at the end of the week, Thompson said.

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Exercise Can Counter That Holiday Binge Eating

Oakville native named Napa Valley College vice president

Napa Valley College announced Thursday the appointment of Terry Giugni, who has a Ph.D in physiology and biophysics, as the colleges next vice president of instruction.

Giugni will begin his appointment in early January as the head of the Office of Instruction and will oversee the colleges instructional program. He will provide leadership support to the colleges 342 full- and part-time faculty members serving a student enrollment of more than 18,000.

A Napa Valley native who grew up in Oakville and was schooled in public institutions throughout California, Giugni received a B.S. in biological sciences from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and completed his Ph.D. in physiology and biophysics at the University of California, Irvine.

A name familiar to many in the Napa Valley, the Giugni family came to the area from Switzerland in the 1860s. Giugnis grandparents were owners of the Oakville Grocery for nearly 50 years starting in 1940 and Giugnis great-grandfather was the stonemason who built the Pope Street Bridge in St. Helena, just a stones throw from NVCs Upper Valley Campus.

He was selected from a competitive process that began in September.

Giugni comes to NVC from Fullerton College in Southern California where has served as its vice president of instruction since 2011. He has extensive prior experience as an instructor, administrator and research scientist, NVC said in a news release.

Terrys long history of a commitment to student success through the development and support of high quality instructional programs at the administrative level demonstrates a true understanding of the importance of faculty within a community college and a deep appreciation of excellence in classroom teaching, said Dr. Ron Kraft, superintendent/president of NVC. We are excited to have him join our team at NVC.

Giugni is an accomplished research scientist who spent two years at Vanderbilt University Medical School in Tennessee working under Nobel Laureate Dr. Stanley Cohen studying the role of growth factors in the development of cancer.

He returned to California to conduct additional research at the City of Hope National Medical Center in the late 1980s and began teaching biology part-time at Chaffey College in Rancho Cucamonga. During what became a 22-year association with Chaffey College, Giugni became a full-time instructor in the Department of Biology, was later appointed dean of Physical, Life, and Health Sciences, and then appointed as Chaffeys dean of Mathematics and Science. In 2010, Dr. Giugni became the dean of the Chaffey Colleges Chino Campus.

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ANN ARBOR: U-M study: Fruit flies with better sex lives live longer

ANN ARBOR Sex may in fact be one of the secrets to good health, youth and a longer life at least for fruit flies suggests a new University of Michigan study that appears in the journal Science.

Male fruit flies that perceived sexual pheromones of their female counterparts without the opportunity to mate experienced rapid decreases in fat stores, resistance to starvation and more stress. The sexually frustrated flies lived shorter lives.

Mating, on the other hand, partially reversed the negative effects on health and aging.

Fruit flies are model organisms for understanding molecular mechanisms of aging. These findings give us a better understanding about how sensory perception and physiological state may be integrated in the brain to affect long-term health and lifespan, says senior author Scott D. Pletcher, professor in the Department of Molecular and Integrative Physiology at the U-M Medical School and research professor at the U-M Geriatrics Center.

The cutting-edge genetics and neurobiology used in this research suggests to us that for fruit flies at least, it may not be a myth that sexual frustration is a health issue. Expecting sex without any sexual reward was detrimental to their health and cut their lives short.

U-M scientists used sensory manipulations to give the common male fruit fly, Drosophila melanogaster, the perception that they were in a sexually rich environment by exposing them to genetically engineered males that produced female pheromones. They were also able to manipulate the specific neurons responsible for pheromone perception as well as parts of the brain linked to sexual reward (secreting a group of compounds associated with anxiety and sex drive).

These data may provide the first direct evidence that aging and physiology are influenced by how the brain processes expectations and rewards, Pletcher says. In this case, sexual rewards specifically promoted healthy aging.

Fruit flies have been a powerful tool for studying aging because they live on average 60 days yet many of the discoveries in flies have proven effective in longer-lived animals, such as mice.

For decades, one of the most powerful ways to slow aging in different species was by limiting their food intake. In a previous study, Pletcher and his colleagues found that the smell of food alone was enough to speed up aging, offering new context for how dietary restriction works.

Male fruit flies that perceived sexual pheromones of their female counterparts without the opportunity to mate experienced rapid decreases in fat stores, resistance to starvation and more stress. The sexually frustrated flies lived shorter lives.

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ANN ARBOR: U-M study: Fruit flies with better sex lives live longer

Diabetes Drugs Affect Hearts of Men, Women Differently

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Newswise Widely used treatments for type 2 diabetes have different effects on the hearts of men and women, even as the drugs control blood sugar equally well in both sexes, according to researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis.

In particular, the commonly prescribed diabetes drug metformin had positive effects on heart function in women but not in men, who experienced a shift in metabolism thought to increase the risk of heart failure.

We saw dramatic sex differences in how the heart responds to the different therapies, said senior author Robert J. Gropler, MD, professor of radiology. Our study suggests that we need to better define which therapies are optimal for women with diabetes and which ones are optimal for men.

The study appears in the December issue of the American Journal of Physiology - Heart and Circulatory Physiology.

To the researchers knowledge, this is the first study to investigate sex differences in the hearts response to diabetes treatments. In type 2 diabetes, the pancreas continues to make insulin, but the body cant use it effectively to move glucose out of the blood and into the tissues. And for reasons that are not entirely clear, patients with diabetes are at higher risk for heart failure.

It is imperative that we gain understanding of diabetes medications and their impact on the heart in order to design optimal treatment regimens for patients, said Janet B. McGill, MD, professor of medicine and a study co-author who sees patients at Barnes-Jewish Hospital. This study is a step in that direction.

The investigators evaluated commonly prescribed diabetes drugs in 78 patients, who were assigned to one of three groups. Under McGills supervision, the first group received metformin alone; the second received metformin plus rosiglitazone (Avandia); and the third received metformin plus Lovaza, which is a kind of fish oil.

Metformin reduces glucose production by the liver and helps the body become more sensitive to insulin. Rosiglitazone also improves insulin sensitivity and is known to move free fatty acids out of the blood. Lovaza is prescribed to lower blood levels of triglycerides, another type of fat.

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For Altitude Training, a Narrow Window for Success

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Article is published in the Journal of Applied Physiology

Newswise Bethesda, Md. (Dec. 12, 2013)Researchers and athletes have long known that living at altitude holds the potential to improve athletic performance. Many competitive endurance athletes follow a Live High Train Low training regimen, in which they live at moderate altitudes and do their easiest workouts there, saving their most intense training for altitudes closer to sea level. However, though several studies have shown the promise of this type of training philosophy, its been unknown what specific living altitude is best for enhancing athletic performance at sea level.

To help answer this question, lead researchers Benjamin D. Levine of the Institute for Exercise and Environmental Medicine at Texas Health Resources and the UT Southwestern Medical Center and James Stray-Gundersen of the USA Ski and Snowboard Association, along with first author Robert F. Chapman of Indiana University and colleagues flew competitive collegiate runners from Dallas, Texasa city near sea levelto one of four different altitude training camps at various heights in the mountains near Salt Lake City, Utah, where they lived and trained for a month. Prior to and after the altitude training camp, they tested these athletes performance in a 3000 meter time trial in Dallas. The researchers findings show that living between 2000 and 2500 meters above sea level offered the best performance enhancement compared to living at higher or lower elevations. These findings could help competitive endurance athletes and their coaches develop altitude training regimens that have the highest chance of success.

The article is entitled Defining the Dose of Altitude Training: How High to Live for Optimal Sea Level Performance Enhancement. It appears in the Articles in Press section of the Journal of Applied Physiology, published by the American Physiological Society. The article is available online at http://bit.ly/1bh6dNr.

Methodology The researchers worked with 48 collegiate track and cross country runners. For four weeks, these athletes trained in Dallas, where the researchers performed a variety of tests to assess the athletes baselines on several different measures. For example, they determined the athletes VO2max, a measure of aerobic fitness based on the rate at which the body uses oxygen during exercise. They timed the athletes as they ran 3000 meters at their fastest pace. They performed a variety of blood tests, including measuring their volume of red blood cells and the concentration of a hormone called EPO that stimulates red blood cell production. Previous research has shown that EPO concentrations rise when people live at higher altitudes, an adaptation to help their bodies cope with less oxygen in the air by making more red blood cells.

Then, for a second four weeks, these athletes were separated into four groups. Each group lived in altitude training camps in the mountains near Salt Lake City at sites of various altitudes: Heber City (1780 meters), Park City (2085 meters), Deer Valley (2454 meters), and Guardsmans Pass (2800 meters). Once a day, all the athletes gathered at a common site to train regardless of which altitude they were assigned for living. Their EPO concentrations were checked periodically during their mountain stay.

At the end of this period, the athletes regrouped in Dallas, where they had more exercise and blood testing and ran another timed 3000 meters.

Results The researchers found that when the athletes returned to sea level, only those who lived at the two middle altitudes (2085m and 2454m) performed significantly better than those at either end of the spectrum. EPO concentrations and red blood cell volumes had risen in each of the four groups, suggesting that contrary to long-held wisdom, these adaptations arent the only reason altitude training enhances performance.

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Men’s and Women’s Hearts React Differently to Diabetes Drug

December 12, 2013

Brett Smith for redOrbit.com Your Universe Online

In a new study from researchers at at Washington University School of Medicine, the type 2 diabetes drug metformin was found to have different effects on the hearts of men and women, despite managing blood sugar the same in both sexes.

According to the study, which was published in the December issue of the American Journal of Physiology Heart and Circulatory Physiology, the drug had positive effects on womens heart health, but male patients saw a change in heart function associated with increased risk for heart failure.

We saw dramatic sex differences in how the heart responds to the different therapies, said study author Robert J. Gropler, a professor of radiology at WUStL. Our study suggests that we need to better define which therapies are optimal for women with diabetes and which ones are optimal for men.

The pancreas continues to make insulin in patients with type 2 diabetes, but the body isnt able to effectively use it to draw glucose out of the blood and into the tissues. Type 2 diabetes is also linked to an increased risk for heart failure.

It is imperative that we gain understanding of diabetes medications and their impact on the heart in order to design optimal treatment regimens for patients, said study author Dr. Janet B. McGill, also a professor of medicine at WUStL. This study is a step in that direction.

In the study, researchers looked at commonly prescribed diabetes drugs in 78 patients. The study participants were divided into one of three groups: those receiving metformin alone, those receiving metformin and rosiglitazone (Avandia) and those receiving metformin plus Lovaza, a form of fish oil.

While metformin reduces glucose production by the liver, rosiglitazone is known to draw free fatty acids out of the blood. Both drugs boost the bodys sensitivity to insulin. Lovaza is prescribed to reduce levels of fatty triglycerides in the blood.

The three groups did not exhibit any major differences in heart metabolism. However, when the patients were divided by sex, the drugs were seen as having different and sometimes opposite effects on heart metabolism.

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Men’s and Women’s Hearts React Differently to Diabetes Drug

BioVision 2010: “Principles of Neural Ensemble Physiology” – Video


BioVision 2010: "Principles of Neural Ensemble Physiology"
The Theory of Biorobs: Towards the Future part II was held during BioVision Alexandria 2010 conference "New Life Sciences: Future Prospects" on Tuesday, 13 April 2010 at the Bibliotheca Alexandrina...

By: Bibliotheca Alexandrina Channel

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BioVision 2010: "Principles of Neural Ensemble Physiology" - Video