In this blog we will look at timely topics on the brain. Learn along with a copy from our book series, Healing the Brain. Get your copy today. A Thousand Moms offers workshops to the general public. These workshops are presented in clear, non-complicated language. In New York, Vermont and Massachusetts, please call 518 322-0607 or write to athousandmoms@yahoo.com.

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Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, and Huntington's diseases share common crucial feature

Finding suggests that treatment for one disease could work for the other two

Date:

May 23, 2017

Source:

Loyola University Health System

Summary:

A study has found that abnormal proteins found in Alzheimer's, Parkinson's and Huntington's diseases share a similar ability to cause damage when they invade brain cells. The finding suggests that an effective treatment for one neurodegenerative disease might work for other neurodegenerative diseases as well.

FULL STORY

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A Loyola University Chicago study has found that abnormal proteins found in Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's disease, and Huntington's disease all share a similar ability to cause damage when they invade brain cells.

The finding potentially could explain the mechanism by which Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, Huntington's, and other neurodegenerative diseases spread within the brain and disrupt normal brain functions.

The finding also suggests that an effective treatment for one neurodegenerative disease might work for other neurodegenerative diseases as well.

The study by senior author Edward Campbell, PhD, first author William Flavin, PhD, and colleagues is published in the journal Acta Neuropathologica.

"A possible therapy would involve boosting a brain cell's ability to degrade a clump of proteins and damaged vesicles," Campbell said. "If we could do this in one disease, it's a good bet the therapy would be effective in the other two diseases."

Neurodegenerative diseases are caused by the death of neurons and other cells in the brain, with different diseases affecting different regions of the brain. Alzheimer's destroys memory, while Parkinson's and Huntington's affect movement. All three diseases are progressive, debilitating and incurable.

Previous research has suggested that in all three diseases, proteins that are folded abnormally form clumps inside brain cells. These clumps spread from cell to cell, eventually leading to cell deaths. Different proteins are implicated in each disease: tau in Alzheimer's, alpha-synuclein in Parkinson's and huntingtin in Huntington's disease.

The Loyola study focused on how these misfolded protein clumps invade a healthy brain cell. The authors observed that once proteins get inside the cell, they enter vesicles (small compartments that are encased in membranes). The proteins damage or rupture the vesicle membranes, allowing the proteins to then invade the cytoplasm and cause additional dysfunction. (The cytoplasm is the part of the cell that's outside the nucleus).

The Loyola study also showed how a cell responds when protein clumps invade vesicles: The cell gathers the ruptured vesicles and protein clumps together so the vesicles and proteins can be destroyed. However, the proteins are resistant to degradation. "The cell's attempt to degrade the proteins is somewhat like a stomach trying to digest a clump of nails," Campbell said.

Flavin said the finding that protein clumps associated with the three diseases cause the same type of vesicle damage was unexpected. Loyola researchers initially focused on alpha-synuclein proteins associated with Parkinson's disease. So they asked collaborator Ronald Melki, PhD, to send them samples of different types of alpha-synuclein. (To do the experiment in a blinded, unbiased manner, the Loyola researchers did not know which types of alpha-synuclein were which.) Melki, a protein researcher at the Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience, is known for his ability to generate distinct types of alpha-synuclein. Without telling the Loyola researchers, Melki sent other types of proteins as well. This led to the surprise finding that tau and huntingtin proteins also can damage vesicles.

Campbell stressed the study's findings need to be followed up and confirmed in future studies.
The Loyola study is titled, "Endocytic vesicle rupture is a conserved mechanism of cellular invasion by amyloid proteins." It was supported by grants from the Michael J. Fox Foundation, Parkinson's Disease Foundation, Illinois chapter of the ARCS Foundation, Arthur J. Schmitt Foundation and other sources.

Campbell is an associate professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Loyola University Chicago Stritch School of Medicine. Flavin is a Loyola University Chicago MD/PhD student. Other co-authors are Zachary Green, Stratos Skarpathiotis, and Michael Chaney of Loyola University Chicago; Luc Bousset and Ronald Melki of the Paris-Saclay Institute of Neuroscience; and Yaping Chu and Jeffrey Kordower of Rush University Medical Center.

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Story Source:
Materials provided by Loyola University Health System.

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Opioids, Heroin and Public Health

In this blog we will look at timely topics on the brain. Learn along with a copy from our book series, Healing the Brain. Get your copy today. A Thousand Moms offers workshops to the general public. These workshops are presented in clear, non-complicated language. In New York, Vermont and Massachusetts, please call 518 322-0607 or write to athousandmoms@yahoo.com.

Source: The Dana Foundation

The Opioid Epidemic

“We’ve moved from an epidemic to a crisis” in opioid abuse in the United States, said Daniel Ciccarone, M.D., MPH, during a panel discussion at AAAS in Washington, DC, this week. Ciccarone, a doctor at University of California, San Francisco, who treats addicted people and does research, described a pattern of intertwined waves involving abuse of prescription pills, heroin, and synthetic opioids like fentanyl.

For example, while overdose deaths due to prescription pill use are spread relatively evenly across the country, “this is not true for heroin,” Ciccarone said. The Northeast has had troubles with opioid abuse for a generation, while in the Midwest, numbers have jumped just recently. And while older folks (50-64) are using pills in greater numbers, it’s younger people (20-35) driving heroin use.
“Heroin itself is becoming more and more dangerous,” he said, especially when it is laced with synthetic drugs like fentanyl and carfentanil (used to tranquilize elephants). People who stop breathing after using these stronger concoctions often don’t respond to emergency treatments like naloxone.


The latest epidemic came about in large part out of doctors’ good intentions, said Nora Volkow, M.D., director of the National Institute on Drug Abuse, part of NIH. Starting in the late 1990s, doctors increasingly prescribed opioids to young and old for acute (sudden onset) and chronic pain (pain that is regular and has lasted for months). They were responding to a call to better help people who were in severe pain, and they thought that while the patient was experiencing pain, they would not be likely to become addicted to the drug.

“The epidemic really started from our over-prescription,” said Volkow, a member of the Dana Alliance for Brain Initiatives. For example, in 2013, the number of total pills prescribed in this country was the equivalent of a 1 month supply for every adult in the US, she said. Over the past 15 years, “the whole United States appeared to become infected,” she said.

Opioids are very effective for acute pain. Volkow described her own experience taking them after she was in a car accident: “It was amazing, not just because the pain was gone but because of that great sense of well-being.” But many people grow more tolerant of the drug the longer they use it, and need ever-increasing doses to find relief. This can lead to over-use, and to people transitioning from pills to black-market drugs like heroin and fentanyl. “80 percent of new cases of heroin are actually emerging from individuals who became addicted to prescription opioids,” she said; because prescription drugs are expensive and difficult to get, while heroin has gotten cheaper, they make the switch. (The other 20 percent of new users are mainly younger people, who started directly with heroin as a recreational drug.)

This is dire news, but we have experienced waves of other deadly maladies and overcome them before. “When we had the HIV epidemic, when we had the Ebola epidemic, we addressed it using science,” Volkow said. “Scientific solutions can provide us means to control these problems, and it’s not any different for the opioid crisis”

For example, Karen Drexler, M.D., an addiction psychiatrist and program director for addictive disorders at the Veterans Healthcare Administration (VA), described the success of Dr. John Snow in solving a cholera epidemic in 1854 London. While others blamed bad air for the outbreak, Snow looked at this map showing where the sickened people lived, and asked what they had in common. It turned out they all obtained water from one local pump. Snow stopped the outbreak by taking the handle off the pump. People obtained their water from elsewhere, and stopped getting sick.

Map of opioid prescriptions and overdoses. Data source: National Vital Statistics, 2013 Source: State of Maryland

Looking at “our ‘map of London’ for the opioid epidemic,” Drexler said, it was clear that the most overdoses were where there were the most over-prescriptions. For opioids, “taking the handle off the pump” means reducing the number of prescriptions and changing prescription advice to use the lowest effective dose for the shortest amount of time so people have the least risk of becoming addicted. “Prevention is best,” she said.

The VA is applying a series of evidence-based actions to reduce prescriptions, including more-closely monitoring people who are taking opioids, advising doctors not to prescribe opioids for chronic pain, and suggesting alternative drugs and counseling.

Volkow described three areas NIH and others are working on: developing better, safer treatments for chronic pain; designing better strategies to help addicted people come off the drugs; and finding more direct opioid-blocking drug interventions like methadone, naloxone, and buprenorphine. The latter are proven to help, but “they are not being used. Less than 15 percent of people who would benefit from these are getting them,” she said, because of stigma, lack of doctor training, and lack of insurance reimbursement. In addition, “with science, of course we look for transformation,” she said, including looking for a potential vaccine against fentanyl.

Drexler described several current models of treatment that have evidence of success, including brief one-on-one counseling, which “is sufficient for many with opioid-use disorder,” she said. Other methods include the Massachusetts model of buprenorphine maintenance, Project Echo in New Mexico, and a method mirroring the alcohol care management model.

“I’m very hopeful that we’ll be able to disseminate these models out,” she said, perhaps by using marketing methods similar to those drug companies use. Still, “we need more help for newer, better treatments as well as how to implement the ones we have.”

“We need to treat this as a poisoning epidemic, not a drug epidemic,” Ciccarone said, including boosting programs that do “harm reduction,” caring for people who are engaging in risky behavior. “We tend to think of harm reduction as ‘aiding and abetting drug users,’ in the political sphere, but harm reduction saves lives,” it’s cost-effective, and it can bring people into treatment, he said. “Stop treating the drugs as sort of the special privilege of the criminal justice folks and the injured bodies as only public health.”

Autism: Thinking in Pictures

In this blog we will look at topics on the brain. Learn along with a copy of our book series, Healing the Brain. Get your copy today. 

My Mind Is a Web Browser:
How People With Autism Think
By: Temple Grandin, Ph.D. (/Authors/Temple_Grandin,_Ph_D_/)
The struggle that made possible Temple Grandin’s early development, graduate education, and notable career as a professor of animal behavior, designer of animal facilities worldwide, and celebrated writer, speaker, and researcher on autism, is told in her books, Emergence: Labeled Autistic (1986) and Thinking in Pictures and Other Reports From My Life With Autism* (Vintage Books, 1996). 

Courtesy the Dana Foundation.
 
Since writing Thinking in Pictures, which described my visual way of thinking, I have gained further insights into how my thought processes are different when compared to those of people who think in language. At autism meetings, I am often asked, “How can you be effective at public speaking when you think in pictures that are like video tapes in your imagination?” It is almost as though I have two levels of consciousness that operate separately. Only by interviewing people did I learn that many of them think primarily in words, and that their thoughts are linked to emotion. In my brain, words act as a narrator for the visual images in my imagination. I can see the pictures in my memory files. 

To use a computer analogy: The language part of my brain is the computer operator, and the rest of my brain is the computer. In most people, the brain’s computer operator and the computer are

merged into one seamless consciousness; but in me they are separate. I hypothesize that the frontal cortex of my brain is the operator and the rest of my brain is the computer.

When I lecture, the language itself is mostly “downloaded” out of memory from files that are like tape recordings. I use slides or notes to trigger opening the different files. When I am talking about something for the first time, I look at the visual images on the “computer monitor” in my imagination, then the language part of me describes those images. After I have given the lecture several times, the new material in language is switched over into “audio tape-recording files.” When I was in high school, other kids called me “tape recorder.”

Non-autistic people seem to have a whole upper layer of verbal thinking that is merged with their emotions. By contrast, unless I panic, I use logic to make all decisions; my thinking can be done independently of emotion. In fact, I seem to lack a higher consciousness composed of abstract verbal thoughts that are merged with emotion. Researchers have learned that people with autism have a decreased metabolism in the area in the frontal cortex that connects the brain’s emotional centers with higher thinking (the anterior cingulate).1 The frontal cortex is the brain’s senior executive, like the CEO of a corporation. Brain scans indicate that people with autism use problem-solving circuits in social situations. Unlike non-autistic people, the emotion center in their amygdala is not activated, for example, when they judge expressions in another person’s eyes.

I do have the ability to control the rate at which pictures come onto the “computer screen” in my imagination. Some people with autism are not able to do this. One person with autism told me that images explode into a web of a pictures that are interrelated. The decision-making process can become “locked up” and overloaded with pictures coming in all at once.

UNMASKING TALENT

I have been fascinated with research indicating that the detailed, realistic pictures that autistic savants—autistic individuals with extraordinary talent in a specific area— make may be created by directly accessing primary memory areas deep in the brain. Researchers in Australia hypothesize that autistic savants may have privileged access to lower levels of information.3 A study with a non-autistic “human calculator,” who could solve multiplication problems twice as quickly as a normal person, indicated that his brain had enhanced low-level processing.4 EEG recordings of his brain waves showed that brain activity was greatest, as compared with a normal person, when the multiplication problem was first flashed on the screen.
When designing livestock equipment in my business, I can do three-dimensional, full-motion videos of equipment and can test-run the equipment in my imagination. I can walk around it or fly over it.
I hypothesize that I am able to access primary visual files in my brain. When designing livestock equipment in my business, I can do three-dimensional, full-motion videos of equipment and can test-run the equipment in my imagination. I can walk around it or fly over it. My ability to rotate the image is slow. I move my mind’s eye around or over the image. 

When I read an article in Neurology about frontal temporal lobe dementia, I became extremely excited. It provided a scientific foundation for the idea of hidden visual thinking under a layer of verbal thinking. Research on frontal temporal lobe dementia, an Alzheimer’s-like condition that destroys language and social areas in the brain, demonstrated that, as the condition progressed, visual skills in art emerged in people who had no interest in art.5 The increase in creativity was always visual, never verbal. Brain scans found the highest activity in the visual cortex. As the patient’s cognitive abilities deteriorated, the art became more photo realistic. Artwork published with the journal article looks like the art of autistic savants.

I SEE THE DECISION PROCESS

I see the decision-making process in my mind in a way most people do not. When I tried to explain this to a person who thinks in language, he just didn’t get it. How my decision-making works is most clearly seen in an emergency. 

On a bright, sunny day, I was driving to the airport when an elk ran into the highway just ahead of my car. I had only three or four seconds to react. During those few seconds, I saw images of my choices. The first image was of a car rear-ending me. This is what would have happened if I had made the instinctive panic response and slammed on the brakes. The second image was of an elk smashing through my windshield. This is what would have happened if I had swerved. The last image showed the elk passing by in front of my car. The last choice was the one I could make if I inhibited the panic response and braked just a little to slow the car. I mentally “clicked” on slowing down and avoided an accident. It was like clicking a computer mouse on the desired picture. 

www.healingthebrainbook.com
 

Brain Videos: Free for Teachers, Students, Parents

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers (and Humans Do)

FREE Videos

To accompany the series at 

www.healingthebrainbooks.com or at Amazon.com 

 

Click to play:

1. Introduction: Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers 

2. What Is This Thing Called the Brain?

3. Substance Abuse: A Brain Disease 

4. Growing Pains in the Teenage Brain 

5. Brain Trauma: Wounds that Time Won't Heal 

6. Gay Minority Stress

To accompany the series at 

www.healingthebrainbooks.com 

or at Amazon.com 

Paying with Our Health: Money Stress

Our new book, Healing the Brain: Stress & Money, looks at the price Americans pay with their health due to money worries. The creator of Hamilton, the musical, Lin-Manuel Miranda, talks about why money and financial literacy are important, reflecting on his life and that of his hero, the man who set up our financial system, Alexander Hamilton.

Lin-Manuel Miranda: The Power of Financial Knowledge

(Excerpted from MorganStanley.com, March 15, 2017)

When it comes to career-defining Broadway moments, it’s difficult to top the last few years for Lin-Manuel Miranda. Not only did the Hamilton creator and star give birth to the biggest hit in recent memory, he did it by redefining what Broadway could be for the next generation. Both in themes and in music, Hamilton speaks in particular to the Millennial generation—and reminds us the importance of "not throwing away my shot."

        Morgan Stanley, Inc.   

“To educate yourself about personal finance is to empower yourself with the resources and tools needed to help you achieve your goals.”

With the incredible success of Hamilton, what has your journey as a writer, actor and artist taught you about the importance of financial literacy?

This experience taught me first-hand how important it is to educate yourself about the basic principles of financial planning. When you are focused on doing what you love, it can be easy to brush aside the need to understand the monetary implications of upcoming milestones. However, regardless of who you are and what you are most passionate about, everyone should master the fundamentals in order to find and fulfill your own greater purpose. For me, that means dedicating the resources I have available to me—whether it is time, effort, money, or relationships—to important organizations, causes, and passion projects.

In addition to familiarizing yourself with the basics, it is equally important to know when to ask for help.

To educate yourself about personal finance is to empower yourself with the resources and tools needed to help you achieve your goals.

What is something about money you wish you had known when first starting out your career?

There is so much I wish I knew about money when I was first starting out my adult life, but in particular, the importance of building good credit. Growing up, I was always cautious about spending.  In fact, I was so nervous about incurring debt that I didn’t open my first credit card until age 28, after my first show had opened on Broadway. As a result, even though I had enough money in the bank, I didn’t have sufficient credit history to purchase my first apartment. My father had to help me buy it by co-signing the mortgage.

Who do you look to for financial advice?

As I faced various opportunities and challenges throughout my career, I was very fortunate to have the guidance of my father. Because in addition to familiarizing yourself with the basics, it is equally as important to know when to ask for help. Trusted, professional support can be invaluable when you’re navigating the complex decisions and tradeoffs associated with big life milestones.

Why is building a financial foundation critical for pursuing your passions?

To educate yourself about personal finance is to empower yourself with the resources and tools needed to help you achieve your goals: whether it be owning your own home, starting a business, making a living off of your passions, providing for a family, having a healthy relationship with money, or paying it forward.

What is one of the greatest lessons you have learned about money?

In writing about Alexander Hamilton, I had to learn a great deal about the birth of our financial system. He intuitively understood that if the states are tied together financially, we begin to transcend our colonial mindset and thinking of ourselves as one nation. I'd never thought of money as a unifying or stabilizing force prior to telling his story.

What are you saving for today?

My family, my children, and supporting causes dear to my heart.

Get your copy by clicking here!

Daylight Savings and Your Sleep

More and more people are coming to dislike the adjustment to our body clocks necessitated by Daylight Savings Time. In this excerpt from Healing the Brain, we look at sleep and its importance to our health.

Many people view sleep as merely a “down time” when their brains shut off and their bodies rest. People may cut back on sleep, thinking it won’t be a problem, because other responsibilities seem much more important. But research shows that a number of vital tasks carried out during sleep help people stay healthy and function at their best. While you sleep, your brain is hard at work forming the pathways necessary for learning and creating memories and new insights. Without enough sleep, you can’t focus and pay attention or respond quickly. A lack of sleep may even cause mood problems. Also, growing evidence shows that a chronic lack of sleep increases your risk of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and infections.

Public Domain Pictures

Researchers acknowledge that regular, consistent sleep plays a major role in brain and body health

Despite growing support for the idea that adequate sleep, like adequate nutrition and physical activity, is vital to our well-being, people are sleeping less. The nonstop “24/7” nature of the world today encourages longer or nighttime work hours and offers continual access to entertainment and other activities. To keep up, people cut back on sleep. A common myth is that people can learn to get by on little sleep (such as less than 6 hours a night) with no adverse effects. Research suggests, however, that adults need at least 7–8 hours of sleep each night to be well rested. Indeed, in 1910, most people slept 9 hours a night. But recent surveys show the average adult now sleeps fewer than 7 hours a night.

Chronic sleep loss or sleep disorders may affect as many as 70 million Americans.

More than one-third of adults report daytime sleepiness so severe that it interferes with work, driving, and social functioning at least a few days each month. Evidence also shows that children’s and adolescents’ sleep is shorter than recommended. These trends have been linked to increased exposure to electronic media. Lack of sleep may have a direct effect on children’s health, behavior, and development. Chronic sleep loss or sleep disorders may affect as many as 70 million Americans. This may result in an annual cost of $16 billion in health care expenses and $50 billion in lost productivity.

What Makes You Sleep?

Although you may put off going to sleep in order to squeeze more activities into your day, eventually your need for sleep becomes overwhelming. This need appears to be due, in part, to two substances your body produces. One substance, called adenosine, builds up in your blood while you’re awake. Then, while you sleep, your body breaks down the adenosine. Levels of this substance in your body may help trigger sleep when needed.

A buildup of adenosine and many other complex factors might explain why, after several nights of less than optimal amounts of sleep, you build up a sleep debt. This may cause you to sleep longer than normal or at unplanned times during the day. Because of your body’s internal processes, you can’t adapt to getting less sleep than your body needs. Eventually, a lack of sleep catches up with you. The other substance that helps make you sleep is a hormone called melatonin. This hormone makes you naturally feel sleepy at night. It is part of your internal “biological clock,” which controls when you feel sleepy and your sleep patterns. Your biological clock is a small bundle of cells in your brain that works throughout the day and night. Internal and external environmental cues, such as light signals received through your eyes, control these cells. Your biological clock triggers your body to produce melatonin, which helps prepare your brain and body for sleep. As melatonin is released, you’ll feel increasingly drowsy.

Flickr

Because their work schedules are at odds with powerful sleep-regulating cues like sunlight, night shift workers often find themselves drowsy at work.

Because of your biological clock, you naturally feel the most tired between midnight and 7 a.m. You also may feel mildly sleepy in the afternoon between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. when another increase in melatonin occurs in your body. Your biological clock makes you the most alert during daylight hours and the least alert during the early morning hours. Consequently, most people do their best work during the day.

Our 24/7 society, however, demands that some people work at night. Nearly one-quarter of all workers work shifts that are not during the daytime, and more than two-thirds of these workers have problem sleepiness and/or difficulty sleeping. Because their work schedules are at odds with powerful sleep-regulating cues like sunlight, night shift workers often find themselves drowsy at work, and they have difficulty falling or staying asleep during the daylight hours when their work schedules require them to sleep.

Top 10 Sleep Myths

Myth 1: Sleep is a time when your body and brain shut down for rest and relaxation. No evidence shows that any major organ (including the brain) or regulatory system in the body shuts down during sleep. Some physiological processes actually become more active while you sleep. For example, secretion of certain hormones is boosted, and activity of the pathways in the brain linked to learning and memory increases.

Myth 2: Getting just 1 hour less sleep per night than needed will not have any effect on your daytime functioning. This lack of sleep may not make you noticeably sleepy during the day. But even slightly less sleep can affect your ability to think properly and respond quickly, and it can impair your cardiovascular health and energy balance as well as your body’s ability to fight infections, particularly if lack of sleep continues. If you consistently do not get enough sleep, a sleep debt builds up that you can never repay. This sleep debt affects your health and quality of life and makes you feel tired during the day.

Myth 3: Your body adjusts quickly to different sleep schedules. Your biological clock makes you most alert during the daytime and least alert at night. Thus, even if you work the night shift, you will naturally feel sleepy when nighttime comes. Most people can reset their biological clock, but only by appropriately timed cues—and even then, by 1–2 hours per day at best. Consequently, it can take more than a week to adjust to a substantial change in your sleep–wake cycle—for example, when traveling across several time zones or switching from working the day shift to the night shift.

Myth 4: People need less sleep as they get older. Older people don’t need less sleep, but they may get less sleep or find their sleep less refreshing. That’s because as people age, the quality of their sleep changes. Older people are also more likely to have insomnia or other medical conditions that disrupt their sleep. 23

Myth 5: Extra sleep for one night can cure you of problems with excessive daytime fatigue. Not only is the quantity of sleep important, but also the quality of sleep. Some people sleep 8 or 9 hours a night but don’t feel well rested when they wake up because the quality of their sleep is poor. A number of sleep disorders and other medical conditions affect the quality of sleep. Sleeping more won’t lessen the daytime sleepiness these disorders or conditions cause. However, many of these disorders or conditions can be treated effectively with changes in behavior or with medical therapies. Additionally, one night of increased sleep may not correct multiple nights of inadequate sleep.

Myth 6: You can make up for lost sleep during the week by sleeping more on the weekends. Although this sleeping pattern will help you feel more rested, it will not completely make up for the lack of sleep or correct your sleep debt. This pattern also will not necessarily make up for impaired performance during the week or the physical problems that can result from not sleeping enough. Furthermore, sleeping later on the weekends can affect your biological clock, making it much harder to go to sleep at the right time on Sunday nights and get up early on Monday mornings.

Myth 7: Naps are a waste of time. Although naps are no substitute for a good night’s sleep, they can be restorative and help counter some of the effects of not getting enough sleep at night. Naps can actually help you learn how to do certain tasks quicker. But avoid taking naps later than 3 p.m., particularly if you have trouble falling asleep at night, as late naps can make it harder for you to fall asleep when you go to bed. Also, limit your naps to no longer than 20 minutes, because longer naps will make it harder to wake up and get back in the swing of things. If you take more than one or two planned or unplanned naps during the day, you may have a sleep disorder that should be treated.

Myth 8: Snoring is a normal part of sleep. Snoring during sleep is common, particularly as a person gets older. Evidence is growing that snoring on a regular basis can make you sleepy during the day and increase your risk for diabetes and heart disease. In addition, some studies link frequent snoring to problem behavior and poorer school achievement in children. Loud, frequent snoring also can be a sign of sleep apnea, a serious sleep disorder that should be evaluated and treated. (See “Is Snoring a Problem?” on page 30.)

Myth 9: Children who don’t get enough sleep at night will show signs of sleepiness during the day. Unlike adults, children who don’t get enough sleep at night typically become hyperactive, irritable, and inattentive during the day. They also have increased risk of injury and more behavior problems, and their growth rate may be impaired. Sleep debt appears to be quite common during childhood and may be misdiagnosed as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Myth 10: The main cause of insomnia is worry. Although worry or stress can cause a short bout of insomnia, a persistent inability to fall asleep or stay asleep at night can be caused by a number of other factors. Certain medications and sleep disorders can keep you up at night. Other common causes of insomnia are depression, anxiety disorders, and asthma, arthritis, or other medical conditions with symptoms that tend to be troublesome at night. Some people who have chronic insomnia also appear to be more “revved up” than normal, so it is harder for them to fall asleep. 

LEARN MORE ABOUT SLEEP AND MUCH MORE ABOUT YOUR HEALTH IN OUR BOOK:

 

Stress & Money: Paying With our Health

Free Illustration

Money fears and worries rank high as America’s stressors.

Money doesn’t buy happiness. Just try living without it, though.

We use money every day. It runs our daily lives--pays for food, clothing, and shelter; educates our children; supports us in retirement; and everything in between.

Americans are extremely concerned over their finances. Surveys show money and personal finances to be the number one cause of stress in America.

In this book about the brain, we look at stress and trauma and how they affect the brain and subsequently our health. Insomnia, migraines, ulcers, and more are triggered by money stress, according to Corporate Wellness Magazine--and any doctor who sees patients every day.

The treatment and cure for money worries doesn’t come in a pill or physical therapy. Only basic knowledge about money and how it works can ease our fears and help build a sound financial house.

Think about it: We go to school. We get courses in English, Science, Math, History...what course don’t we get? Has anybody taken a course called My Money, Money 101, or Building Personal Wealth?

So do we learn about money at work? At home?

The answers are almost always no.

This information deficit has become more critical because over the past decade, culminating in the Great Recession, the economic world of middle-class Americans shifted under our feet.

In these pages you will find information on topics that have proven important in talking to people about their finances. Folks working two and three jobs to make ends meet. People working in what they call “their retirement job.” Those trying adjust to the “new economy.”

Healing the Brain: Stress & Money gives readers a view of the remarkable human brain, its capabilities, and its vulnerabilities. A brain compromised by stress and trauma diminishes our health and yet the brain is slowly yielding its secrets to science and medicine.

Get the book: Healing the Brain: Stress & Money!