Health
Another reason to get more sleep and this one might surprise you
Good shut-eye is critical for all sorts of reasons — but now there’s a compelling new one, according to a study.
An international team of scientists discovered an interesting incentive for getting eight hours of sleep a night.
Make sure to get plenty of slumber if you’re trying to learn a new language, researchers say.
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The study, led by the University of South Australia, revealed that the coordination of two electrical events in the sleeping brain “significantly” improves its ability to remember new words and complex grammatical rules, as news agency SWNS reported.
To explore the relationship between memory retention and sleep, researchers at the university asked 35 English-speaking adults to study Mini Pinyin, a miniature language based on Mandarin.
An international team of scientists has discovered a compelling incentive to get eight hours of sleep a night — and it might surprise you. (iStock)
Mini Pinyin’s grammatical rules are similar to English.
The language contains 32 verbs and 25 nouns, SWNS reported, including 10 human entities, 10 animals and five objects.
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Overall, the language has 576 unique sentences.
The participants were split into two groups.
Half the participants learned the language in the morning — the other half learned it in the evening, then slept on it.
Half of them learned the language in the morning and returned in the evening to have their memory tested.
The other half learned Mini Pinyin in the evening, slept through the night and had their memory tested the next morning.
Sleep does not just mean a period of rest. “It is also an active, transformative state of the brain,” said a researcher involved in the new study. (iStock)
Researchers also tracked the brain activity of the second group during their sleep, said SWNS.
Those who slept performed significantly better than those who remained awake, according to the findings, which were published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
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Lead researcher Zachariah Cross, PhD, said sleep-based improvements were linked to the coupling of slow oscillations and sleep spindles — brainwave patterns that synchronize during NREM sleep.
Cross, who earned his PhD at the University of South Australia and is now based at Northwestern University in the U.S., said that “the coupling likely reflects the transfer of learned information from the hippocampus to the cortex, enhancing long-term memory storage.”
Those who slept performed significantly better than those who remained awake, according to the findings. (iStock)
Post-sleep neural activity, he also said, “showed unique patterns … suggesting a strong link between sleep-induced brainwave coordination and learning patterns.”
The study underscores the importance of sleep in learning complex linguistic rules, said researcher Scott Cousens of the University of South Australia.
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Sleep does not just mean a time to rest, he suggested.
“It is also an active, transformative state of the brain,” he said.
The research team said it plans to explore how sleep and wake dynamics influence the learning of other complex cognitive tasks.
The research team said it plans to explore how sleep and wake dynamics influence the learning of other complex cognitive tasks, aside from language studies. (iStock)
“Understanding how the brain works has implications beyond language learning,” said Cross. “It could revolutionize how we approach education, rehabilitation and cognitive training.”
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Dr. Brian Licuanan, a board-certified clinical psychologist in California, recently told Fox News Digital that there are a variety of reasons sleep can be disrupted — including medical and mental health conditions, diet, alcohol intake and other lifestyle behaviors, such as screen exposure.
Among the tips for better sleep — as shared by Licuanan, the author of “How to Get Your Resisting Loved One Into Treatment” — are being more cognizant of food and drink consumption.
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“Carve out time for exercise and healthy eating habits, as that will help you relax and promote better sleep.”
Angelica Stabile of Fox News Digital contributed reporting.
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A new report by the American Heart Association (AHA) included some troubling predictions for the future of women’s health.
The forecast, published in the journal Circulation on Wednesday, projected increases in various comorbidities in American females by 2050.
More than 59% of women were predicted to have high blood pressure, up from less than 49% currently.
The review also projected that more than 25% of women will have diabetes, compared to about 15% today, and more than 61% will have obesity, compared to 44% currently.
As a result of these risk factors, the prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7%.
The prevalence of cardiovascular disease and stroke in women is expected to rise to 14.4% from 10.7% by 2050. (iStock)
Not all trends were negative, as unhealthy cholesterol prevalence is expected to drop to about 22% from more than 42% today, the report stated.
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Dr. Elizabeth Klodas, a cardiologist and founder of Step One Foods in Minnesota, commented on these “jarring findings.”
“The fact that on our current trajectory, cardiometabolic disease is projected to explode in women within one generation should be a huge wake-up call,” she told Fox News Digital.
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“Hypertension, diabetes, obesity — these are all major risk factors for heart disease, and we are already seeing what those risks are driving. Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women, eclipsing all other causes of death, including breast cancer.”
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death for women in the U.S. and around the world. (iStock)
Klodas warned that heart disease starts early, progresses “stealthily,” and can present “out of the blue in devastating ways.”
The AHA published another study on Thursday revealing one million hospitalizations, showing that heart attack deaths are climbing among adults below the age of 55.
The more alarming finding, according to Klodas, is that young women were found more likely to die after their first heart attack than men of the same age.
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“This is all especially tragic since heart disease is almost entirely preventable,” she said. “The earlier you start, the better.”
Children can show early evidence of plaque deposition in their arteries, which can be reversed through lifestyle changes if “undertaken early enough and aggressively enough,” according to the expert.
Moving more is one part of protecting a healthy heart, according to experts. (iStock)
Klodas suggested that rising heart conditions are associated with traditional risk factors, like smoking, high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes, obesity and a sedentary lifestyle.
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Doctors are also seeing higher rates of preeclampsia, or high blood pressure during pregnancy, as well as gestational diabetes. Klodas noted that these are sex-specific risk factors that don’t typically contribute to complications until after menopause.
The best way to protect a healthy heart is to “do the basics,” Klodas recommended, including the following lifestyle habits.
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Klodas especially emphasized making improvements to diet, as the food people eat affects “every single risk factor that the AHA’s report highlights.”
“High blood pressure, high blood sugar, high cholesterol, excess weight – these are all conditions that are driven in part or in whole by food,” she said. “We eat multiple times every single day, which means what we eat has profound cumulative effects over time.”
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health,” a doctor said. (iStock)
“Even a small improvement in dietary intake, when maintained, can have a massive positive impact on health.”
The doctor also recommends changing out a few snacks per day for healthier choices, which has been proven to “yield medication-level cholesterol reductions” in a month.
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“Keep up that small change and, over the course of a year, you could also lose 20 pounds and reduce your sodium intake enough to avoid blood pressure-lowering medications,” Klodas added.
“Women should not view the AHA report as inevitable. We have power over our health destinies. We just need to use it.”
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Nearsightedness (myopia) is skyrocketing globally, with nearly half of the world’s population expected to be myopic by 2050, according to the World Health Organization.
Heavy use of smartphones and other devices is associated with an 80% higher risk of myopia when combined with excessive computer use, but a new study suggests that dim indoor lighting could also be a factor.
For years, scientists have been puzzled by the different ways myopia is triggered. In lab settings, it can be induced by blurring vision or using different lenses. Conversely, it can be slowed by something as simple as spending time outdoors, research suggests.
Nearsightedness occurs when the eyeball grows too long from front to back, according to the American Optometric Association (AOA). This physical elongation causes light to focus in front of the retina rather than directly on it, making distant objects appear blurry.
The study suggests that myopia isn’t caused by the digital devices themselves, but by the low-light environments where they are typically used. (iStock)
Researchers at the State University of New York (SUNY) College of Optometry identified a potential specific trigger for this growth. When someone looks at a phone or a book up close, the pupil naturally constricts.
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“In bright outdoor light, the pupil constricts to protect the eye while still allowing ample light to reach the retina,” Urusha Maharjan, a SUNY Optometry doctoral student who conducted the study, said in a press release.
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“When people focus on close objects indoors, such as phones, tablets or books, the pupil can also constrict — not because of brightness, but to sharpen the image,” she went on. “In dim lighting, this combination may significantly reduce retinal illumination.”
High-intensity natural light prevents myopia because it provides enough retinal stimulation to override the “stop growing” signal, even when pupils are constricted. (iStock)
The hypothesis suggests that when the retina is deprived of light during extended close-up work, it sends a signal for the eye to grow.
In a dim environment, the narrowed pupil allows so little light through that the retinal activity isn’t strong enough to signal the eye to stop growing, the researchers found.
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In contrast, being outdoors provides light levels much brighter than indoors. This ensures that even when the pupil narrows to focus on a nearby object, the retina still receives a strong signal, maintaining healthy eye development.
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The team noted some limitations of the study, including the small subject group and the inability to directly measure internal lens changes, as the bright backgrounds used to mimic the outdoors made pupils too small for standard equipment.
Researchers believe that increasing indoor brightness during close-up work could be a simple, testable way to slow the global nearsightedness epidemic. (iStock)
“This is not a final answer,” Jose-Manuel Alonso, MD, PhD, SUNY distinguished professor and senior author of the study, said in the release.
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“But the study offers a testable hypothesis that reframes how visual habits, lighting and eye focusing interact.”
The study was published in the journal Cell Reports.
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