Articles Tagged ‘sleep’
Neuroscience & Neurology | By January 10, 2010 | By Shaheen E Lakhan, MS, MEd, PhD, MD | 3 Comments
Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Neuroscience Conferences for 2010
Do you want to attend a neurology, neurosurgery, or neuroscience conference this year? In an effort to provide a consolidated webpage, I’ve compiled what I deem the most exhaustive online listing for 2010. I’ve included as many links as possible to official sources/sites with a rough idea of registration fees; however, should I have left something out, please feel free to comment and I’ll be sure to update the list. Only programs conducted in English are included. Read more →
- Narcolepsy Treatment May Lead to Abuse
- Be a Doctor! The Hours are Great!
- Sleeping on the Job – A Program Director’s Take on IOM Recommendations
- The Doctor Can’t See You Right Now, He’s Napping
- Beating the Biological Clock – Clinical Trials of Tasimelteon
- Sleep Deprivation, Behavior, and the Young
Narcolepsy is a neurological disorder typified by excessive daytime sleepiness. The symptoms of the disorder can be disabling, and for years treatment relied on amphetamines and related stimulants to help patients stay awake. For nearly 2 decades now, modafinil (Provigil) has been available to treat the symptoms of narcolepsy; modafinil has been the preferred wake-promoting drug due to its mechanism of action and safety profile that is distinct from traditional stimulants. It was long believed that modafinil could produce the benefits of the stimulants without the dangerous and unwanted side effects. However, a new study conducted by the National Institutes of Health (NIH), reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, has shown that it might not be as different from traditional stimulants as once believed. Read more →
Residency training in the United States has historically been a period of abusive hours and intense training. Until recently, there was no limit to the number of hours per week a resident could work. In fact, that has something to do with why they’re called “residents” in the first place: they practically lived in the hospitals in which they worked.
Then came the Libby Zion case, in which a young woman died while under the care of overtired residents. Suddenly America realized that it probably wasn’t a good idea to have inexperienced doctors taking care of really sick people on less than three hours of sleep per night. Read more →
I’ve been thinking about sleeping a lot lately. Not in the sense of curling up under the blankets for hours on end, but in the sense of thinking about the topic of sleeping. As the program director of an internal medicine residency program, one of my jobs is to make sure that my residents are rested enough to provide appropriate patient care. I was under the impression that they were. But recently, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) came to the conclusion that many residents are still sleep-deprived, posing a threat to the safety of patients under their care across the United States. Based on this conclusion, the IOM made the bold recommendation that after 16 hours of continuous work, residents must be allowed an uninterrupted five hour block of time for sleep, preferably between the hours of 10pm and 8am. Read more →
On December 2nd, the Institute of Medicine (IOM) released a report suggesting that resident physicians have further limits on work hours than those enacted in 2003 by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). While the number of hours per week would remain at the ACGME maximum of 80, the IOM recommends on 30-hour shifts that a “protected sleep period” of 5 hours occurs between 10pm-8am. These measures are aimed at reducing physician fatigue and the number of resultant medical mistakes. Read more →
The Lancet recently published clinical trial data from a Harvard study which compares the experimental new drug tasimelteon to placebo in treating jet lag. The medication works by binding to the same receptor as melatonin, and activating it as a direct agonist.
Melatonin is a neurotransmitter produced by the brain that is believed to play a pivotal role in the regulation of our “biological clock” or circadian rhythm. Melatonin levels fluctuate in the bloodstream throughout the day, and surge during the nighttime hours when it is dark outside and our bodies are inclined to sleep. The trouble with melatonin is that it falls under the FDA category of supplements and nutraceuticals, and is therefore largely unregulated in terms of potency, manufacturing process, and quality of ingredients. Studies are hard to conduct and successfully repeat for this reason as well. Read more →
These days, sleep is often seen as an expendable resource. With so much work to do and limited time to accomplish tasks, going to sleep later and waking up earlier seems so natural. For some people, lack of sleep was used to prove toughness and stamina. It was common for physician trainees to boast (in some cases complain) about getting little sleep. However, studies showing suboptimal patient care when residents are sleep-deprived have resulted in shorter working hours and mandatory time off after a number of hours at work. Read more →
Tuesday, February 9, 2010
- Religion - A "Natural" Phenomenon?
- Creating an Artificial Brain
- How Culture Shapes Our Mind and Brain
- Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis
- The Secret to Good Health – Listen to the Data
- If Herbal Medicine is Medicine, Shouldn't it be Treated as Such?
- Too Much Information?
- Swine Flu - A Lose-Lose Situation for Public Health Authorities
- Logging On for Psychotherapy
- The Neural Basis of the Self
- Income Inequality and Health Outcomes
- Ginkgo Biloba Ineffective... Again
- The Evolution of Depression
- Post-Partum Psychosis - Rare but Real
- Worried Well on the Web
- Is Your Doctor Happy or Burnt-Out?
- Journal Retracts Autism Research
- How Young is Too Young to Diagnose Depression?
- In Sickness and Mental Health
- Health Insurance for All - A Weighty Issue
- “I Feel Your Pain” – The Neural Basis of Empathy
- Speaking in Tongues – A Neural Snapshot
- Neuro Case 1 – Using Transcranial Doppler for Basilar Artery Occlusion
- Journal Retracts Autism Research
- Crossing the Line from Physician to Journalist
- Ginkgo Biloba Ineffective… Again
- The Smart Ones are Living Longer
- Too Much Information?
- Drugs and Pharmacology, Nineteenth Edition
- Coping with Trauma – Lessons from Resilient Individuals
- Worried Well on the Web
- Neurology, Neurosurgery, and Neuroscience Conferences for 2010
- One Puff Forward, Two Pounds Back
- Income Inequality and Health Outcomes
- Farewell 2009, Welcome 2010
- When the Drugs Don’t Work, or Just Make it Worse
- Is a Slim Santa Claus Coming to Town?
- Stimulants May Offer Protection in ADHD
- Sex, Violence and The Male Warrior Hypothesis
- Is Time on Your Side?
- We all get depressed every now and then. It's part of life. Sometimes you feel g...
- it will take many test to prove whether gingko biloba is effective..but for now ...
- i do not know which Australlia you are talking abiuy. My impression about this c...
- The Institute of Natural Excellence has a new way to look at this and many other...
- My guessI expect that in their childhood...free flowing care free ...
- its the mind game when it comes to good healthy survival. better iq means better...
- the ability of brain to store information, regarding different languages while c...
- 12 children were taken as subjects for a very controversial research , the resu...
- Below is how and why the Swine flu was Genetically Engineered. For full version...
- Having worked with developmentally disabled persons for 17 years, I see many par...
- Great job. I've posted a link to here from the ...
- Yeah... I don't buy it. Know why? Because rotund Santa was around for many gener...
- For those unfamiliar with Dr. John Cannell's Vitamin D Theory of Autism see the...
- It is a pity that very little coverage of this issue names the journalist who is...
- I would like to see some research into what Ginkgo biloba does do instead of wha...
- It is easier for us to ignore the problem than really attack the problem, due to...
- I was going by Alan MacFarlane's description of Hunter Gatherer societies.( les...
- Javaid, where on earth do you get the idea that hunter-gatherers have little or ...
- This is my angle ..Hunter Gatherers have the lightest density footprint and ...
- yes , i really like it. isuggest everyone to be fit and healthy....

