As strange as that may sound, sleep researchers have discovered that our sleep patterns are related to the way the Earth’s axis shifts. As the Earth travels around the sun on its annual course, one hemisphere is tilted toward the sun, getting more than its fair share of light and warmth, while the other is titled away and thus has winter weather. It’s the reason why going off daylight saving time may have given you insomnia.
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More than 40% of Americans say they don’t get enough sleep, and the culprit could be watching TV in bed. A new study by the National Sleep Foundation found that 95% of people polled had used some sort of electronic device less than an hour before bed the previous night. Exposure to electrical light between dusk and bedtime strongly suppresses melatonin levels, and light -emitting TVs, smart phones, computers and video-game players can do just that, making it difficult to sleep.
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After you eat Thanksgiving dinner, you may find yourself getting sleepy, because turkey contains a natural sleep-inducing amino acid called tryptophan. This is GOOD because cutting back on sleep reduces the benefits of dieting BUT sleeping too much may cause you to die younger. When dieters in a new study got a full night’s sleep, they lost the same amount of weight as when they slept less. When dieters got adequate sleep, however, more than half of the weight they lost was fat. When they cut back on their sleep, only one-fourth of their weight loss came from fat. They also felt hungrier. When sleep was restricted, dieters produced higher levels of ghrelin, a hormone that triggers hunger and reduces energy expenditure.read more