MEDICAL EXPRESS - SLEEP APNEA

The latest research news on sleep-wake disorders, like sleep apnea and other sleep problems
  1. It's common knowledge teens need a good night's sleep to function well. But recent Brock University-led international research has raised the stakes on what could happen if their slumber is inadequate. The findings are published in the European Journal of Public Health.
  2. Adolescents who sleep for longer—and from an earlier bedtime—than their peers tend to have improved brain function and perform better at cognitive tests, researchers from the UK and China have shown.
  3. Insomnia is a significant health and quality of life concern for older adults, with up to half of all adults over the age of 65 experiencing insomnia symptoms. In a new study, researchers in the Penn State College of Health and Human Development and at Taipei Medical University have analyzed five years of data from older adults in the United States. They found that higher levels of both insomnia symptoms and sleep medication use were associated with higher risk of disability a year later.
  4. Sleep is an essential biological process known to contribute to both mental and physical health. In addition to supporting memory processes and learning, boosting concentration, facilitating the body's recovery, and promoting cardiovascular health, good quality sleep for approximately 7–8 hours a day has been found to strengthen the body's immune system.
  5. Last year, two popular smartwatches—the Samsung Galaxy Watch and Apple Watch—received Food and Drug Administration approval for features that can potentially alert the wearer that they may have sleep apnea.
  6. Exercise too close to bedtime may affect sleep duration, timing and quality, new research led by Monash University has found. More strenuous workouts closer to bedtime coincided with greater disruptions to sleep and nighttime cardiac activity.
  7. Navigating bedtime with a teenager is, in many homes, a nightly battle with a constant refrain: Get off your phone! Go to bed!
  8. The topic of a new course at Mansfield Senior High School is one that teenagers across the country are having trouble with: How to Get to Sleep.
  9. A new scientific review from researchers at the Marshall University Joan C. Edwards School of Medicine highlights emerging connections between gut health and sleep apnea, pointing to potential new therapeutic approaches for managing this common and serious disorder.
  10. Insomnia and hazardous drinking are so closely intertwined that estimates suggest at least one-third, and as many as 91%, of people who have a hard time with sleep also misuse alcohol.
  11. Sleep is a necessary part of people's daily routine, but modern lifestyles and technology have ushered in an era of decreased rest time and subsequent fatigue. Further, the bedroom environment, such as light, sound, and temperature, is important for a good night's sleep, though this is often neglected in residential architecture.
  12. Healthy sleep includes multiple components, such as number of hours of sleep per night, how long it takes to fall asleep, daytime functioning and self-reported sleep satisfaction, and addressing these different dimensions of sleep may help to reduce cardiometabolic health and related risk factors, according to a new American Heart Association scientific statement published in Circulation: Cardiovascular Quality and Outcomes.
  13. A collaborative study conducted by researchers at the Center for Sleep and Cognition at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine) and ŌURA found that while sleep duration recovers quickly, sleep timing and sleep architecture can take significantly longer to realign when traveling across time zones. The study titled "Insights about Travel-Related Sleep Disruption from 1.5 Million Nights of Data" was published in SLEEP on 24 March 2025.
  14. "Avoid screens before bed" is one of the most common pieces of sleep advice. But what if the real problem isn't screen time—it's the way we use social media at night?
  15. Excessive screen time among adolescents negatively impacts multiple aspects of sleep, which in turn increases the risk of depressive symptoms—particularly among girls. That is the conclusion of a new study in PLOS Global Public Health by Sebastian Hökby of Karolinska Institutet, Sweden, and colleagues.
  16. Researchers at the University of Tsukuba have discovered that the so-called "multi-task exercise," which combines cognitive activity with physical movement, enhances sleep quality in older women by activating the prefrontal cortex after exercise. These findings may support the development of exercise programs designed to improve sleep in older populations.
  17. New research reveals that lower proportions of specific sleep stages are associated with reduced brain volume in regions vulnerable to the development of Alzheimer's disease over time.
  18. Scientists have found another reason to put the phone down: a survey of 45,202 young adults in Norway has discovered that using a screen in bed drives up your risk of insomnia by 59% and cuts your sleep time by 24 minutes. However, social media was not found to be more disruptive than other screen activities.
  19. A new study by researchers from Marshall University and the University of Missouri highlights how exosomes—tiny vesicles released by cells—may play a key role in blood-brain barrier (BBB) dysfunction in children with obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), particularly those with neurocognitive deficits.
  20. Those who start work earlier express more discomfort with the seasonal time change. This is the main conclusion of a study that the lecturers at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the University of Seville (US), Jorge Mira Pérez and José María Martín Olalla, have published in the journal Chronobiology International, in which they analyze in detail the results of the public consultation organized by the European Commission in 2018 in the then 28 member states, which obtained 4 million responses.
  21. People with a complex heart, kidney and metabolic-related condition who got better quality sleep were less likely to have an advanced stage of the illness than those getting poor sleep, according to a new study.
  22. A good night's sleep helps us remember recently learned information, "engraving" our memories. This is also true for animals, as remembering, for example, the location of food resources is essential for their survival. Scientists can examine this role of sleep in the lab by training lab mice or rats about their environment using various memory tasks.
  23. Does your partner keep leaving for the guest bedroom because of your thunderous snoring? Don't call the divorce lawyer. Instead, consider calling your doctor.
  24. Fruit fly mutants that have severe sleep deficits perform better at olfactory learning and memory tasks, according to a study published in the open-access journal PLOS Biology by Sheng Huang and Stephan Sigrist from Freie Universität Berlin, Germany, and colleagues. The paradox of enhanced memory despite sleep loss could be explained by protein kinase A (PKA) signaling in the mushroom body of the fly brain.
  25. Jet lag is one of the worst parts of long-distance traveling or shift work—it makes us tired and cranky, and also plays havoc with our metabolism (and therefore our weight). Now, new research on mice suggests that the way jet lag impacts our metabolism may depend on our sex.
  26. About 10% of Americans say they have chronic insomnia, and millions of others report poor sleep quality. Ongoing research has found that bad sleep could lead to numerous health problems, including heart disease.
  27. Struggling to sleep after the time change? You're not alone—daylight saving time causes temporary insomnia symptoms in as many as 35% of adults due to the sudden change in schedule, according to the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. Roughly a third of those adults will suffer insomnia symptoms year-round.
  28. In the middle of winter, when lack of sunlight can lead to low energy and low mood, we are expected to make new year's resolutions. But why not wait till March, for spring, when the returning sunlight gives us the energy and improved mood to tackle fundamentally difficult things like starting a new diet or exercise regimen? We need spring resolutions, not new year's resolutions.
  29. Mindfulness, total sleep quality, and alcohol consumption may help explain why people who stay up late have a greater risk of depression, according to a new study published in the open-access journal PLOS One by Simon Evans of the University of Surrey, UK, and colleagues.
  30. What is the best time to start the day in view of the variation in when the sun rises? This is the problem analyzed by Jorge Mira Pérez and José María Martín-Olalla, lecturers at the University of Santiago de Compostela (USC) and the University of Seville (US), in a study that has just been published in the journal Royal Society Open Science. In it, they analyze the physiological and social foundations of the practice of seasonal time change and review its impact on health.