Sleep

Q.Thank you for printing the vinegar treatment for foot fungus. My husband has had so-called jungle rot since his days as a soldier in Vietnam. It's been incurable, but now it is all but gone, with only a few soaks needed every so often to keep it from coming back. My father, an eye doctor, told an elderly patient about vinegar. She was about to have a toenail amputated by another doctor because the fungus could not be cured. She started soaking her foot and saved her toenail. A.Dermatologists groan when we write about home remedies for nail fungus.

The Maryland State Medical Society recognizes the health risks of adolescent sleep deprivation and for that reason recommends Maryland adopt later start times in the state's high schools ("Md. school systems study later start times for high schools," March 11). Studies indicate that a modest delay in school start time is associated with significant improvements in adolescent alertness, mood and health. A 2010 study published in the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine offered compelling evidence for the potential benefits of adjusting school schedules to adolescents' sleep needs, circadian rhythms and developmental stage.

FEELING BLEARY this morning? Up too late or too early? Medical science has now got a drug for you. Wake Forest University researchers recently reported that they've found a compound that temporarily restores normal cognitive functioning and short-term memory in the sleep-deprived, at least in tested monkeys. Human tests are under way. No, the chemical, labeled CX717, isn't coffee, which offers the potential for overstimulation and addiction. This new drug apparently improves the functioning of certain chemical receptors in certain parts of the brain without arousing the whole brain.

Johns Hopkins' 12-4 record last season disguised a matter that troubles every coach but has few solutions: injuries. Four starters missed extended time in 2012 because of a variety of ailments. Attackman Chris Boland - who has since graduated - sat out eight starts after breaking his collarbone in the team's season-opening win against Towson, and then-junior midfielder John Greeley was sidelined for the final four contests after re-tearing the anterior cruciate ligament in his left knee.

The National Institutes of Health is expanding its safe infant sleep outreach campaign to include ways to reduce not only sudden infant death syndrome but all causes of infant death. The “Back to Sleep” campaign was launched in 1994 to encourage parents to put babies to sleep on their back to reduce the risk of SIDS, or unexplained death of an infant under a year old. The campaign has been adopted widely, with Maryland and Baltimore City aggressively educating parents.

In addition to all the reasons that being overweight is not good for you, there is evidence that it prevents you from sleeping well. Even worse, researchers warn of a vicious cycle of eating more when you are sleep-deprived. If more motivation were needed to make that New Year's resolution to shed those extra pounds, the prospect of not sleeping and gaining more weight should do it. The dangers of obesity are well known and can't be emphasized enough. There's the increased risk of diabetes, hypertension and heart problems that can lead to a poor quality of life and, at worst, a reduced life span.

While health professionals encourage people to get from seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, millions of Americans are falling well short of that mark. Many are getting just five to six hours and recent studies have shown that more than 20 percent of the population may be suffering from some type of sleep disorder. St. Agnes Hospital now has a renovated and expanded facility dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. The St. Agnes Sleep Center is open to adults and children as young as 3 years old. The patients are usually referred to the facility by their primary care doctor or cardiologist.

The chronic sleep disorder that afflicts Ravens rookie linebacker Sergio Kindle is a common but often misdiagnosed condition that is treatable and should not affect his NFL career, according to experts in the study of narcolepsy. But the long-term effect is still being studied. University of Texas football coach Mack Brown disclosed last week that Kindle, 23, suffers from narcolepsy. It is unknown whether the disorder contributed to a recent fall at a house in Austin in which his skull was fractured.

A. M. Chaplin says that she demonstrated true reportoria involvement in this week's cover story on sleep. She got a two-week-long attack of insomnia while she was doing it, during which she felt, as every insomniac does, godawful. "I consoled myself," she says, "with deeply resentful thoughts about certain individuals who have the bad taste to sleep soundly while their spouses toss and turn miserably for hours."A. M. takes some small pleasure in pointing out the rotten sleep habits of sleep researchers.

Sleeping. We spend a third of our lives doing it, and yet we have to learn how, and some of us still have trouble with it after many years. Some sleep scientists believe most of us are getting 6 hours of sleep a night, when we actually need 8 or 10. Sleep experts say the key to getting to sleep is to have a routine, a set of behaviors practiced faithfully every night to "wind you down" and lead you into dreamland. Some suggested activities are stretching exercises to relax tension, drinking hot caffeine-free tea, or luxuriating in a warm bath.

From Liz Atwood: I'm just not getting enough sleep and the kids are the reason why. My sons are no longer infants crying in the middle of the night to be fed or changed. They aren't toddlers running into my room when they have a bad dream. They are a tween and a teen and they just can't seem to fall asleep until very late at night. Their habit of staying up until 11 or later is taking its toll on all of us. Last week, the 16-year-old, who has to get up at 6:30 in order to make the bus on time, asked to have coffee at breakfast.

While health professionals encourage people to get from seven to eight hours of sleep nightly, millions of Americans are falling well short of that mark. Many are getting just five to six hours and recent studies have shown that more than 20 percent of the population may be suffering from some type of sleep disorder. St. Agnes Hospital now has a renovated and expanded facility dedicated to the diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders. The St. Agnes Sleep Center is open to adults and children as young as 3 years old. The patients are usually referred to the facility by their primary care doctor or cardiologist.

Drop a few pounds and it will lead to a good night's sleep, new Johns Hopkins research has found. As the body loses fat, particularly belly fat, people are able to sleep better, Hopkins doctors found when following 77 people over six months. The improvement in sleep quality was experienced by both those who lost weight through diet as well as those who combined a healthy diet with exercise. Study participants had type 2 diabetes or pre-diabetes and were all overweight or obese.

Last night before I left work, my husband sent me the photo above, with the caption, "Dinner is exhausting. " Aww, how cute, we both thought. He'd been eating his Cheerios and yogurt melts to finish up his dinner while my husband was cooking in the kitchen, and just conked out. It wasn't all that long before Aaron's usual bedtime, and he put him down in his crib. Ahh, an easy bedtime for the little guy, we both thought. Annnnnnd ... not so much. A bit after I got home he woke up, and we tried to give him the bottle he'd missed and put him back to bed, but he was totally unglued.

You think sports fans are superstitious? That baseball players have the corner on game-day rituals? I say they've got nothing on parents whose baby just slept through the night for the first time in weeks. After a couple of months of being solidly spoiled by several hours in a row of glorious sleep thanks to a sleeping baby, my husband and I were completely thrashed when he suddenly stopped sleeping more than a handful of hours at a stretch. And this continued for days and days, probably months if we calculated it (which trust me, we don't want to do)

The National Institutes of Health is expanding its safe infant sleep outreach campaign to include ways to reduce not only sudden infant death syndrome but all causes of infant death. The “Back to Sleep” campaign was launched in 1994 to encourage parents to put babies to sleep on their back to reduce the risk of SIDS, or unexplained death of an infant under a year old. The campaign has been adopted widely, with Maryland and Baltimore City aggressively educating parents.

I am standing in the linen department of a large department store. There's a sale in progress. I am lovingly fingering the printed sheets with bright tulips. I move along to the Ralph Lauren designer sheets -- oooh, these are striking. Then I -- over to Calvin Klein and hug the gorgeous pillow cases. Ah, to be able to spend a night on any of these great designs.I love colorful sheets -- probably because he hates them so much. Besides, they didn't have printed sheets with all the neat colors when I was growing up.But he has a disease that I call Printed Sheet Shock Syndrome.

WANT A well-rested work force? Dream on. We promise the boss the report will be on her desk at 8 a.m., then grab another cup of coffee. We laugh along with Jay Leno's monologue, then set the alarm for 6 a.m. After it rings, we hustle to get ready for our 80-minute commute. We get only six hours of shut-eye a night -- that is, if the snoring of our equally sleep-deprived mate doesn't keep us awake. We doze off at work, while idling at traffic lights, around the dinner table. We get irritable; we get heart disease; we make mistakes; we make our spouses feel devastatingly unattractive as we nod off in the easy chair to cap off another unromantic evening.

A few years ago, I vowed that there was one topic I would never bring up again on social media: sleep training. As my maternity leave wound to a close at the end of 2008, my baby stopped sleeping. We'd been spoiled, no doubt, by his good sleeping before that, but we found ourselves up several times a night, rocking him back to sleep, sometimes for hours. We were completely thrashed. My husband and I did some reading, and we did a version of sleep training that I now know it known as " controlled comforting.

The beginning of the school year often means morning battles between parents and their children who don't want to get out of bed in the morning. But a good night's sleep is crucial to a student's performance in school. Dr. Scott Krugman, chairman of the department of pediatrics at MedStar Franklin Square Medical Center and the vice president of the Maryland Chapter of the American Academy of Pediatrics, talks about children's sleep patterns and how to get them on a workable sleep schedule.