Sleep
Even Fat Cells Need Sleep
Here’s a study to make you hit the bed early tonight. Matthew Brady, PhD, associate professor of medicine and vice-chair of the Committee on Molecular Metabolism and Nutrition at the University of Chicago, found that not getting enough sleep has a harmful impact on fat cells in body, reducing their ability to absorb insulin by […]
LabBook August 10, 2012
Welcome to LabBook, our weekly roundup of University of Chicago Medicine & Biological Sciences research news from around campus and the world wide web. Each Friday, LabBook will recap the week on the blog, link to news stories about our faculty and studies, and briefly summarize a handful of recent publications by our researchers. This […]
The Deep Impact of Childhood Sleep Apnea
By Matt Wood Hearing a young child snore like Grandpa may be cute, but it’s not something to ignore. Excessive snoring in children is a symptom of obstructive sleep apnea (OSA), a condition marked by repeated episodes of obstructed breathing during sleep that has been linked to cognitive problems, obesity and long-term damage to the […]
Year in Review: UChicago Research 2011
As another year comes to a close we’d like to look back at the fascinating research breakthroughs and inspiring patient stories from 2011. ScienceLife ran 168 posts this year, and while we wish we could highlight all of them, here are a handful of our favorites from each month. January Patrick Wilson found out that […]
Lonely Hearts, Disrupted Sleep
Loneliness has had a tough run of late, with a growing body of research blaming it for everything from high blood pressure to heart disease to depression and cognitive decline. The research group of John Cacioppo, director of the Center for Cognitive and Social Neuroscience at the University of Chicago, has been among the leaders […]
Linkage 9/2: Counting Species, Ancient Drug Resistance, Sleep & Hypertension
Writing about science means looking up a lot of numbers. Trying to find a figure for the number of cells in the body or the protein-encoding genes in human DNA or patients diagnosed with ovarian cancer from 1980 through 1995 can eat up a lot of time and internet bandwidth. For some of these oft-cited […]
Sleep and the Male Sex Life
By Dianna Douglas More research practically begging people to get a good night’s sleep has come out of the sleep labs at the University of Chicago. Eve Van Cauter and Rachel Leproult have discovered that a week of inadequate sleep means less testosterone in young men. A lot less. In the study, ten healthy young […]
The Brain’s Underdogs Have Their Day
[Cartoon from the University of Washington "Neuroscience for Kids" page.] ===== In neuroscience, the neurons hog all the attention. Most research is focused on the 100 billion neurons of the brain, the elongated cells that fire electric action potentials and release chemical transmitters to communicate with each other. But the neurons are a minority in […]
Restless Sleep, Restless Blood Sugar
By Dianna Douglas Kristen Knutson, PhD, recently added to the growing body of research from the University of Chicago on the long-term consequences of skimping on sleep. She found that diabetics who sleep poorly have a harder time controlling their insulin and glucose levels than diabetics who sleep well. The research was published in the […]
