Browsing by Subject "sleep"
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Item A Parent-Focused Intervention to Increase Parent Health Literacy and Healthy Lifestyle Choices for Young Children and Families.(2012-07-16) Fleary, SashaHealth literacy affects caregivers' ability to engage in preventive health care behaviors for themselves and their children. Studies suggest that health literacy among low income families needs improvement, and this possibly contributes to disparities in preventive health care rates. Additionally, parents and caregivers may not be able to provide or seek preventive health care for their children because of lack of knowledge and skills to do so effectively. This study designed and piloted an intervention that delivered to parents of young children, 1) health literacy information in an experiential manner, and 2) practical skills to engage their families in healthy lifestyle choices, with the decisions for healthy lifestyle choices being based on the health knowledge provided in the intervention. Specifically, the intervention focused on diet/nutrition, physical activity, sleep hygiene, parenting skills, and mental wellness. The intervention was successful at improving diet/nutrition knowledge at least one month post-intervention and more immediate changes were found for participants' overall beliefs about diet/nutrition, children's vegetable consumption, and parents' fruits and vegetable consumption. Immediate improvements were also found for factual knowledge about physical activity, sleep, and the relationship between mental health and stress. Additionally, the intervention was successful at improving general knowledge and beliefs about sleep, knowledge about the relationship between sleep and health, and knowledge about common childhood sleep problems at least one month post-intervention. The intervention also reduced participants' bedtime interactions with children that are indicative of sleep problems at least one month post-intervention. Future research should conceptualize the intervention as a multiple health behavior intervention and reflect this in the evaluation.Item Ambulatory Monitoring and Psychopathy: The Sleep Study(2013-12-06) Yaugher, Ashley ChristineThere is an increasing focus on the role of sleep in psychological disorders, including Antisocial Personality Disorder (APD) and Psychopathic Personality Disorder. Consistent with a relationship between sleep and impulsivity, compared to controls, APD patients report lower subjective sleep quality, longer sleep latency, shorter duration of sleep, less habitual sleep efficiency, more sleep disturbances, more use of sleeping medication, and a higher level of daytime dysfunction. Compared to APD less is known about the relation between sleep and symptoms associated with psychopathy. The current study included objectively measured sleep using an actigraphy device to record activity levels and sleep interruptions in a large sample of 402 (233 f, 169 m) undergraduate college students at Texas A&M University. Significant gender differences were found for age of participants, psychopathy scores, anxiety scores, and antisocial scores. Results indicated that individuals reporting high levels of psychopathy also reported high levels of impulsivity on the questionnaire measures. While a relationship between sleep efficiency and psychopathy was not found in the current study, several mood effects did emerge. Findings of the current study replicate prior research, and support the continuation of examining sleep in individuals with psychopathy as well as mood disorders.Item Beowulf, sleep, and judgment day(2009-05-15) Hanchey, Ginger FielderWhen warriors fall asleep within Heorot?s decorated walls, they initiate a sequence of events that ultimately ends in slaughter and death. This pattern of sleep, attack, and death predictably appears in each of the monster episodes. Humans sleep and fall prey to an otherworld attacker, who eventually receives death as punishment. Interestingly, the roles of the characters are reversed in the dragon scene. Here, the dragon?s sleep exposes him to harm at the hands of a human, the thief, whose guilt is transferred to Beowulf. In this way, sleep designates the victims and the attackers, but it also helps the audience predict the judgment that will take place at the end of each episode. This judgment becomes specifically Christian when contextualized by other Anglo-Saxon accounts of sleep. As in these texts, sleep in Beowulf functions as a liminal zone connecting the world of the humans with an Otherworld. The intersection of these worlds in Beowulf follows the structural paradigm of the popular ?Doomsday motif,? in which an angry Christ comes to earth to surprise a sleeping humanity. A study of the verbal and thematic similarities of Beowulf and Christ III best exemplifies this connection. Other mythographic traditions of Christian judgment within Anglo Saxon texts appear throughout Beowulf. Motifs of Christ?s second coming surround Grendel as he approaches Heorot, and his entrance echoes Christ?s harrowing of Hell. The fight in Grendel?s mother?s lair recalls redemption through water: Beowulf?s immersion represents baptism and the hilt of the sword which saves the Danish nation depicts the great Flood. Finally, the dragon?s fire and its resulting annihilation of a people, at least indirectly, resounds with apocalyptic undertones.Item Disaster relief: Fatugue and countermeasures(2007-09-04) Sean Andrew Hollonbeck; Sheryl Bishop; Richard Jennings; C. Joan RichardsonThe emphasis of this paper has been to educate disaster leaders on fatigue and fatigue management. The need for sleep is real, inescapable and often misunderstood. The impact of fatigue on performance is greatly magnified when individuals have to operate under conditions of high emotional, psychological or physiological stress – all inherent conditions for disaster response teams. Fatigue can clearly increase the risk of fatalities and injuries. Fatigue in disaster relief workers is an unstudied and critical safety issue in the complex process of disaster management and relief. This paper is designed for leaders in disaster agencies and management as guide to understanding the problem of fatigue in the austere uncontrolled chaos of a disaster event and to be able to implement effective scientific countermeasures to ensure mission success. \r\nThe National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) has found that the incidence of fatigue is underestimated in virtually every transportation mode, because it is so hard to quantify and measure. Many accident investigations do not obtain the information necessary to determine the contribution of fatigue; namely, the condition of the workers, the extent to which they have been deprived of sleep, and their state of alertness. \r\nThis report will show through studied “best practices” in areas of industry (the military, medicine, the transportation industry and aviation) that the un-researched hazard of fatigue during disasters exists and more importantly by comparing and review these other areas the reader will be prepared address the challenge of severe decrements in cognitive and physical performance caused by fatigue. The outcome is to educate disaster relief leaders about fatigue, human fatigue physiology, the risks and hazards of fatigue as well as countermeasures to fatigue. Then armed with this new knowledge disaster leaders will be empowered to make effective decisions and establish policy and doctrine with a resulting positive impact on disaster relief safety.Item Regular treadmill exercise prevents sleep deprivation-induced impairment of hippocampal-dependent memory and synaptic plasticity(2012-04-19) Zagaar, Munder; Alkadhi, Karim; Eriksen, Jason; Salim, Samina; Grill, Raymond; Alcantara, AdrianaABSTRACT Study Objectives: Evidence suggests that regular exercise can protect against learning and memory impairment in the presence of insults such as stroke and neurodegeneration. The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of regular exercise on hippocampus-dependent learning and memory impairment associated with sleep deprivation. Experimental Design: We investigated the effects of 4 weeks of regular treadmill exercise on learning and memory impairment in 24 hour sleep-deprived rats. Sleep deprivation was accomplished using the columns-in-water model. We tested the effects of exercise and/or sleep deprivation using three approaches: the radial arm water maze (RAWM) task to test spatial learning and memory performance; electrophysiological recording in the Cornu Ammonis (CA1) and dentate gyrus (DG) areas of the hippocampus to measure synaptic plasticity; and western blot analysis to quantify the levels of key signaling molecules that are related to memory and synaptic plasticity. Results: In the RAWM, regular exercise prevented the sleep deprivation-induced impairment of spatial learning, short-term memory, and early-phase long-term potentiation (E-LTP) in both CA1 and DG areas. In correlation, exercise prevented the sleep deprivation-associated decrease in basal levels of phosphorylated and total calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (P/total-CaMKII) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). High frequency stimulation (HFS), which increased the P-CaMKII and BDNF levels in normal animals, did not change these levels in sleep-deprived rats but did increase levels of the phosphatase calcineurin. In contrast, exercise increased BDNF and P-CaMKII levels in exercised/sleep-deprived rats, probably by preventing increases in calcineurin levels, thus maintaining appropriate P-CaMKII levels. Regular exercise also prevented the sleep deprivation-induced impairment of long-term memory and late-phase LTP. In correlation, exercise increased the basal levels of phosphorylated cAMP response element binding protein (P-CREB) and total-CREB as well as P/total- mitogen activated protein kinase (MAPK/ERK) in CA1 and DG areas of sleep-deprived rats. Also, exercise allowed multiple HFS to increase the levels of BDNF and P/total-CREB during L-LTP expression in sleep-deprived rats. Conclusions: These findings suggest that sleep deprivation impairs both the CA1 and DG areas whereas exercise prevents this impairment. Regular exercise exerts a protective effect against sleep deprivation-induced impairment probably by inducing BDNF expression, which can positively modulate basal and/or stimulated levels of P-CaMKII, P-CREB, P-MAPK/ERK and calcineurin. As a result, exercise-induced BDNF could contribute to the restoration of hippocampus-dependent learning and memory as well as LTP in both CA1 and DG areas.