During a large-scale study of the socioeconomic costs of this neurodegenerative disease, Danish researchers, some from the University of Copenhagen, discovered that very early symptoms of Parkinson's disease may be revealed in dream or REM sleep.

Parkinson's disease is a brain disease best known for the trembling it causes. It is an incurable, chronic disease and gradually affects the muscles and mental capacity, seriously afflicting the lives if the patient and his or her immediate relatives.

"In the study we saw that eight years before diagnosis, Parkinson's sufferers exhibited work and health indications that something was wrong," says Poul Jennum, professor of clinical neurophysiology at the Center for Healthy Ageing, University of Copenhagen, and the Sleep Centre at Glostrup Hospital.

Among the very early symptoms is the sleep disorder RBD, or REM sleep behaviour disorder. REM is a particular stage of sleep in which we dream, and our eyes flicker rapidly behind our eyelids, hence the term REM, or Rapid Eye Movement. To prevent us from actually acting out our dreams the body usually shuts down our muscle movement during REM sleep, but in RBD it is still active, and REM sleepers with RBD display a range of behaviours from simple arm and leg spasms to kicking, shouting, seizing or jumping out of bed.

"In some cases their behaviour may be violent and result in injuries to the patients or their partners," Professor Jennum explains.

Early symptoms of Parkinson's may be other brain disorders

"Our hypothesis is that the very earliest stages of Parkinson's disease show up as various other diseases such as RBD," Jennum says.

In recent years, great advances have been made in the treatment of Parkinson's disease, but we still do not have therapies to mitigate the later symptoms, costs and increased mortality of the disease.

"This may become possible if we are able to intervene earlier, and if we are able to find clear indications of Parkinson's disease eight years sooner than we are now, this may give us an important tool. The question is of course whether we can actually say that RBD is always a very early marker for Parkinson's disease. That is what we are now investigating at the Sleep Centre at Glostrup Hospital," says Jennum. Parkinson's disease has considerable costs

Not surprisingly the study showed that Parkinson's sufferers are more often in contact with all sections of the health service, more often unemployed, more often on benefits, and on average cost the health service DKK 50,000 a year more than healthy control subjects.

For the study, researchers used the National Patient Register to identify all the patients diagnosed with Parkinson's disease between 1997 and 2007. 13,700 patients were compared to 53,600 healthy patients of the same sex, social class, educational background etc.

Dr. Sanjay Patel of Case Western Reserve University reported at a San Diego medical conference today that women who fail to get enough sleep at night risk gaining weight.

In a long-term study of middle-aged women, those getting 5 hours of sleep or less per night were 32% more likely to gain a significant amount of weight (33 lbs or more) and 15% more likely to become obese during 16 years of follow-up than women sleeping 7 hours each night.

This level of weight gain is “very clinically significant in terms of risk of diabetes and heart disease,” Patel told Reuters Health.

The study also found that women sleeping 6 hours a night were 12% more likely to experience a significant amount of weight gain and 6% more likely to become obese compared to those getting at least 7 hours of sleep a night.

The study observed 68,183 women in 1986 who reported their typical night’s sleep and reported their weight every 2 years for 16 years. The findings were presented at the American Thoracic Society’s International Conference.

Women reporting 5 hours or less sleep each night, on average, weighed 5.4 lbs more at the beginning of the study than those sleeping 7 hours or more.

After accounting for the influence of age and weight at the study’s induction, women who slept 5 hours or less per night gained about 2.3 lbs more during the follow-up than those sleeping 7 hours nightly. Women getting 6 hours of slumber per night gained about 1.5 lbs more than the 7-hour sleepers.

Patel and his research team analyzed the diets and physical activity levels of the women, but failed to find any differences that could explain why women getting less sleep weighed more. He explained, “We actually found that women who slept less, ate less.”

He concluded that it seems diet and exercise are not accounting for the weight gain in women who get less sleep.

He goes on to say that it’s possible that sleeping less may affect changes in a person’s basic metabolic rate – the number of calories burned when at rest.

Another possibility that’s recently surfaced is called “non-exercise associated thermogenesis” or NEAT, referring to involuntary activity such as fidgeting or standing instead of sitting. It could be, Patel noted, that if people who sleep less, also move around or “fidget” less.

There is a really cheap and effective way of making sure you look as attractive as possible; get plenty of sleep. You will also look much healthier, researchers from the Karolinska Institute, Sweden, revealed in the BMJ (British Medical Journal). The authors say that the concept of Beauty Sleep now has compelling, scientific proof.

As our society becomes more global and active 24 hours per day, the number of people suffering from sleep disorders, disturbed sleep, and forced to adopt unnatural sleeping patterns has grown considerably, the authors explained.

John Axelsson and team set out to determine whether there might be a link between perceptions of attractiveness and health, and sleep.

Their study involved 23, non-smoking, young adult volunteers, aged between 18 and 31. They were photographed twice, each time between 2pm and 3pm. The first photograph was taken after they had had a good night's sleep, while the second one showed what they looked like after sleep deprivation.

All pictures were taken in the same, well-lit room, with a fixed camera and at a fixed distance. None of the participants wore make-up, their hair was combed back, and had undergone similar shaving and washing procedures before each photograph was taken. The photographer asked them to assume a neutral, relaxed facial expression on both photo shoots.

For a period of 48 hours before the study began, the participants were not allowed to consume alcohol.

Sixty-five other people were asked to rate the photographs for attractiveness, health aspect, and whether or not the person looked tired. The photograph observers did not know the sleep status of the participants they were asked to rate.

The authors reported that in the vast majority of cases, the observers rated those who had had a good night's sleep as more attractive, healthier, and with more vigor, compared to the ones in which they had been deprived of sleep.

The researchers concluded, "This suggests that humans are sensitive to sleep related facial cues, with potential implications for social and clinical judgments and behaviour.

Studies are warranted for understanding how these effects may affect clinical decision making and can add knowledge with direct implications in a medical context."

The link between sleeping and obesity is drawn tighter as a new research published online in the FASEB Journal study shows that what your mother ate when she was pregnant may make you obese or overweight by altering the function of genes (epigenetic changes) that regulate circadian rhythm. In the report, pregnant primate females consuming a high-fat diet altered the function of fetal genes that regulate circadian rhythm (including appetite and food intake) during development. The offspring also had non-alcoholic fatty liver disease.

"It is our hope that our studies will continue to guide research aimed at understanding the pivotal role that maternal health plays in guiding the health of the next generation," said Kjersti Aagaard-Tillery, M.D., Ph.D., a researcher involved in the work from the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. "We are enthusiastic that our research will give hope that even small changes, such as improving one's diet in pregnancy and during breastfeeding, will translate into a lower chance for obesity in our next generation."

To make this discovery, Aagaard-Tillery and colleagues studied three groups of Japanese macaque primates. One group was fed a 12 percent fat diet (the control group). The second group was fed a 35 percent fat or high-fat diet and the third group was fed the high-fat diet for up to five years and then switched back to the control diet. Each group maintained their specific diet prior to conception and throughout pregnancy. Offspring from the high-fat group developed non-alcoholic fatty liver disease; experienced changes in histones (the core set of proteins which DNA wrap around), and had altered metabolic profiles and circadian rhythms. Results also showed that the genes in the fetal liver, which are responsible for orchestrating circadian rhythms with appetite and food intake, are altered in offspring from the mothers on the high-fat diet. Specifically, one of these genes, called Npas2, is a key regulator of the circadian system and is itself regulated by changes in the fetal histone code. Scientists found that improving the diet, either for the pregnant or breastfeeding mother, or for the infant after birth, helps to partially restore the circadian machinery back to normal, possibly lessening the risk of childhood diseases related to obesity.

"We've recently published a number of studies in the FASEB Journal showing that what a mother eats affects the weight of her children for their entire lives," said Gerald Weissmann, M.D., Editor-in-Chief of the FASEB Journal. "Now, we know why, and what a wake-up call for pregnant women! The mother's diet during pregnancy affects their children's sleep machinery via genetic machinery that controls the sleep cycle. Children are literally forced to sleep in the proverbial bed their mothers have made."