The National Sleep Foundation offers these guidelines:
Look for baby's natural sleep patterns and when he or she starts to get sleepy.Place baby in the crib sleepy, but not asleep.Create a consistent daytime and nighttime sleep schedule, and a soothing bedtime routine.Make sure the environment is dark, cool, and otherwise conducive to sleep.Teach baby to fall asleep on his or her own and to self-soothe to sleep.In one report, State University of New York researchers examined data from 400,000 participants in the U.S. National Health Interview Surveys between 2004 and 2010 and found that those born in the United States were more likely to report sleeping longer than the recommended seven to nine hours each night.
Previous research has found that adults who regularly sleep less or more than the recommended seven to nine hours may be at increased risk for health problems such as cardiovascular disease, stroke and depression.
In comparison, African-born Americans were more likely to report sleeping six hours or less per night, and Indian-born Americans were more likely to report sleeping six to eight hours a night.
However, foreign-born Americans were less likely than U.S.-born Americans to report getting too little or too much sleep after the researchers adjusted for the effects of age, sex, education, income, smoking, alcohol use, body mass index and emotional distress.
In the other study, researchers randomly selected 439 adults in Chicago and found that whites slept significantly longer than other racial/ethnic groups, blacks reported the worst sleep quality, and Asians were most likely to report daytime sleepiness.
"These racial/ethnic differences in sleep persisted even following statistical adjustment for cardiovascular disease risk factors that we already know to be associated with poor sleep, such as body mass index, high blood pressure and diabetes," study lead author Mercedes Carnethon, of Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago, said in an American Academy of Sleep Medicine news release.
"And we excluded participants who had evidence of mild to moderate sleep apnea. Consequently, these differences in sleep are not attributable to underlying sleep disorders but represent the sleep experience of a 'healthy' subset of the population," she added.
The studies were to be presented Wednesday at the annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Boston. Because this study was presented at a medical meeting, the data and conclusions should be viewed as preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
More information
The U.S. National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute offers strategies for getting enough sleep.
Colorectal cancer is the third leading cause of cancer death in the Western world. Research linking fish consumption and the risk of colorectal cancer has been inconclusive, although people who live in countries with high levels of fish consumption are known to develop the disease less frequently. Now, scientists from Xi'an, China, have reviewed the literature and find that eating fresh fish regularly reduces the risk of colorectal cancer by 12%. They evaluated 41 studies on fish consumption and colorectal cancer risk published between 1990 and 2011 and tracked cancer diagnoses. The protective effect of fish consumption is more prominent in rectal cancer than in colon cancer. The risk reduction for rectal cancer was as much as 21%, whereas the reduction for colon cancer was 4%.
"Despite the fact that colon and rectal cancer share many features and are often referred to as colorectal cancer,' they tend to demonstrate many different characteristics," notes lead author Daiming Fan, of the Fourth Military Medical University. "One possible reason for the difference may be because colon cancers are generally more molecularly diverse, whereas rectal cancers mostly arise via a single neoplastic pathway."
Mark J. Eisenberg, MD, MPH, of McGill University, in Montreal, Quebec, and colleagues report that the use of unconventional smoking cessation aids, including acupuncture and hypnotherapy, results in substantial increases of smoking cessation. A meta-analysis of 14 trials found that smokers who underwent hypnotherapy were 4.55 times more likely, and those who underwent acupuncture were 3.53 times more likely, to abstain from smoking than those who did not. Aversive smoking may also help smokers quit; however, there were no recent trials investigating this intervention.
Regular tooth scaling is associated with a decreased risk for future cardiovascular events. A study by H-B. Leu, MD, of Taipei Veterans General Hospital, Taiwan, and colleagues examined 10,887 subjects who had undergone tooth scaling, and 10,989 subjects who had not received tooth scaling. During an average follow-up period of seven years, the group that had undergone tooth scaling had a lower incidence of myocardial infarction, stroke, and total cardiovascular events. Increasing frequency of tooth scaling correlates with a higher risk reduction.
A study by William C. Haas, MD, of East Carolina University, Greenville, NC, and colleagues finds thatphysicians in primary care practices can be as effective as weight loss clinics in helping the moderately obese lose weight. Patients received behavioral modification sessions and a diet plan partially or fully supplemented by meal replacements at either a primary care clinic or a weight loss center. Primary care clinics were as effective as weight loss centers at reducing weight, and better at reducing body fat. Regardless of location, participants completing 12 weeks of treatment lost an average of 11.1% of their body weight. Participants who selected full meal replacement had better results.
Low-dose aspirin, a common strategy for preventing cardiovascular disease, can also reduce nonvascular deaths, including cancer deaths. A meta-analysis of 23 randomized studies by Edward J. Mills, PhD, MSc, of the University of Ottawa, Ontario, Canada, and colleagues offers conclusive evidence that low-dose aspirin offers cancer preventive effects, and showed significant treatment effects after approximately four years of follow up.
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