(Press-News.org) If insomnia keeps you awake at night, Flinders University researchers recommend a trip to the doctor - not for a sleeping pill prescription but for a short course of intensive behavioural therapy.
Researchers have developed new clinical guidelines for Australian doctors to give family GPs insights into the most effective treatment for insomnia - Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for insomnia (or 'CBTi').
CBTi improves insomnia, mental health and quality of life, and can be more successful than sleeping pills, say Adelaide Institute for Sleep Health (AISH) sleep experts from Flinders University in a new paper in the Australian Journal of General Practice.
Most patients with insomnia managed in general practice are prescribed potentially addictive sedative-hypnotic medicines (e.g. benzodiazepines), and never access the CBTi that would treat their underlying condition, they say.
"We are aiming to provide GPs with more information, accessible guidelines and tools, as well as referral and treatment options to manage insomnia with CBTi," says lead researcher Dr Alex Sweetman from Flinders University.
"To get the ball rolling, our step-by-step model for GPs will identify, assess and treat insomnia with a Brief Behavioural Treatment for Insomnia program (BBTi)."
Brief Behavioural Treatment for insomnia leads to long-term improvement of insomnia, mental health, and overall quality of life, and can help patients reduce their use of sedative-hypnotic medicines.
This clinical review published in the Australian Journal of General Practice provides GPs with a description of a four-session insomnia treatment program that is tailored to the time limitations, knowledge, and capacity of general practice staff.
Dr Sweetman and his team are currently running two trials to provide GPs with a suite of tools and treatment options to manage patients with insomnia.
Chronic insomnia is characterised by difficulties getting to sleep, staying asleep, and/or early morning awakenings from sleep - with daytime impairments including reduced work productivity, fatigue and concentration difficulties.
Common in approximately 15% of the general population, it can persist for many years unless treated - ideally with non-pharmaceutical interventions.
Meanwhile, AISH and other sleep experts have also expanded ongoing investigations into better treatments for complex cases of combined insomnia, and sleep apnoea (COMISA), all conditions leading to doctor diagnoses and the need for targeted interventions.
The study of 2044 adult Australians found COMISA disorders are common and associated with increased medical and psychiatric co-morbidity, as well as poor general health.
"Much more investigation is required understand these combined disorders and improve diagnostic and treatment approaches," researchers say in their paper, Prevalence and associations of co-morbid insomnia and sleep apnoea in an Australian population-based sample (2021) by A Sweetman, YA Melaku, L Lack, A Reynolds, TK Bill, R Adams and S Appleton has been published in Sleep Medicine (Elsevier) DOI: 10.1016/j.sleep.2021.03.023
More information at A step-by-step model for a brief behavioural treatment for insomnia in Australian general practice (2021) by Alexander Sweetman, Nicholas A Zwar, Nicole Grivell, Nicole Lovato and Leon Lack has been published in the Australian Journal of General Practice Volume 50, Issue 5, DOI: 10.31128/AJGP-04-20-5391
Insomnia is a common and debilitating disorder that is frequently associated with important consequences for physical and mental health and wellbeing. It often occurs in tandem with another common sleep disorder, obstructive sleep apnoea (OSA).
Along with daytime sleepiness and fatigue, these debilitating disorders can be treated in a number of ways to reduce long-term health issues including diabetes, heart disease, anxiety and depression.
INFORMATION:
Paleo researcher Charlotte Prud'homme, who until recently worked at the Max Planck Institute for Chemistry and is now a researcher at the Université Lausanne, explains: "The 80-meter-thick sedimentary sequence we found at Charyn Canyon in southeast Kazakhstan provides us with a virtually continuous record of five million years of climate change. This is a very rare occurrence on land!" The alternating dust and soil layers provide the first reliable evidence, in one place, of long-term interactions between major climate systems on the Eurasian continent. "Over the past five million years, the land surfaces of Eurasia appear to ...
The so-called 'bullshit jobs theory' - which argues that a large and rapidly increasing number of workers are undertaking jobs that they themselves recognise as being useless and of no social value - contains several major flaws, argue researchers from the universities of Cambridge and Birmingham.
Even so, writing in Work, Employment and Society, the academics applaud its proponent, American anthropologist David Graeber, who died in September 2020, for highlighting the link between a sense of purpose in one's job and psychological wellbeing.
Graeber initially put forward the concept of 'bullshit jobs' - jobs that even those who do them view as worthless - in his 2013 essay ...
Researchers at the University of Turku, Finland, showed that the antibody treatment reactivates the immune defense in patients with advanced-stage cancer. The treatment alters the function of the body's phagocytes and facilitates extensive activation of the immune system.
The immune defense is the body's own defense system equipped to combat cancer. However, cancer learns to hide from immune attacks and harnesses this system to promote its own growth. Therefore, it would be beneficial to be able to return the immune defense back to restricting the advancement of cancer.
Macrophages, a type of white blood cell, are central in the fight against cancer. Cancer educates ...
RUDN University mathematician and his colleagues from France and Hungary developed an algorithm for parallel computing, which allows solving applied problems, such as electrodynamics or hydrodynamics. The gain in time is up to 50%. The results are published in the Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics.
Parallel computing methods are often used to process practical problems in physics, engineering, biology, and other fields. It involves several processors joined in a net to simultaneously solve a single problem -- each has its own small part. The way to distribute the work between the processors and make them "communicate" with each other is a choice based on the specifics of a particular problem. ...
"Ornaments composed of elk teeth suspended from or sown on to clothing emit a loud rattling noise when moving," says auditory archaeologist and Academy of Finland Research Fellow Riitta Rainio from the University of Helsinki. "Wearing such rattlers while dancing makes it easier to immerse yourself in the soundscape, eventually letting the sound and rhythm take control of your movements. It is as if the dancer is led in the dance by someone."
Rainio is well versed in the topic, as she danced, for research purposes, for six consecutive hours, wearing elk tooth ornaments produced according to the Stone Age model. Rainio and artist Juha Valkeapää held a performance to ...
As G7 governments renew commitments to protecting marine spaces and biodiversity, global conservation initiatives such as 30x30 are feared to pay too little attention to the livelihood impacts on communities
Close-up inspection of an upcoming marine conservation area in Cambodia shows mixed livelihood consequences ranging from improving relationships to the state to increased anxiety and social division
In the long term and on a regional scale in Southeast Asia, communities exposed to marine conservation are poorer and experience higher child mortality
Researchers warn that the rapid global expansion of nominal marine protected area (MPA) coverage can undermine community livelihoods if it proceeds with a sole focus on marine resource conservation, a disregard of local ...
Physiologically, milk contains biocomponents that are highly protective against infections. In light of this, the AGR-149-Infectious Diseases group at the University of Cordoba's Department of Animal Health is doing research that focuses on cow's milk as a possible source of Covid-19 control. The results have been published, partially, in the journal Frontiers in Immunology.
This is possible due to "crossed immunity", and there is already evidence of the protection it provides, explained one of the principal investigators, Mari Carmen Borge. "It has been shown that the immune cells that the vaccinated animal generates against bovine coronavirus ...
O-quinone methides have been studied at the Samara Polytech for more than ten years. Vitaly Osyanin, Doctor of Chemistry, Professor of the Department of Organic Chemistry, is in charge of scientific work in this area. The results of the latest research were published in the authoritative Russian journal "Russian Chemical Reviews" (DOI: https://doi.org/10.1070/RCR4971).
Thus Professor Osyanin and the Candidate of Chemical Sciences, Associate Professor of the Department Dmitry Osipov and the Candidate of Chemical Sciences, the graduate of the Department Anton Lukashenko prepared a review article in which the main known examples of the transformation of o-quinone methides into chromene and ...
Skoltech scientists have studied the hydroxyl defects in LiFePO4, a widely used cathode material in commercial lithium-ion batteries, contributing to the overall understanding of the chemistry of this material. This work will help improve the LiFePO4 manufacturing process to avoid formation of adverse intrinsic structural defects which deteriorate its performance. The paper was published in the journal Inorganic Chemistry.
Lithium iron phosphate, LiFePO4, is a safe, stable and affordable cathode material for Li-ion batteries that has been very well optimized for practical applications despite its low conductivity and medium energy density. Yet scientists continue to study the various properties of this material, and in particular the impact ...
There has been concern at how the pandemic has not only hit physical health and the economy but has also impacted our mental health with the possibility of increased rates of suicide.
Now a new study - a collaboration between Swansea University, Cardiff University, and the NHS in Wales - has investigated exactly which Covid-related stressors are most likely to trigger suicidal thoughts and behaviours.
The researchers also discovered the important role that hope for the future can play - along with individuals' levels resilience - when it comes to coping with these stressors.
More than 12,000 people responded to the Wales Wellbeing survey which asked volunteers to share their experiences during the ...
