A new study on sleep indicates that healthy older adults without sleep disorders need less sleep than healthy young adults and are less sleepy during the day. The study, appearing in the journal SLEEP, finds that during an eight-hour stretch in bed, total sleep time decreases significantly and progressively with age.

Older adults sleep about 20 minutes less than middle-age adults who, in turn, sleep 23 minutes less than young adults. It also finds that while older adults awaken more often at night as they get older, and their deep, slow-wave sleep decreases, they show less need for a nap during the day.

"Our findings reaffirm the theory that it is not normal for older people to be sleepy during the daytime," said principal investigator Derk-Jan Dijk, Ph.D., professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey in the U.K.

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A new study has reversed the conventional view that age brings an increasing propensity for napping after showing that healthy young adults are more likely to doze off than healthy older adults. Scientists in the UK, who conducted the study, said that daytime sleepiness is more common in younger people and older adults are more alert during the day and need less sleep at night.

Despite spending a longer period asleep at night, young people aged 20 to 30 are more likely to find their eyes closing during the day than older people aged 65-plus. Researchers at the University of Surrey studied 110 healthy adults at the University of Surrey who spent eight hours in bed.

They found that the older they were the less time they spent sleeping. Adults over 65 slept for six-and-a-half hours on average, 20 minutes less than adults aged 40-55. They in turn slept 23 minutes less than those aged 20-30, who spent on average seven hours 13 minutes asleep.

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Jay Mercer's efforts to get more of his patients to undergo cancer screening are starting to pay off: Early detection resulted in one woman having her cervical cancer cured and gave another high hopes for recovering from a breast tumour.

The screening push is also paying off, literally, for the Ottawa family physician. His preventive campaign is partly driven by a little-known recent trend in the Canadian health-care system: incentive payments, or bonuses, paid to doctors to encourage better health care.

If he pushes a set percentage of patients through cancer screening, Dr. Mercer is rewarded with a sizeable annual bonus. Ontario doctors can also earn bonuses of up to $5,000 for visiting patients at home; specialists in Nova Scotia receive thousands of dollars extra a year to simply stay in a rural location; and GPs in British Columbia are paid $2,100 annually just to keep delivering babies.

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Minced beef in a delicious tomato sauce with egg pasta topped with a yummy three cheese sauce. 'I use British beef and three cheeses - parmesan, mascarpone and gruyere. My beef lasagne is a source of zinc, which is important for growth, healthy skin and the immune system - the body's natural defences.'

No added colours, flavourings or preservatives. Annabel Karmel beef lasagne: 2/5
Nutritionist's verdict: This portion contains only a meagre 19 per cent beef, so it is inevitably going to be low in iron. A homemade lasagne would normally have about 40-50 per cent beef.

Sugar is added in three forms, according to the ingredients list: 'sugar', 'fruit juice concentrate' and 'barley malt extract', which is not necessary in a savoury dish, and adds unnecessary sugar (the company has pledged to remove sugar from its Eat Fussy range over the next three months).

Salt is also added, and at 1g per portion (a third of the daily allowance for a child of four to six), the overall salt content is high. If a dish contains cheese there is no need to add salt because cheese is preserved with salt.

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Heart disease is the No. 1 killer of women older than 25. Sixty-four percent of women who died suddenly of heart disease had no previous symptoms.

And in a 2008 study, the American Heart Association ranked Baton Rouge.

As the sixth least heart-healthy city for women in mid-sized metro cities. That’s the bad news.

There is good news, though  people can do things to dramatically decrease their risk for heart disease, Dr. David Carmouche, internist, said at a recent program on women’s heart health.

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But a BBC Panorama investigation into food for the under-fives found that easy answers to healthy eating can be as hard to come by as a full night's sleep and a long lie.

For the parents of the 1.5m children who regularly attend nursery in the UK, the nutritional puzzle is even harder to piece together. While celebrity chef Jamie Oliver successfully raised the profile of the importance of nutritional standards being met in school dinners, Scotland is the only place where similar set guidelines apply to nursery food.

Patchwork policies

In England, government advice for care of children aged one to five states they should be eating a "healthy, balanced and nutritious" diet, but does define what that diet should contain. England's strict nutrient-based standards for primary schools do not apply in pre-school settings.

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Talk about spicing things up! Move over, trans fats; salt is under fire as the next nutrition no-no on its way out from restaurant menus and processed foods. Sodium levels in foods have been on the nutrition watch list for years because too much sodium in the diet is associated with high blood pressure, which can increase the risk for heart attack and stroke.

But now health officials in New York are asking restaurants and makers of packaged foods to shake the salt habit and cut levels of sodium by 25 percent over the next five years. The New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene’s plan is called the National Salt Reduction Initiative, and it involves other cities and states including North Carolina and Tennessee in the Southeast, but not Georgia as of yet.

Who should care about consuming too much salt? Just about everyone, according to a public health alert on sodium intake from health watchers at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC report concludes that 70 percent of U.S. adults should limit sodium intake.

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Burgers, stuffed chicken rolls and French fries may taste good, but high consumption of processed junk food not only makes you obese, it could contribute to depression, says a new research.

A team of British and French epidemiologists, whoanalysed food and mood data from 3,486 men and women, claimed they've uncovered a true cause-and-effect relationship.

"Our finding shows a strong association between diet and depressive symptoms after controlling for a large range of socio-demographic factors, and for health behaviours such as smoking, physical activity, and health status," said lead researcher Tasnime Akbaraly of National Institute of Health and Medical Research in Montpellier, France.

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The world can be a scary and confusing place when your can't remember.  Unrecognizable faces and places and repeated actions can become a way of life, and aren't a normal part of aging.  They are the common signs of Alzheimer's disease, a form of dementia.

And according to a new Canadian study, diagnosed dementia cases will have skyrocketed by 2038.  That's not news Laura-Lynn Bourassa wants to hear.  "It's concerning to know what will happen in the next 30 years if we don't have a national dementia prevention strategy," said Bourassa, education co-ordinator for the Alzheimer Society of Greater Simcoe County. "There's still a lot of fear associated with Alzheimer's Disease and the thought that a loved one could one day be diagnosed with it."

The 2009 study, Rising Tide: The Impact of Dementia on Canadian Society, suggests that by 2038, one Canadian every two minutes will develop dementia.  Also, the associated health care costs will soar to $153 billion a year from $15 billion a year, and the total cumulative costs will skyrocket to $872 billion over the next 30 years.

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Getting in shape and the beginning of a new year seem to go hand in hand. That was part of the reason for the big Community Health and Wellness Fair Jan. 9 at Brooks Middle School in Bolingbrook. The free event was sponsored by the Bolingbrook Park District, DuPage Township and Adventist Bolingbrook Hospital as a way to put the spotlight on getting Bolingbrook fit and healthy.

The fair featured a variety of booths offering health information and screenings, fitness demonstrations and more. Among the biggest attractions were Jerry and Estella Hayes, who were winners on "The Biggest Loser" TV show. The couple gave a seminar designed to help Bolingbrook residents follow the path they took to lose a combined 260 pounds.

They shared a simple plan to change consumption, then highlighted exercise as the complementing factor that allows for weight loss. Both agreed that without changing the way they ate, their weight loss would not have been possible.

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