HEALTH
June 1, 2011 | By Amanda Leigh Mascarelli, HealthKey
Melatonin may hold the key, or one key, to treatment of summer seasonal depression. The hormone, produced naturally by the human body, is frequently taken as a supplement to help travelers adjust to new night and day cycles and to help insomniacs get to sleep. Very early research suggests that this ability to affect the body's circadian rhythms could make the hormone a potential treatment for depression triggered by seasonal changes as well. Melatonin is a hormone that sets the seasonal rhythms in animals, such as the timing of breeding seasons and coat growth.
CALIFORNIA | LOCAL
March 3, 2010 | By Carla Hall
When a magnitude 8.8 earthquake struck South America last weekend, the ground rumbled in Chile, the sea rose in the Pacific, and a day on Earth got shorter. Not by much. Earthlings ended up losing 1.26 millionth of a second of a day. You can't sense it. Nor is your dog aware of it. But while other experts charted the shift of tectonic plates and the swell of ocean waters wrought by the quake, geophysicist Richard Gross mathematically calculated the temblor's disruption of the length of the day. The thrust-fault quake -- in which plates under the Earth's surface moved vertically -- caused mass to be redistributed, said Gross, who works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge.
SCIENCE
February 17, 2010 | By Thomas H. Maugh II
Riding in school buses in the early morning, then sitting in poorly lighted classrooms are the main reasons students have trouble getting to sleep at night, according to new research. Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature's cycles of day and night. If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of sync with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported Tuesday in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.
HEALTH
January 19, 2009 | Shari Roan
Doctors often wonder if there is a best time of day for cancer patients to receive chemotherapy. Past research suggests there probably is an optimal time based on the body's circadian rhythms. Now a compelling new study offers some biological proof for the idea. Researchers at the University of North Carolina have discovered that chemotherapy is probably most effective at particular times of day when an enzyme system in the body that can blunt the effect of the drugs is at its lowest levels.
HEALTH
March 24, 2008 | Shari Roan, Times Staff Writer
AT 6 a.m., the hospital's bright hallway lights flicker on, signaling the start of a new day. Doctors in crisp business clothes appear on their early-morning rounds, and the clang of breakfast carts will soon echo through the unit. For registered nurse Liberty Bunag, however, it's finally time to go home and sleep. She began her shift 12 hours ago with an extra-large coffee and since has consumed a liter of caffeinated soda, more coffee and lots of rice, her personal energy food. Sometimes she and the other nurses on the orthopedic ward of White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles practice foreign languages to stay alert, squelching the yawns and drowsiness -- the body's way of protesting this nocturnal activity.
HEALTH
March 24, 2008 | By Shari Roan, Los Angeles Times Staff Writer
AT 6 a.m., the hospital's bright hallway lights flicker on, signaling the start of a new day. Doctors in crisp business clothes appear on their early-morning rounds, and the clang of breakfast carts will soon echo through the unit. For registered nurse Liberty Bunag, however, it's finally time to go home and sleep. She began her shift 12 hours ago with an extra-large coffee and since has consumed a liter of caffeinated soda, more coffee and lots of rice, her personal energy food. Sometimes she and the other nurses on the orthopedic ward of White Memorial Medical Center in Los Angeles practice foreign languages to stay alert, squelching the yawns and drowsiness -- the body's way of protesting this nocturnal activity.