Sleep

Your choices in San Francisco hotels are overwhelming. The prices can be too. So during our staff visit to the City by the Bay, we looked for reasonably priced hotels that had charm, location or both. We came back with 14 ideas on places to bed down. It's not a complete list, but it is eclectic, like the city itself. Mystic Hotel. This property, which opened in April, stands on a tunnel-adjacent block of Stockton Street that you'll never see on a picture postcard, yet it has style, as do the Burritt Tavern bar and restaurant downstairs.

Re "Flight attendant fatigue is an issue," Business, June 6 Just because the plane lands safely doesn't mean there's no longer any danger posed by a fatigued flight attendant. I commuted from Orange County to LAX for 35 years. I was often awake for 18 to 24 hours before beginning my drive home on the 405 Freeway. I was pulled over once for a suspected DUI because I couldn't stay within my lane. After one flight from Australia, I went north on the 405 instead of south, passing two exits before getting off. Fatigue does strange things to your mind.

Security researchers Nick DePetrillo and Don Bailey have discovered a seven-digit numerical code that can unlock all kinds of secrets about you. It's your phone number. Using relatively simple techniques, this duo can use your cellphone number to figure out your name, where you live and work, where you travel and when you sleep. They could even listen to your voice messages and personal phone calls — if they wanted to. "It's really interesting to watch a phone number turn into a person's life," DePetrillo said.

An advisory panel to the Food & Drug Administration has recommended approval of a new sleep drug that targets the brain's wakefulness centers, but suggested the agency should consider a dose of the drug,  called suvorexant, lower  than that proposed by the medication's maker, Merck. In doing so, members of the FDA's advisory committee on peripheral and central nervous system drugs appeared to agree with concerns raised by FDA staff scientists that, at higher doses, the sleep medication may cause dangerous next-day drowsiness in some patients.

You've heard about the "Wheat Belly" diet, right? Well, technically, it doesn't exist. Dr. William Davis points out that the word "diet" does not appear on either the cover of his bestselling "Wheat Belly" book published in 2011 or on the follow-up, "Wheat Belly Cookbook," which was published last month and already tops bestseller lists. And that omission is intentional, Davis said. "Wheat Belly" is about stripping your plate of a substance that contributes to heart disease, causes joint pain, inflammation, foggy thinking, bloating and much more, Davis said.

How can you tell if you or someone you know is having a heart attack? Sometimes the symptoms can be surprisingly subtle. "They can be very different from person to person, between women and men and even within an individual who has more than one heart attack," says Dr. David Rizik, director of Interventional Cardiology for Scottsdale Healthcare Hospitals, in Scottsdale, Ariz. Men and women may experience atypical heart attack symptoms. In contrast to the "classic" chest-splitting, gasping-for-breath symptoms, many heart attacks begin with symptoms that are so mild they are often mistaken for indigestion or muscle ache.

Ever wanted to know what your dog was doing all day without having to set up a complicated video camera system? People Power, a Palo Alto software company, has released a mobile app that can easily turn an old iPhone, iPad or iPod Touch into a security camera. The company's free app, Presence, makes it possible for users who have Wi-Fi to set up one Apple device as a video camera and another as a monitor. For instance, a dog owner could take an old iPhone, turn it into a camera and then watch the pooch on an iPad at work.

With more than 4 million people visiting Yosemite National Park last year ? and that number expected to increase this year ? it's no wonder lodging inside the park is snatched up quickly. "We typically sell out during the summer season," Delaware North Cos. spokeswoman Lisa Cesaro said of its Yosemite accommodations (Ahwahnee Hotel, Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, Curry Village and the housekeeping camp on the Merced River; the Wawona Hotel, and in the back country, Tuolumne Meadows Lodge, White Wolf Lodge and the High Sierra camps)

They touch down at another NBA city and check their smartphones to help them adjust to a new time zone while their own bodies struggle. They arrive with bags under their eyes and often depart that city a day later sleepless, jet-lagged, stowing sore joints and heavy legs. During this lockout-shortened NBA season, it's been a grueling routine: 66 games played in 124 days, a pace of one per 1.88 days, or 8.5% faster than a usual season. Every team has played back-to-back-to-back sets and stretches such as nine games in 12 days; the Clippers played 20 games in 31 days in March, a marathon that has not been on the NBA schedule in 45 years.

You can't sleep.  You've tried counting sheep, drinking warm milk, maybe even taking medications like Benadryl or sleeping pills.   Maybe next you should try cooling your brain. According to research presented Monday at Sleep 2011 , the annual meeting of the Associated Profession Sleep Societies, cooling the brain and can reduce the amount of time it takes people with insomnia to fall asleep -- and increase the length of time they stay that way. To achieve "frontal cerebral thermal transfer," as the cooling is called, researchers Dr. Eric Nofzinger and Dr. Daniel Buysse of the Sleep Neuroimaging Research Program at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine outfitted 24 people --  12 with insomnia, and 12 without -- with soft plastic caps.  The caps had tubes for circulating water at neutral, moderate or maximum "cooling intensity.

Operating on just four hours of sleep and trailed by a swarm of journalists, Los Angeles mayoral candidate Wendy Greuel asked for votes and talked up the historic nature of her campaign during a lunchtime stop in Chinatown. "I'm the most qualified candidate, and I would be -- I will be -- the first woman mayor," she told two women eating French dip sandwiches at Philippe The Original. To an elderly woman with a walker, Greuel said: "You've lived to meet the first woman mayor of Los Angeles!"

The links between sleep and cancer are now so many, you could build a chain. A new study has found that for men who suffer insomnia and unwelcome wakefulness, the risk of prostate cancer is greater than for those whose sleep is undisrupted. That research expands on a growing body of evidence that men and women whose sleep is short, broken or of poor quality are at higher risk of developing a wide range of cancers. Research has long linked overnight shift work -- and the circadian rhythm disruptions that are common with it -- as a risk factor for breast cancer and endometrial cancers in women.

After more than two days of combating flames and hacking away at brush with axes and chain saws, hundreds of exhausted firefighters tried to steal a few minutes' sleep on Saturday morning in a makeshift city that sprouted almost overnight along a rural road in Camarillo. Then, with flames hopscotching along nearby ridgelines, the firefighters from as far away as Oregon, Idaho and Arizona geared up once again to protect lives and property from the devastating wildfire. The mini-city known as the Springs Fire Incident Command Post is equipped to serve three meals a day - along with providing medical supplies, shower and laundry facilities and tents to catnap in - to the 1,865 firefighters deployed to Ventura County over the last three days.

Rumors that the Beastie Boys would soon be penning a memoir were confirmed on Monday by the book's U.K. publisher, Faber & Faber: " Yes, it is true ," the imprint's blog said. The book will be released in the U.S. by Spiegel & Grau, and is planned for fall 2015. The book, by surviving Beasties Michael Diamond (Mike D) and Adam Horovitz (Ad-Rock) will rely on oral storytelling as its primary narrative technique. The third member of the group, Adam Yaunch (MCA), succumbed to cancer last year.

The profane book for adults written in the form of a children's book, "Go the F--  to Sleep," may soon be coming to a multiplex near you. The husband-and-wife writing team, actors Ken Marino and Erica Oyama, have signed on to adapt the book for the screen. Marino was one of the stars of the cult hit "Party Down. " More recently, he's directed and starred in the spoof of "The Bachelor"-style shows, "Burning Love," a Yahoo Internet series coming to the cable channel E. Oyama is the series' writer and creator.

Prescription sleep medications can be balm for the insomniac, but for many who take medications marketed as Ambien, Restoril and Lunesta, they can come with a cost: fogginess that can last into the next day. An experimental medication may help induce sleep without the hangover of impaired attention, memory and learning that is common with so-called hypnotic sedatives now available to consumers. The investigational drug works on receptors in a region of the brain that's key for allowing us to fall into slumber: the lateral hypothalamus, where molecules called orexins are released throughout the day to keep us alert and awake.

A new study suggests that the 6% to 10% of Americans who use prescription sleep medications such as zolpidem (Ambien), temazepam (Restoril), eszopiclone (Lunesta) and zaleplon (Sonata) are more likely to develop cancer, and far more likely to die prematurely, than those who take no sleep aids. The increased rates kick in at really low levels too, the study says. For those prescribed as few as one to 18 sleeping pills in a year, deaths during the period of the new study were more than three and a half times greater than for those who got no such prescriptions, the study says.

It's a universal truth: When you're in your 20s, you can stay out all night and look fresh the next morning. Unfortunately, as we age, lack of sleep affects us more deeply and shows more prominently on our faces -- lackluster complexions, dark circles, fine lines and, in more extreme cases, rashes and eczema. Progressive loss of cellular water may be one reason sleepless nights affect our skin more visibly as we age, says board-certified dermatologist Dr. Howard Murad. Water retention is key to keeping skin moisturized and supple, which can translate to fewer lines and a smoother complexion.

The tall stalk of pale, Scottish androgyny known as Tilda Swinton has brought her 1995 performance-art piece "The Maybe" to the Museum of Modern Art in New York. The piece, which requires the Oscar-winning actress to lie inside a transparent box for hours at a stretch, is expected to be performed periodically during the year, according to reports. MoMA didn't publicize Swinton's project, nor has it provided a schedule of her appearances. News of the actress' arrival to the museum came Saturday from the website Gothamist, which has  photos of Swinton lying in a state of repose as museum visitors look on.  Swinton's "The Maybe" has prompted a number of amused Tweets from cultural VIPs and other observers.

SACRAMENTO - For the first five games of the CIF state basketball championships played Friday at Sleep Train Arena, shooters were off target. Again and again. Four of the 10 teams didn't make it out of the 20s in shooting percentage. And Southern California teams won every game. By the final game of the night, the Division I championship, hometown favorite Elk Grove Pleasant Grove finally gave Northern California fans something to cheer about. With senior guards Matthew Hayes and Malik Thames scoring from outside and an ailing Jordan Mathews failing to reach any kind of comfort zone, Pleasant Grove was able to dominate Santa Monica en route to a 73-57 victory to gain the school's first state championship.