3rd July 2019
Insomnia can persist and when entrenched can be a misery. So start sleeping better now, says Duke-NUS Medical Schoolâs Michael Chee.
SINGAPORE: Mark Tan, a driven 40-year-old, was a competitive athlete in school. Academic success egged on by like-minded classmates took him to an elite university where it was a badge of honour to sacrifice sleep for grades and activities.
He graduated to a good job but one where he was under constant pressure to perform. He engaged in fortnightly inter-continental travel and never said no to conference calls.
[Read the full article]
7th May 2019
Health Check Ep 10: Can schools and parents help boost the cognition and well-being of sleep-deprived Singaporean teenagers?
Synopsis: In this fortnightly podcast series on Tuesdays, The Straits Times guides you to healthier living, debunks the myths, and examines the impact of national policies with expert guests.
To discuss why teenagers and students need to sleep more and how insufficient sleep affects them, ST correspondent Joyce Teo and podcasting head Ernest Luis host Prof Michael Chee, the director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Duke-NUS Medical School who is a prominent sleep expert.
23rd April 2019
Health Check Ep 9: Why sleep habits need to be formed when young
ST correspondent Joyce Teo and podcasting head Ernest Luis host Prof Michael Chee, the director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Duke-NUS Medical School, a prominent sleep expert who wants to change how we think about sleep.
20th February 2019
Studies have shown that better sleep benefits health, productivity and cognition, say two sleep experts.
SINGAPORE: If there is one topic most Singaporeans often talk about, it's that a huge number of us feel tired and sleep deprived most of the time, but can't seem to do anything meaningful to escape our situations.
16th May 2017
The move by Nanyang Girls' High to start school later helps adolescents get appropriate rest, argue Duke-NUS Medical School experts involved in the initiative.
SINGAPORE: Channel NewsAsia recently published an article featuring the move by Nanyang Girlsâ High School (NYGH) to a later school start time. As the researchers involved in this initiative, we have been following the response to this article on social media with interest.
Feedback from the public seems to be largely positive, but there have also been concerns raised about the potential costs of starting school later. Our team is not blind to these challenges and we would like to share why we believe that starting school later is advisable in spite of them.
10th May 2017
They are more energised and focused throughout the day, and school didn't even have to end later, thanks to careful planning. But how sustainable is this?
SINGAPORE: For almost a year now, Nanyang Girls High (NYGH) students have been starting school at 8.15am â a good 45 minutes later than most secondary schools.
And the results have been telling.
The school in Bukit Timah has been taking part in ground-breaking sleep studies conducted by Duke-NUS Medical School researchers â whose studies have shown that 80 per cent of teens here donât get enough sleep, which affects their health, grades and cognitive abilities.
21st April 2017
Depriving a person of sleep is, literally, a form of torture. The United States' Central Intelligence Agency made suspected terrorists stay awake for days in order to gather intelligence from them.
Indeed, just one night of inadequate sleep is enough to irritate us. We feel tired and are unable to function properly or learn and retain information.
Yet, many of us often happily sacrifice some sleep in exchange for time to go clubbing, watch TV or go on social media.
17th March 2017
Today is World Sleep Day, an annual celebration of the importance of sleep.
While sleep is essential for health and well-being, many people in Singapore are not getting enough of it.
Results of a study released by scientists from the University of Michigan last year showed that Singaporeans clocked an average amount of 7 hours 24 minutes of sleep per day - tying with Japan as the country with the least amount of sleep among 100 nations.
17th June 2016
In the past year, there has been a slew of local articles about sleep, the health risks of sleep deprivation, the need for work-life balance, as well as letters calling for action to improve studentsâ sleep.
While there appears to be genuine recognition that something needs to change, the needle has not moved much on a societal or policy level. In this instance, instead of waiting for government action, change can and should actually begin with individuals. Here are five pointers to get us to the tipping point.
29th March 2016
Earlier this month, Duke-NUS Medical School researchers were featured in a first-of-its-kind study in the United States journal Sleep.
In the study, 56 teenagers, mostly from "elite" high schools and aged between 15 and 19, stayed in a boarding school for two weeks to assess how insufficient sleep could affect cognitive function.
For seven nights, half the teens received five hours of sleep, while the other half had nine hours - the recommended sleep duration for this age group.
29th February 2016
The legendary work ethic of East Asian students may have driven them to the top of the standardized test leaderboard, but researchers found that adolescents who sleep five hours a night for a week experience significant cognitive degradation.
23rd June 2015
Anyone who has ever driven home after a red-eye flight or sat through an important but interminable lecture will know the feeling: Youâre commanding your brain to stay awake, yet your eyelids feel heavy as lead and they just keep falling shut.
Now a team of neuroscientists based in Singapore has documented whatâs going on in the brain when the battle to stay awake is momentarily lost. Ju Lynn Ong and her colleagues put 18 healthy participants in a sleepy state by keeping them awake all night in a psych lab. After being awake for 22 straight hours, the participants were asked to lay in the dark inside a brain scanner for two six-minute scans â and to keep their eyes open the whole time.
2nd July 2014
Older adults who sleep less show evidence of a more rapid decline in cognitive performance, according to a study by Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore.
1st July 2014
Researchers at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore (Duke-NUS) have found evidence that the less older adults sleep, the faster their brains age. These findings, relevant in the context of Singapore's rapidly ageing society, pave the way for future work on sleep loss and its contribution to cognitive decline, including dementia.
14th March 2014
Last year, an opinion-editorial that I wrote on the perils of short sleep received an unexpected flood of attention. Some wrote tongue-in-cheek commentaries on local sleep patterns. A few concerned parents made appeals on forum pages to have morning-session secondary schools start later. Others thanked me for helping them counsel their children. Is this acknowledgement that the effects of sleep on health are being taken more seriously? Perhaps not.
2nd May 2013
The rising cost of healthcare and the burden of chronic illness are perennial concerns. Remarkably, there exists a measure that a quarter to a third of city dwellers can implement to reduce their risk of accidents, coronary artery disease, diabetes, cancer and all-cause mortality, while improving their cognitive performance.
Work on risky decision making in sleep deprived persons highlighted in news around the world
9th March 2011
Time Magazine
Tricks to Improving Your Odds in Vegas: Get a Full Night's Sleep. [read full article]
8th March 2011
Scientific American
Bloomberg Businessweek
DukeHealth.org
8th December 2009
The recent article in The Straits Times, âDangerous brain scans foundâ should prove little cause for alarm among Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) participants. The dangerous brain scans in question refer to a series of Computed Tomography, or CT brain perfusion scans. The potential dangers that accompany CT scans do not apply to MRI scans even though from the outside, the scanners look the same. [Read more in our FAQ section]
21st May 2008
Work on lapses in sleep deprivation highlighted in US News and DukeMed News
4th June 2007
A lifetime of paying attention to the background may have trained some senior citizens to tamp down part of their brainâs ability to see the foreground, suggest researchers in Illinois and Singapore...
22nd May 2007
While it is well documented that sleep deprivation leads to short-term memory loss, it had been believed that it was the result of the brain not being able to assemble and "file away" the information it received in its proper place. However, researchers from the Duke University-NUS Graduate Medical School suggest that the problem occurs earlier in the information-gathering process....
9th May 2007
The later Tim Harris stays up playing poker, the bolder â and more imprudent â he becomes. As it turns out, itâs not just Harris choosing risky options when exhausted. Sleep experts point to disasters like the Exxon Valdez oil spill and Chernobyl as examples of what can happen when people donât get enough sleep.
