Wednesday, August 12, 2009 - 8PM EDT
Trans-D Tropin Product Webinar - This will be a webinar about Trans-D Tropin, the uniqueness of this remarkable product, the fantastic results experienced by users, and the various health benefits it can provide.
To Join: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/768049531

Wednesday, August 26, 2009 - 8PM EDT
Trans-D Tropin Referral Program - This will be a webinar about the Trans-D Tropin referral program, the unique affiliate viral marketing plan that allows all users to POTENTIALLY obtain this product at no “out of pocket” cost to themselves.
To Join: https://www2.gotomeeting.com/register/961570387

A Phoenix pharmacy and its owner have been indicted for selling up to $8 million in human-growth hormone to doctors without receiving prescriptions.

An announcement from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Phoenix also says the Compounding Center, 4045 East Bell Road, and wholesale division manager Sean Shaffer advertised anti-aging products based on the “impermissable use” of HGH.

The main allegation centers on sales from 2001 to 2006 of $1.2 million to $8.2 million of the hormone, officials say. Shaffer reportedly had no clue whether the doctors were using the HGH legitimately, like he should have, the feds say.

When we called Shaffer — who told us he’s the owner — to ask about the indictment this afternoon, he was surprised and “baffled” to hear about it.
“HGH is not a big mover for us,” he says.

He acknowledges it used to be, though. The feds say it once accounted for 38 percent of his business. But “absolutely,” all of the sales were legit, he says.

We ask about the part of the news release where it says “undercover operatives” were sent in to Shaffer’s shop to buy HGH, telling him it was for “bodybuilders and athletes.”

“I have no recollection of that,” Shaffer says.

We offer to e-mail him the news release, but he doesn’t seem to want it.

You, however, can read it below:

PHARMACY AND EMPLOYEE INDICTED FOR CONSPIRACY TO ILLEGALLY DISTRIBUTE HUMAN GROWTH HORMONE (HGH)
PHOENIX - A federal grand jury in Phoenix returned an indictment on Wednesday against the Compounding Center, Inc., a pharmacy located in Phoenix, and Sean Shaffer, 29, of Phoenix, for Conspiracy in relation to the Prohibited Distribution of Human Growth Hormone. Shaffer was also indicted for two additional counts of Prohibited Distribution of Human Growth Hormone.

The indictment alleges, among other things, that the Compounding Center, Inc. advertised through its website, among other means, offering its services as a supplier of “anti-aging products”. The website specifically touted the impermissible use of HGH as being effective to reverse a wide range of signs and symptoms associated with aging. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has only approved the use of HGH for a defined and limited number of diseases. HGH has not been approved for use in any anti-aging, body-building, or weight loss treatments. HGH has also not been shown to be safe and effective for the enhancement of athletic performance.
The indictment further alleges the Compounding Center operated a wholesale department, run by Shaffer, that sold Saizen, a brand of HGH, directly to doctors and other licensed buyers without the receipt of a prescription. Through their advertisements and solicitations, the Compounding Center was able to attract the attention of certain doctors whose practices primarily centered on the purported treatment of anti-aging, performance enhancement and life extension. From on or about November 2001 through on or about March 2006, the Compounding Center and Shaffer sold between approximately $1.2 million to $8.2 million worth of Saizen to these doctors despite there being no indication that these doctors engaged in the treatment of a disease or other recognized medical condition approved by the FDA in relation to the use of this drug. These sales accounted for approximately 38% of the wholesale business conducted by the Compounding Center during the period relevant to the indictment. During the course of the conspiracy, Shaffer, in his capacity as the manager of the wholesale department of the Compounding Center, also sold a number of HGH kits to two undercover operatives who specifically told Shaffer that the purchases were for bodybuilders and athletes.

A conviction for each count alleged carries a maximum penalty of five years imprisonment, a $250,000 fine ($500,000 for the corporation) or both. In determining an actual sentence, the assigned will consult the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines, which provide appropriate sentencing ranges. The judge, however, is not bound by those guidelines in determining a sentence.

An indictment is simply the method by which a person is charged with criminal activity and raises no inference of guilt. An individual is presumed innocent until competent evidence is presented to a jury that establishes guilt beyond a reasonable doubt.

The investigation preceding the indictment was conducted by the Drug Enforcement Administration. The prosecution is being handled by Howard D. Sukenic and Marnie Hodahkwen, Assistant U.S. Attorneys, District of Arizona, Phoenix.

CASE NUMBER: CR-09-717-PHX-ROS

Selig: I’ve spent the last 11 years of my life on this issue. I was in St. Louis for the gigantic celebration on Labor Day in 1998. I have a great deal of affection for Mark McGwire, let me say that. I like Mark. He was always very cooperative with me. And when he retired, he wrote me a beautiful letter and I’m saddened by some of the things that have happened.

But let me say that I started meeting with all the club’s team doctors and trainers. The minor-league (drug testing) program, which I could do unilaterally, is in its ninth year. What some people don’t understand is that while we proposed a steroid program in 1994, the next labor negotiation we could deal with it in was 2002. … I know there are some members of the media who don’t seem to understand this. They think that the commissioner should have done this or done that unilaterally. No, he couldn’t.

In the ’80s, we had a horrible cocaine problem and none of the commissioners could get a drug-testing program, in spite of the Pittsburgh drug trials, in spite of the fact that four people went to jail. Our historian, Jerome Holtzman, who has passed away, used to say to me that, ‘what they don’t understand is that we’ve had these kinds of problems for 70 years.’ Amphetamines were a very significant problem. A number of team doctors told me three or four years ago that I had more to be concerned about with amphetamines than I did with steroids because we had the steroids problem already pretty well solved. I know we don’t have a test for human growth hormone. Nobody has a test for human growth hormone. We’re spending millions every year trying to get to one. All these history revisionists who say, ‘They should have known.’ Interestingly enough, the very people who are the most critical didn’t write a column about it in the ’90s. So I find it interesting now that they have all kinds of criticisms.

Look, baseball has never been more popular. We’ve set attendance records in four of the last five years because our fans have recognized we’ve done something. The Manny Ramirez situation … we’ve administered way over 1,600 tests and we’ve had one positive.

We’ve done everything we’ve been asked and a lot more. For this, I’ll give the (players’) union credit. They did, at the end, come around. We had an amphetamine scandal in the 1980s. We had all sorts of things that went on for many, many years. We banned amphetamines. Nobody told us to ban amphetamines. I thank our team doctors and our head athletic trainers who have been extraordinarily helpful to me in all of this. So these people who are talking … this is just another example of how we’re held to a higher and different standard and it’s wrong. You can talk to all the great stars - Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard and Ryan Braun - they’re tested for the last nine years.

Hummel: Is baseball held to a different standard, relative to performance enhancing drugs and the like, because of all the individual records?

Selig: In 1971, my second year in baseball, I was going to lunch with (then commissioner) Bowie Kuhn. And Bowie was getting pounded. Unfortunately, Bowie was getting pounded a lot. I don’t remember the particular issue but then who walked in was (NFL commissioner) Pete Rozelle and we all sat down together. I asked Bowie a question on the way back and Pete was getting praised on the same issue. Bowie said, ‘Buddy, we’re held to a higher and different standard and we ought to be complimented.’ Whether our fans are more intense, whether it’s the records, whatever it is, I don’t really know. But we are held to a higher and a different standard.

The sport has a magnificent history. Let’s take St. Louis and I love St. Louis. There’s no question that it’s one of the great baseball cities in America. When I think of St. Louis, I immediately start thinking of (Red) Schoendienst and (Stan) Musial. And way before that, the Gas House Gang. Grover Cleveland Alexander. They have this remarkable tradition. I think that plays a role in all this. Our history and tradition are very important to our fans. And they’re protective of it.

The report followed up on a study conducted in 2000 and shows a 33% increase in obesity, which has led to greater costs of healthcare and loss of productivity. In 2000, it was determined by Chenoweth and Associates, a health econometrics consulting firm in North Carolina, that a higher percentage of annual costs was claimed by obese and overweight individuals. The company predicted that the costs will continue to climb and could reach more than $53 billion by 2011.

“To put this in perspective, the economic cost to California of adults who are obese, overweight and physically inactive is equivalent to more than a third of the state’s total budget,” stated California State Controller John Chiang. “Think of the programs we could protect, the children we could educate and the families we could help if we could recapture those dollars by investing in prevention. These figures demonstrate the real and very unsettling financial impact of the obesity epidemic on a California economy already in crisis.”

The study authors believe that minor improvements to health could have a substantial impact on the state’s finances. A 5% improvement in the physical activity rate and healthy weight during the next five years may reduce obesity costs by $12 billion.

“The obesity crisis may seem overwhelming, but California has successfully tackled big health issues before,” stated Kim Belshé, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency, who aided in the design and lead the state’s nationally recognized tobacco programs.

“The key is to establish concrete changes at the federal, state, and local level to make it easier for people to make healthier choices. This study shows that if those changes can help just one Californian in twenty reduce their weight and become more physically active, we could realize significant savings and begin to turn this crisis around.”

So suggests a study of rhesus monkeys published today in the journal Science. The new research shows that fewer rhesus monkeys who ate a calorie-restricted diet had died in a 20-year period than those whose diets weren’t restricted (only 50 percent of the nonrestricted animals survived at the time of the report, while 80 percent of those on calorie-restricted diets remained alive.) The calorie-restricted diet also appears to have delayed the onset of age-related illnesses such as diabetes, heart disease and cancer among the monkeys.

The work is important because it represents the first time such an effect of calorie restriction has been observed in primates. Earlier work with mice and roundworms has shown cutting calories extends life, but scientists have been uncertain as to whether that phenomenon likely applies to primates — and thus potentially to humans.

And we still don’t know for sure. The current research reports on monkeys in their mid-to-late 20s; given their expected life span of 27 to 40 years, it will take about 15 more years for the last of the study subjects to die. Only then will the full picture become clear.

The monkeys on restricted diets consumed 30 percent fewer calories a day than those on unrestricted diets. In humans, that would translate to consuming 600 calories less than the currently recommended average of 2,000 daily calories — for a very low 1,400 calories.

By Jennifer LaRue Huget | July 10, 2009; 12:17 PM ET

Number 10: Achilles Tendinitis

When the tendon at the back of the ankle - the Achilles tendon - is overused, inflammation and pain can occur, which is known as acute Achilles tendinitis. If this condition is left untreated, it can become chronic and the injury can worsen until it becomes impossible to run. Achilles tendinitis is most common among runners and athletes who participate in sports that involve running or jumping.

Prevention and treatment: Stretching and strengthening exercises for the calf muscles can help prevent injury to the Achilles tendon. Rest, ice, compression, and elevation (RICE), an anti-inflammatory medication, and strengthening your calf muscles are your best treatment options. Do not resume sports until the injury is completely healed or it may become a chronic condition.

Number 9: Concussion

A concussion is an injury to the brain that is usually the result of a blow to the head. Symptoms include disorientation, vision disturbance, headache, dizziness, amnesia, loss of balance, difficulty concentrating, and nausea. A concussion does not necessarily involve a loss of consciousness. Concussions are most common in contact sports, such as football, boxing, hockey, and soccer. However, they also occur in sports like skiing and gymnastics. While most people return to normal a few weeks or months after a concussion, multiple concussions can cause permanent damage.

Prevention and treatment: The best way to prevent concussion is to avoid contact sports, but that may not be a viable option for many people. Treating a concussion simply involves resting, although you can take acetaminophen (Tylenol) if you have a headache. Depending on the severity of your concussion, you will have to refrain from playing contact sports for a few hours to a few months. Returning to play too quickly could result in second impact syndrome, a potentially fatal condition.

Number 8: Groin Strain

A strained groin or adductor muscles - the fan-like muscles situated in the upper thigh that serve to pull the legs together - usually happens when you suddenly change directions while running, such as in soccer, hockey, basketball, racket sports, football, and volleyball. Symptoms include sharp pain, swelling and sometimes even bruising on the inside of the thigh.

Prevention and treatment: As with most sports injuries, the best way to prevent a groin pull is to stretch properly before exercising. Also, gradually increasing the intensity of the activity rather than jumping into the activity too quickly may help prevent injury, and strengthening the groin muscles can be helpful too. RICE, combined with anti-inflammatory medications, is the best treatment plan. Don’t do anything too strenuous for a week or two after the injury, and when you do resume exercising, apply ice to the affected area after your workout until healed. When you are feeling better, start a stretching and strengthening program.

Number 7: Shin Splints

Shin splints refer to pain on the inner side of the shinbone caused by inflammation of the muscles that surround it. They often affect people who aren’t used to exercising; they can be caused by increasing the intensity of your workout too fast, wearing worn-out shoes or by jumping or running on hard ground.

Prevention and treatment: Wearing good shoes, cross training, stretching, and not increasing workout intensity too quickly are the best preventive measures. As for treatment, ice, stretching and anti-inflammatory medications are your best bets.

Number 6: Lower Back Pain

Although lower-back pain is much less common among athletes than among sedentary and overweight people, it can affect runners, cyclists, golfers, tennis, and baseball players. While there are many types of lower-back pain - bulging discs, back spasms, and pain reaching down the leg from the lower back, known as sciatica - the most common reason for sports-related back pain is simply improper stretching. In the case of runners, having even the slightest discrepancy in leg length can cause back pain.

Prevention and treatment: Although some lower-back injuries cannot be prevented, warming up properly before exercising will greatly reduce your risk of injury. While bulging discs and sciatica require fast medical treatment, you can treat a simple muscle pull or back spasm yourself with RICE, anti-inflammatory medication and stretching. Runners with a difference in leg length can get orthotic lifts from a podiatrist to correct the problem.

Number 5: Pulled Muscle

Not warming up properly, fatigue, lack of flexibility, and weakness can cause all types of athletes to pull a muscle. The most commonly pulled muscles are hamstrings (especially in sports involving running, such as jogging, basketball and soccer) and calves (particularly in older tennis players). The hamstrings are the muscles behind your thighs; pulling them is painful and can even cause bruising. While these are the most common, you can pull many different muscles depending on the sport you are performing.

Prevention and treatment: The best way to prevent pulling a muscle is to stretch properly before and after exercising, and avoid working out when you are fatigued and weak. As with most injuries, RICE and anti-inflammatory drugs are helpful, as well as gentle stretches. When the injury has begun to heal, you can begin exercising again, but stop every so often during your workout to stretch until you are completely healed.

Number 4: Tennis or Golf Elbow

Elbow injuries account for 7% of all sports injuries. Tennis elbow consists of tendon degeneration in the elbow due to repeated backhand strokes in tennis. It causes pain on the outside of the elbow. Golf elbow, on the other hand, usually affects the inside of the elbow, although it can sometimes attack the outside. The pain experienced is a result of an inflammation of the epicondyle, the area on the inside of the elbow where the forearm-flexing muscles attach to the upper arm.

Prevention and treatment: The best way to prevent these ailments is to perform forearm-strengthening exercises, such as wrist curls, reverse wrist curls and squeezing a soft rubber ball. Also, improving your swing technique and wearing an elbow brace can be very helpful. Treatment can be as simple as RICE and anti-inflammatory medications, but in some cases physiotherapy and a prolonged break from the sport may be necessary.

Number 3: Ankle Sprain

Ankle sprains are very common among soccer, hockey, basketball, and volleyball players. They are almost inevitable in sports that involve jumping, running and turning quickly; these movements can lead to twisting the ankle and even possibly tearing a tendon or ligament. An X-ray can rule out the possibility of a fracture.

Prevention and treatment: Strengthening your ankles by doing exercises such as ankle lifts on stairs, as well as taping the ankle or wearing a lace-up brace can help, but these measures in no way guarantee that you won’t be injured if you fall hard or make a false movement. Treat an ankle sprain with RICE and anti-inflammatory drugs, but don’t rest it excessively for more than a day. To help your ankle heal faster, you should try to move your ankle gently to get the circulation going and reduce swelling.

Number 2: Shoulder Injury

About 20% of sports injuries involve the shoulder, including dislocations, sprains and strains. Shoulder injuries are most common in tennis, swimming, weightlifting, baseball, and volleyball - basically, any sport that involves a lot of overhead movement. These problems are generally due to overuse, which loosens the rotator cuff - the group of tendons and muscles that surround the shoulder. Symptoms include pain, stiffness, and weakness and slipping in the shoulder.

Prevention and treatment: To prevent shoulder injuries - which often occur when you haven’t been using your shoulder muscles for a while, such as during your baseball league’s off-season - be sure to strengthen your muscles through weight training before the season begins. If you do injure yourself, RICE and an anti-inflammatory medication are your best treatment options.

Number 1: Runner’s Knee

Knee injuries comprise about 55% of all sports injuries and approximately one-fourth of all problems treated by orthopedic surgeons. Although torn ligaments and cartilage are the most common injuries, many knee problems are grouped into the category of “runner’s knee,” which includes a variety of aches and pains related to the kneecap. Runners are not the only victims of such injuries; they also strike cyclists, swimmers, people who practice step aerobics, and football, basketball, and volleyball players. Runner’s knee occurs when overuse leads to irritation of the tendon below the kneecap or when the region underneath the kneecap is worn or afflicted with arthritis.

Prevention and treatment: Replace shoes and insoles regularly; choose a softer running surface such as an indoor track rather than hard pavement; strengthen your quadriceps through weight training; take more rest days between workouts; and cross train to prevent overuse. If you injure your knee, don’t exercise for at least two days and take an anti-inflammatory medication. When you resume your workout, make sure to warm up properly and apply ice to your knee for about 20 minutes afterward.

Prevention is Key

Many sports injuries are due to an improper warm-up or stretching routine or because the level of intensity of the workout was increased too quickly. Therefore, the best way to avoid sports injuries that can keep you out of the game for weeks or months is to stretch adequately before and after your workout, and to pace yourself according to your level of skill and experience in the sport.

“Cartilage loss is the hallmark of osteoarthritis,” Dr. Changhai Ding told Reuters Health. By the time patients reach the point of needing knee replacement, 60 percent of cartilage has been lost, he said.

However, “achieving vitamin D sufficiency in osteoarthritis patients could significantly delay total knee replacement,” said Ding, at the Menzies Research Institute in Tasmania.

In a study, Ding and colleagues found “osteoarthritis patients with vitamin D sufficiency have approximately 1.5 percent less loss of knee cartilage per year than patients with vitamin D deficiency,” said Ding.

The investigators measured levels of vitamin D in blood samples and knee cartilage volume on X-rays from 880 men and women who were 51 to 79 years old. The team then took similar measurements again almost 3 years later among 353 of the study participants, the researchers report in the journal Arthritis & Rheumatism.

Overall, 58 percent of these subjects showed changes in knee cartilage indicating worsening osteoarthritis between the first and second measurements, and half reported knee pain.

Both at the beginning of the study enrollment and at follow up, men and women with vitamin D deficiency had lower knee cartilage volume and were more likely to experience knee pain.

Ding’s team concludes that vitamin D plays an important role in cartilage changes, and that vitamin D deficiency may predict knee cartilage loss over time.

The researchers call for further research to see if vitamin D supplementation can delay the progression of knee osteoarthritis and the need for total knee replacement in osteoarthritis patients.

The study, among the first to directly measure sleep duration in middle-aged adults, found missing an average one hour of sleep over five years raised the risk of developing high blood pressure by 37 percent.

It also suggests that poor sleep may explain in part why black men have higher blood pressure risks.

“People who didn’t sleep as much were at greater risk of developing hypertension over five years,” Kristen Knutson of the University of Chicago reported in the Archives of Internal Medicine on Monday.

Adults typically need between seven and nine hours of sleep, according to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, but many get far less, and several studies have begun to show the health consequences.

In children, lack of sleep has been shown to raise rates of obesity, depression and high blood pressure. In older adults, it increases the risk of falls. And in the middle-aged, it raises the risk of infections, heart disease, stroke and cancer.

The team studied 578 adults with an average age of 40. They took blood pressure readings and measured how long each person slept. Only 1 percent slept eight hours or more.

The volunteers slept six hours on average. Those who slept less were far more likely to develop high blood pressure over five years. And each hour of lost sleep raised the risk.

“If you compare six hours of sleep to five hours of sleep, the five-hour sleepers will have 37 percent greater odds of developing hypertension,” Knutson said.

The team also found that men, and particularly black men, got much less sleep than white women in the study, who were least likely to develop high blood pressure.

“These two observations suggested the intriguing possibility that the well-documented higher blood pressure in African Americans and men might be partly related to sleep duration,” Knutson and colleagues wrote.

Overall, the findings were not explained by sleep apnea, a dangerous type of snoring that is known to raise blood pressure risks. “Poor quality sleepers had higher blood pressure risks regardless of whether or not they snored,” Knutson said.

There were some sex differences, however.

Knutson said getting less sleep had the same effect in men regardless of whether they snored. But women who snored had even greater odds of developing high blood pressure.

It is not clear why, but Knutson said snoring is more rare in women and may be more strongly linked with sleep apnea.

Knutson said studies need to be done to see if helping people sleep more can cut the risks of developing high blood pressure, which affects a third of Americans and contributes to 7 million deaths worldwide each year.

Copyright 2009 Reuters.

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - Poor quality sleep - whether from insomnia, sleep fragmentation, or nightmares - is associated with increased risk of death, according to several presentations this week in Seattle at SLEEP 2009, the 23rd Annual Meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.

One study, conducted at Penn State College of Medicine in Hershey, Pennsylvania, suggests that insomnia may be as hazardous as obstructive sleep apnea.

“Insomnia with objective short sleep duration is associated with an activation of the stress system, i.e., higher secretion of cortisol and increased risk of high blood pressure,” said lead author Dr. Alexandros Vgontzas. He and his associates examined the effects of insomnia that persisted for at least 1 year and objective short sleep duration on mortality.

The subjects included 1741 randomly selected men and women. During 14 years of follow-up among men, the mortality rate was 19.6 percent. Among women, who were followed for 10 years, the mortality was 10.3 percent.

Compared with men who had normal sleep patterns and sleep durations of at least 6 hours, men with insomnia and a shorter duration of sleep had mortality risks that were up to 5-times greater. While mortality risk was also increased among women with similar characteristics, the association was not statistically significant.

“The longer follow-up of men may explain why we did not have the same finding in women,” Vgontzas. “Another possibility is that men are more vulnerable physically to this type of insomnia, i.e., insomnia associated with objective short sleep duration.”

Because “insomnia with objective sleep duration (of less than 6 hours) has significant medical consequences similar to sleep apnea, this type of insomnia should become a medical priority in terms of its detection and treatment,” he said. “At this point there are no studies that have assessed which type of treatment — medication vs. psychotherapy vs. a combination of the two — is more effective,” he added.

Another study assessed sleep duration using actigraphy, a small instrument worn on the wrist that measures body movement and detects patterns based on activity used to evaluate sleep-wake cycles. The investigators found that sleeping less than 5 hours per night increased the risk of death among elderly women, but not among elderly men.

Dr. K. L. Stone at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco and co-investigators monitored 3052 women (average age of 83.6 years) and 3055 men (average age 76.4 years) for at least three 24-hour periods.

Compared with women who slept at least 8 hours nightly, women who slept fewer than 5 hours had a significantly higher risk of death over 4.2 years of follow-up. Men who got fewer than 5 hours of sleep per night also had an increased mortality risk, but this was not statistically significant, which, again may be related to study conditions.

Based on data from the Sleep Heart Health Study, researchers led by Dr. Alison M. Laffan, formerly at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, and now at California Pacific Medical Center, have identified sleep fragmentation as another risk factor.

Included were 5614 subjects who underwent overnight polysomnography, in which brain wave activity is observed overnight during various phases of sleep, and were then followed for 8 years. The authors defined sleep fragmentation using an index of the number of sleep stage transitions per hour of sleep.

When transition types were considered individually, going from being awake to non-REM sleep and from non-REM sleep to being awake were tied to significantly higher mortality. “Other transition types decreased the odds of death; however, the decrease was observed only when the number of transitions was (less than) 1 per hour of sleep,” the researchers found.

Findings from a fourth study indicate that, among severely depressed individuals, nightmares — but not insomnia — were associated with elevated suicidal symptoms.

Principal investigator Dr. Rebecca Bernert, at Florida State University, and colleagues studied 82 adults who sought emergency psychiatric evaluation and completed symptom questionnaires.

The investigators found that only scores for disturbing dreams and nightmares were independent predictors of suicidal thinking.

Thus, the researchers conclude, “a more thorough assessment of sleep in acutely ill patients is warranted and may provide an important opportunity for intervention.”

Copyright 2009 Reuters.

The more types of sleep disturbances a person had - such as waking up too early, difficulty falling asleep or lying awake at night - upped the odds of suicidal thoughts, planning a suicide, or attempting it, researchers told a conference.

“People with two or more sleep symptoms were 2.6 times more likely to report a suicide attempt than those without any insomnia complaints,” Marcin Wojnar, a researcher at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor and the Medical University of Poland, who led the study, said in a statement.
“This has implications for public health as the presence of sleep problems should alert doctors to assess such patients for a heightened risk of suicide even if they don’t have a psychiatric condition.”

According to the World Health Organization, some 877,000 people worldwide kill themselves each year. For every suicide death, anywhere from 10 to 40 attempts are made, the U.N. agency estimates.

Scientists have linked sleep disturbances to increased suicidal risk in people with psychiatric disorders and in adolescents but it is unclear whether the association also exists in the general population, the researchers said.

In the study presented at the World Psychiatric Association International Congress in Florence, Italy, Wojnar and colleagues looked at the relationship between sleep problems and suicidal behaviors among 5,692 U.S. men and women.

About a third of the volunteers reported at least one type of sleep disturbance over the preceding year, which included either difficulty falling asleep, trouble staying asleep or waking at least two hours earlier than desired.

After adjusting for factors such as substance abuse and depression as well as for the influence of age, gender, marital and financial status, the researchers found the most consistent suicide link with waking up early.

People who reported that problem were twice as likely to have had suicidal thoughts or planned a suicide and were nearly three times more likely to have tried to kill themselves.

The researchers do not know exactly why, but said lack of sleep may affect cognitive function and lead to poorer judgment and increased hopelessness. A malfunction involving the brain chemical serotonin may also play a role, Wojnar added.

“Our findings also raise the possibility that addressing sleep problems could reduce the risk of suicidal behaviors,” Wojnar said.

Copyright 2009 Reuters.