HEALTH & WELLNESS

Late bedtimes and not enough sleep can harm developing brains – and poorer kids are more at risk. Shorter sleep and later bedtimes are linked to potentially harmful functional changes to parts of the brain important for coping with stress and controlling negative emotions, our recently published research found. And children in families with low economic resources are particularly at risk. We are neuroscientists who are passionate about reducing socioeconomic disparities in child development. To better understand how socioeconomic disadvantage affects sleep health and brain development in children, we recruited 94 5- to 9-year-old children from socioeconomically diverse families living in New York. About 30% of the participating families had incomes below the U.S. poverty threshold. ...

Millions of Americans believe aromatherapy works – but for many doctors, it still doesn’t pass the smell test. The history of using essential oils and their aromas to improve health and well-being dates back thousands of years. Like today, patients would inhale or topically apply these oils, which were typically extracted from plants – from leaves to flowers to roots to bark. But not until the 1930s was this form of therapy considered to have true potential in mainstream health care. That was when Rene Maurice Gattefossé, a French chemist who coined the word aromatherapy, wrote extensively about the properties of essential oils. Today, depending on whom you talk to, aromatherapy comprises anything from pleasant odors associated with personal hygiene and cleaning products to a serious t...