New means of monitoring slumber relies on cardiac rhythms

02/09/2005

(HealthDay News) - Tracking beat-to-beat changes in the heart's electrical signals may allow researchers insights into sleep stability and quality, researchers report.

"This new ECG-based approach is important because it promises to provide an affordable and readily achievable way to monitor sleep stability in a wide range of conditions, including sleep apnea, depression, fibromyalgia, heart failure and stress," senior researcher Dr. Ary Goldberger of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Boston, said in a prepared statement.

Reporting in the Sept. 1 issue of Sleep, Goldberger's team developed a "sleep spectrogram," a novel graph based on data obtained from a simple electrocardiogram (ECG).

Using this approach, they were able to identify two distinct types of behavior during a person's sleep - stable and restful or unstable and aroused.

The graph provided more information about sleep depth than conventional methods using rapid eye movement, the researchers said.

More information

Test your 'Sleep IQ' at the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research.

http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/about/ncsdr/patpub/patpub-a.htm 

http://healthandfitness.sympatico.msn.ca/News/ContentPosting.htm?contentid=864cf515-94bf-4231-9892-8e64d64d8dbd&show=True&number=5&showbyline=False&abc=abc

Copyright 2005 ScoutNews