Your health: How much sleep is needed?
<b>Is it nap time? </b>
As we age, the quality of our sleep changes.
After about age 60, according to the Harvard Medical School newsletter, we have less deep (slow-wave) sleep and more rapid sleep cycles, we awaken more often and we sleep an average of two hours less at night than we did as young adults.
But experts say forget about the notion that older people don't need as much sleep.
No matter your age, we typically need 7½ to eight hours of sleep to function normally. If you're not getting enough shut-eye at night, what about daytime naps or will that also disrupt sleep patterns?
These questions were addressed in a recent study by researchers at the Weill Cornell Medical College in White Plains, N.Y., and published in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society. The authors concluded that napping not only increases older individuals' total sleep time - without producing daytime drowsiness - but also provides measurable cognitive benefits.
Yawn ... I think my couch is calling.
<b>Aches and pains</b>
One in five adults and nearly 300,000 children in the United States suffer from arthritis, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Clinical psychologist Jane L. Delgado tells The Washington Post that a better understanding of the condition will help people cope with it more easily.
In the first part of her book, "The Buena Salud Guide to Arthritis and Your Life," she covers the cartilage and joint damage that leads to arthritis and how a healthy diet and low-impact exercise can ease the discomfort.
Delgado suggests seeing a physician regularly, getting enough sleep and keeping a health journal to track those good and bad days.
<b>Global obesity </b>
Obesity levels doubled in every region of the world between 1980 and 2008, spurring rates of noncommunicable diseases, such as diabetes and cancer that now account for almost two in three deaths globally, the World Health Organization said in a report.
About 500 million people are obese, WHO said in its annual World Health Statistics. About 26 percent of adults in the Americas are obese, making it the world's fattest region, compared with 3 percent of adults in Southeast Asia, according to the report.
Women are more likely to be obese than men.
About one in three adults worldwide has high blood pressure and one in 10 has diabetes, the report said.