University of Colorado Boulder researchers recently released a study showing that sleeping only five hours a night and having unlimited access to food can cause people to gain almost two pounds of weight a week. The study suggests that getting more sleep could help curtail the obesity epidemic.

“I don’t think extra sleep by itself is going to lead to weight loss,” said Kenneth Wright, director of the university’s Sleep and Chronobiology Laboratory, which led the study. “Problems with weight gain and obesity are much more complex than that. But I think it could help. If we can incorporate healthy sleep into weight-loss and weight-maintenance programs, our findings suggest that it may assist people to obtain a healthier weight.”

The researchers found that staying awake longer requires more energy; however, the quantity of food consumed by the study participants offsets the extra calories burned. 

“Just getting less sleep, by itself, is not going to lead to weight gain,” Wright said. “But when people get insufficient sleep, it leads them to eat more than they actually need.”

Meeting professionals are a ripe workforce for insufficient sleep. Planning and supplying meetings and events can tax even the most healthy individual. There are ways, though, you can keep your body healthy and your well-being in shape. 

“For me, a hotel with a 24-hour gym is a must,” said Charles Massey, CMP, founder and CEO of SYNAXIS Meetings & Events. “On site and when travelling on a ‘regular’ business trip (whatever that is) I try to get at least 30 minutes worth of cardio plus some stretches in every morning. Some mornings, that might require getting up at 4 a.m.”

Massey says hydration is key to keeping healthy.

“I also make sure to drink lots of water, especially when I’m going to be walking several miles each day in a convention center or hotel,” he said. “In addition, I make sure to pack lots of EmergenC and Berocca (water soluble vitamin B-complex) and mix it with my water and also keep it handy for when I ‘crash’ in the afternoon. It’s much better than caffeine (although I do get plenty of that in the morning, albeit with green tea).” 

And then there’s the sleep component. 

“Get sufficient sleep (which for me is 5 hours) and take breaks when you can,” Massey said. “Luckily our onsite teams are ‘cross trained’ so we can cover for each other when one of us needs to take a break. And don’t over do it with alcohol (often easier said than done in our industry). Know your limitations. For me, I know that I am the early bird and some of my colleagues are night owls, so we schedule ourselves onsite accordingly.”

Massey is great at keeping healthy on the road. Are you? How do you stay healthy while planning and producing meetings and events? Please let us know your tips in the comments.

Imagine painting a picture while you sleep. No, this isn't a dream. It's a reality. 

European hotel chain Ibis has a robot that creates a work of art based on your sleep patterns. Sensors in the bed measure pressure, heat and sound. The data is sent wireless to the robot, which then paints the picture in another room away from the person sleeping. The paintings, though, look more Pollock than Picasso in the end. 

Check out the video below for more on this story.

Do you get the recommended 8-10 hours of sleep a night? Some of us shrug off the missed hours as something that won't hurt productivity.  If there's a sense of fatigue we can work harder and longer with an energy drink or coffee shot.

But a recent study out of The Journal of Vision may change your perception of how much sleep you need. A team of researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital (BWH) have discovered that regardless of how energized you feel, that lack of sleep can influence the way you perform certain tasks. “Our team decided to look at how sleep might affect complex visual search tasks, because they are common in safety-sensitive activities, such as air-traffic control, baggage screening, and monitoring power plant operations,” explained Jeanne F. Duffy, PhD, MBA, senior author on this study and associate neuroscientist at BWH. “These types of jobs involve processes that require repeated, quick memory encoding and retrieval of visual information, in combination with decision making about the information.” 

Researchers collected and analyzed data from visual search tasks from 12 participants over a period of one month. In the first week, all participants were scheduled to sleep 10-12 hours per night to make sure they were well-rested. For the following three weeks, the participants were scheduled to sleep the equivalent of 5.6 hours per night, and also had their sleep times scheduled on a 28-hour cycle, mirroring chronic jet lag. The research team gave the participants computer tests that involved visual search tasks and recorded how quickly the participants could find important information, and also how accurate they were in identifying it. The researchers report that the longer the participants were awake, the more slowly they identified the important information in the test. Additionally, during the biological night time, 12 a.m. -6 a.m., participants (who were unaware of the time throughout the study) also performed the tasks more slowly than they did during the daytime. 

“This research provides valuable information for workers, and their employers, who perform these types of visual search tasks during the night shift, because they will do it much more slowly than when they are working during the day,” said Duffy. “The longer someone is awake, the more the ability to perform a task, in this case a visual search, is hindered, and this impact of being awake is even stronger at night.”

(Story materials via Brigham and Women's Hospital.)

There's a new type of hotel room on the horizon for those who have to put up with snorers. 

The "snore absorption room" was tested at the Crowne Plaza London The City for from June 27-July 1 and in eight other hotels across Europe and the Middle East. The room used technology to help reduce repetitive nasal noise and included: 

• Sound proofing on walls to absorb the loud frequencies, deflect the sound waves and minimize the impact of snoring. The walls use egg box style foam that reduces the noise reverberating in the room.
• A specially designed sound absorbing head board that works together with the sound proof walling to muffle the echo within the room.
• An anti-snoring bed wedge that acts as a body pillow, encouraging snoring guests to sleep on their sides or upright. 
• An anti-snoring pillow that uses rare neodymium magnets to create a natural magnetic field, opening the airways and stiffening the upper palate, which vibrates during snoring.
• A white noise machine that is proven to help drown out the droning snoring noise and help sleep and relaxation

“We’ve all been there. Lying wide awake at three o’clock in the morning burying our head under a pillow to drown out our partner’s snoring," said Tom Rowntree, a spokesperson for Crowne Plaza. "There’s nothing worse than being kept up all night, and that’s why we’ve designed this specific snore absorption room to help give our guests a great night’s sleep."

There are currently no plans to test the room in the U.S.

Would you pay extra to sleep in a snore absorption room? Or do earplugs suffice? 

Arianna Huffington, editor in chief of The Huffington Post, says getting more sleep will make you more productive. And she has the scars to prove it. Here she is speaking at a TEDWomen event. (We're on a TED kick today.)