Body News.

Byline: Kristin Sainani

Cell Phones and Sleep

P rolonged cell-phone use before bedtime may impair your sleep quality. In a study of 71 people, participants took longer to reach deep sleep (an average of 22 versus 16 minutes) and had shorter bouts of deep sleep (37 versus 45 minutes) after they had been exposed to cell-phone radiation for three hours, compared with having been exposed to sham signals for the same amount of time. The effect was too subtle for the subjects to perceive a difference in their sleep (though they did report more headaches), but "deep sleep is the most important aspect of sleep for recharging your energy reserves," says Bengt Arnetz, a professor of occupational and environmental health at Wayne State University in Detroit. "If you have problems sleeping, use a wireless or hands-free device to keep the radio-frequency fields away from the head," Arnetz suggests.

Dandruff Breakthrough

In a discovery that may lead to new dandruff treatments, scientists at Procter & Gamble have solved the genetic code--all 4,285 genes--of the fungus that causes the condition. The organism lives on every person's scalp; it eats oil from the scalp and releases by-products that irritate the skin and cause flaking in susceptible individuals, says Thomas L. Dawson Jr., a researcher at P&G Beauty (which develops Head & Shoulders antidandruff products). Now that the investigators know more about how the fungus operates, they can try to interfere with its ability to secrete irritants. Existing ...