Study of sleep-deprived teens an eye-opener !!!!!!!

[Daanyeer]

Source: Memphis Commercial Appeal
May 8, 2006 Author: William Hathaway




......."Adolescents should not drink caffeine after lunch and should not have electronic devices in their bedrooms"



Call it Generation Groggy. At least once a week, 28 percent of high school students fall asleep in class, and 22 percent fall asleep doing homework, according to the survey released last week by the National Sleep Foundation.
"And that is the tip of the iceberg because you know they aren't alert before they fall asleep," said Amy Wolfson, sleep researcher and associate professor of psychology at College of the Holy Cross in Worcester. "That is very alarming to me."

Sleep deprivation among American youth is caused not only by puberty, which triggers changes in one's sleep cycle, but also by environmental and lifestyle factors, such as early school starts, a taste for caffeinated drinks and bedrooms that are full of sleep-postponing temptations such as cell phones, computers and television sets, sleep experts say.
"In no way are we saying this is all biological," said Dr. Judy Owens, director of the pediatric sleep disorders clinic at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I. "The survey also showed that 97 percent had at least one electronic device in their rooms. This is a big problem."

Researchers at Hasbro and Bradley Hospital, another affiliate of Brown University Medical School, found plenty of evidence in their survey, funded by the National Sleep Foundation, that adolescents were falling far short of recommended nine hours of sleep.

Only about one in five adolescents between the ages of 11 and 17 gets the recommended nine hours of sleep per night, and about half get less than eight hours on school nights. The total hours of sleep also declined with age. Sixth-graders slept on average 8.4 hours per night while high school seniors slept 6.9 hours, two hours less than recommended.

Young people are paying the consequences, both academically and in terms of personal health problems, the researchers said.

For instance, adolescents who get less sleep get worse grades than their peers who get at least nine hours of sleep. Eighty percent of the well-rested subjects reported getting A's and B's in school.

Also, 28 percent of respondents reported they were too tired to exercise.

Owens noted that many studies have reported that the fewer hours of sleep an adolescent gets, the more likely they are to be obese or to suffer from mood disorders.

Also, about half of teenage drivers in the survey said they have driven while drowsy in the past year.

Owens said that there are things that parents and their children can do to help kids get a better night's sleep.

Adolescents should not drink caffeine after lunch and should not have electronic devices in their bedrooms. They should stick to a regular sleep schedule with an adequate number of hours of sleep and try not to deviate much from it on weekends.

However, for some adolescents, making major changes in their sleep cycles may require extra help. Light therapy and the hormone melatonin sometimes can be used to restore more normal sleep cycles in young night owls, Owens said.