Teens life quality affected by a lack of sleep

Mar 29 2006

According to a new survey of teenagers across the U.S., many of them are losing out on quality of life because of a lack of sleep.

The poll by the National Sleep Foundation (NSF), found that as a consequence of insufficient sleep, teens are falling asleep in class, lack the energy to exercise, feel depressed and are driving while feeling drowsy.

The poll results support previous studies by Brown Medical School, and Lifespan affiliates Bradley Hospital and Hasbro Children's Hospital, which found that adolescents are not getting enough sleep, and suggest that this can lead to a number of physical and emotional impairments.

Mary A. Carskadon, PhD, with Bradley Hospital and Brown Medical School, chaired the National Sleep Foundation poll taskforce and has been a leading authority on teen sleep for more than a decade.

Carskadon, director of the Bradley Hospital Sleep and Chronobiology Sleep Laboratory and a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown Medical School, says the old adage 'early to bed, early to rise' presents a real challenge for adolescents.

Her research on adolescent circadian rhythms indicates that the internal clocks of adolescents undergo maturational changes making them different from those of children or adults.

But teens must still meet the demands of earlier school start times that make it nearly impossible for them to get enough sleep.

Carskadon's work has been instrumental in influencing school start times across the country.

Carskadon's newest finding indicates that, in addition to the changes in their internal clocks, adolescents experience slower sleep pressure, which may contribute to an overall shift in teen sleep cycles to later hours.

Judy Owens, MD, a national authority on children and sleep, is the director of the pediatric sleep disorders center at Hasbro Children's Hospital and an associate professor of pediatrics at Brown Medical School, and says the results are especially important in light of the fact that 90% of the parents polled believed that their adolescents were getting enough sleep during the week.

She says the message to parents is that teens are tired; but parents can help by eliminating sleep stealers such as caffeinated drinks and TV or computers in the teen's bedroom, as well as enforcing reasonable bed times.

A major report last year by Carskadon, Owens, and Richard Millman, MD, professor of medicine at Brown Medical School, indicated that adolescents aged 13 to 22 need 9 to 10 hours of sleep each night.

According to the National Center on Sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health, school-age children and teenagers should get at least 9 hours of sleep a day.

Other studies have also shown that young people between 16 and 29 years of age were the most likely to be involved in crashes caused by the driver falling asleep.

The NIH also says without enough sleep, a person has trouble focusing and responding quickly, and there is growing evidence linking a chronic lack of sleep with an increased risk of obesity, diabetes, heart disease and infections.