on sleep and adolescence...

(Original Post 8/26/14)

Sleep patterns and needs definitely change as we travel through the varying stages of our bodies development.

As infants we challenge our parents to function on as little sleep as possible, sleeping when they are awake, and waking when they are asleep.

I remember, as a younger child, perhaps through 7th grade, shooting out of bed at 5 am ready to watch Saturday morning cartoons. Granted, I went to bed around 7 or 8 (and though tired-- with resistance), allowing myself a healthy 10 hours of sleep. I had the lineup memorized and didn't want to miss a second of them. One of my parents would begrudgingly get up and start motoring around on auto pilot so that I was not completely unsupervised.

As an adult I cannot force myself to sleep in. I can lay there and stare at the ceiling, hoping to God that I will be able to shut my eyes and fall into a lovely slumber... and just it doesn't happen (partly because I have 5 pairs of eyes staring at me, and partly because... I just cannot do it.)

But then were my "teen" years where sleeping until 1pm was no problem. In fact, I don't really recall making plans anytime prior to one, of course unless I was working. I also recall never getting to bed before 9 pm. Going to bed at nine was, like, so uncool.

Interestingly, it appears that there is science behind all of this!! Our sleep cycles are manages by what is called a circadian rhythm (or at least some schools of thought believe this), which is effected by the seasons among other variables. Essentially our brains shoots off endorphin like energy at different times of the day to maintain wakeful alertness. In the diagram below this "chemical" for lack of a better word is represented by the blue arrows.The orange line represents our actual energy. (Anyone ever felt the need for a caffeinated beverage or piece of chocolate between 2 and 4 pm? Totally normal... that is our afternoon lull.)

In recent years, studies have focused a lot on how sleep effects development from the infant through the elderly and how it differentiates and becomes more or less necessary or crucial as far as number of hours are concerned. Turns out our educational system is not aligned with what adolescents need in terms of sleep, and could actually be dramatically effecting the mental health of our kiddos.

According to some of the conclusions researchers have made, adolescent sleep cycles shift roughly two hours later moving the circadian rhythms back, which appears to explain the adolescent tendency to go to bed late and wake up even later... Though they are not going to bed early, they still require 10 hours of sleep. Unfortunately, with high school start times ranging between 7 and 8:30am on average, that eliminates supporting this natural shift in sleep cycles and tends to overtire our high school kids.

Try and think back for a moment to being 5 years old (or so) and totally flipping about about something... crying, screaming, kicking, being mad... about something (who knows what), and then someone saying to you "I think you might be tired... " (which ends up making you more mad?) Well... there's a lot of truth to that suggestion... we have less emotional resourcing when we are tired. We cannot handle the same amount of stress, cannot problem solve as well, and have a higher rate of re-activity... now add to this all of the pressures and hardships that just come with adolescent territory... oof!

The NPR article below begins to discuss the efforts groups are trying to make to shift high school start times to better support the emotional health of our teens. I wonder if we would see a dramatic shift in substance abuse, depression, suicidal ideation, and violence if we allowed are kids a few more hours of sleep... Currently there is no bona-fide proof, but the correlations certainly are a cause for looking deeper into this... I mean if these are epidemics that we can actually eliminate through a two hour shift in work hours, why not give it a try.... for the sake of our kids...

NPR article on sleep, school start times, and adolesence