sleep study •

Enough Sleep Equals Healthy Children

June 13, 2016 By Melissa Gansler

Enough sleep improves health.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – We all know that sleep is necessary in order to have a healthy life. However, only recently have scientists established the benefits of enough rest and the consequences of sleeping only a few hours every day.

Recent research from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine has shown that infants from 4 to 12 months need 12 to 16 hours of rest every day, including naps, whereas children 1 to 2 years need 11 to 14 hours of rest every 24 hours, naps included.

Furthermore, children with ages between 3 to 5 years need 10 to 13 hours of sleep every 24 hours, while children from 6 to 12 years need 9 to 12 hours. Last but not least, teenagers with ages from 13 to 18 years need between 8 and 10 hours of rest every 24 hours.

However, scientists did not establish how much rest is necessary for babies younger than 4 months, because there is not enough research and there is a broad range of sleep patterns regarding newborns.

According to Dr. Lee Brooks, consensus paper author and attending pulmonologist at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the benefits of enough rest include better overall quality of life, emotional regulation, memory, learning, attention span, and behavior.

Nevertheless, if children do not meet the adequate number of sleep hours for their age, the consequences include depression, diabetes, obesity, hypertension, more injuries and several other health problems.

Worse, teens who rest only a few hours every night have a higher risk of suicidal thoughts and self-harm. According to Wendy Sue Swanson, a pediatrician at the Seattle Children’s Hospital and The Everett Clinic, more than 85 percent of teenagers do not sleep enough. Unfortunately, tiredness and deprivation affect interactions, mood, attention, schoolwork, and lead to a high risk of unhealthy weight.

It is also worth mentioning that too much sleep can also affect our lifelong habits and the daily routine. On the other hand, the biggest problem of today is the exposure to video screens, because light stimulates the state of wakefulness.

Therefore, experts recommend parents to turn off all screens at least 30 minutes before their children go to sleep. All in all, we all need to rest in order to have a healthier lifestyle.

Image Source:Pixabay

Books Are Better Than Tablets

March 12, 2016 By Ryan Harris Leave a Comment

"Reading from an electronic device in bed"

Reading from a tablet affects the brain, tricking it into believing that it is daytime.

(Mirror Daily, Unites States) – Books are better than tablets when it comes to reading before going to sleep. Researchers found that people who read from a book experience more sleepiness than individuals who use a tablet for the same activity.

This is not the first time somebody claims that books are better than tablets. But it is one of the first experiments that scientifically proves the affirmation.

Janne Gronli, the lead author, and researcher at the Bergen University in Norway declared that the study found that when it comes to a good night’s sleep, books are better than tablets.

In order to reach these conclusions, she gathered a sample of sixteen volunteers. All of them were nonsmokers, familiar with both physical books and tablets, and had no psychiatric, medical or sleep disorders. The ages of the participants varied from 22 to 33.

The volunteers were asked to adopt a regular sleeping pattern before the experiment so that the results would be relevant. After that, the researchers measured the participants in three separate nights.

In the first one, they measured their sleep activity so that they could have a point of reference. In the second, the volunteers were asked to read for half an hour from an iPad, and in the third they repeated the activity, only this time using a book.

According to the result, the night in which the participants read from an actual book, they felt sleepier, and their brain was ready to engage in the restful activity. But when they delighted themselves with the electronic version, their brains were more alert, and it took them longer to reach the REM stage after the sleep onset.

Books are better than tablets because tablets use blue light which tricks the brain into thinking that it is daylight outside, and it should become alert and ready for action. But the study was realized on a small sample, and further research is needed in order for the scientists to declare that books are better than tablets when it comes to before-sleep activities.

Furthermore, there are a couple of illuminating devices that use blue light as well. So, in a future study, researchers have more variables to take into consideration.

Other members of the scientific community are defending Apple products saying that the company already released new night time features that diminish the amount of blue light used by the device, thus allowing the user to go to sleep faster.

Image source: www.flickr.com

If You Sleep Less, You Will Eat More

March 1, 2016 By John Birks Leave a Comment

A small study has revealed that the body craves for more food when it doesn’t get enough sleep.

(Mirror Daily, United States) – No matter what coffee shops or energy drink commercials might tell you, sleep is not overrated. In fact, according to the researchers, if you sleep less you will eat more. So those extra pounds you were trying to explain are, in effect, caused by the lack of a proper snooze.

If you sleep less you will eat more, in consequence, you will get fatter, and/or you will develop additional health problems that are related to an unhealthy food regime.

A new study that was published in the Sleep journal analyzed the link between a lack of Zs and the munchies. It seems that everything is chemically connected, and our body makes us want to eat more in a desperate attempt to balance the chemicals in our organisms.

In order to gather more information on the chemical imbalances that take place in our bodies when we don’t get enough rest, the researchers collected a sample of 14 volunteers.

They divided the participants into two groups. The first would sleep roughly seven hours and a half per night in a session, and the others only a bit over four hours.

In the next session, the sleeping hours were changed between the patients.

While they were involved in the experiment, the volunteers received three regular meals at nine am two pm and seven pm.

The food was carefully chosen in order for the candidates to receive all of the calories they required in a day.

At the end of every session, the participants were allowed to eat as much as they wanted.

The researchers discovered that the individuals who were in the four-hour sleep group usually ate roughly 300 calories more than those from the seven-hour group.

In order to explain this crave, the researchers took blood samples and analyzed the chemicals levels present in each group.

It seems that the ones that slept less had higher levels of ghrelin (also known as lenomorelin, or the hunger hormone) while the others presented increased rates of leptin (or the satiety hormone).

Furthermore, the members of the sleep-deprived group presented themselves with significant levels of endocannabinoids.

It was already proven in previous studies that the endocannabinoid system is activated by marijuana. This system which is typical for mammals gives a false impression of hunger to the affected individuals, making them crave for fatty or sweet foods.

What is more interesting is that the sleep-deprived volunteers presented traces of endocannabinoids even in the next afternoon, which means that if you sleep less, you will eat more for a longer period of time.

Image source: www.pixabay.com

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