As everyone gears up for the start of school, homework, commuting, and busy routines,
we thought this a perfect time to address a critical issue in the academic and life-success of teens – SLEEP DEPRIVATION. Yes, this is a very real concern for teens as many face long hours of homework and a myriad of extra-curricular activities.

The beginning of the school year is a perfect time to rethink family priorities. Evaluate the level of stress on each of your children and make changes according to each individual personality that supports them in being the best that they can be – including what it takes to make room for a good night’s sleep!

The articles below give great insight into current research and advice to help teachers, parents, and teens find a healthy balance.

Late Nights of Summer Will Take Toll on Sleepy Teens When School Bells Ring

If kids don't adjust their internal sleep clocks a few weeks before classes start, they'll have some sleepy days in the fall, said Dr. W. McDowell Anderson, a professor of medicine at the University on South Florida and director of the Sleep Center at Tampa General Hospital.

"They'll have jet lag at school because their biological clocks are already shifted," he said. "This could lead to poor work performance and afternoon sleepiness, or much more serious consequences, such as car accidents or hard-to-control high blood pressure.

Children, however, may get hyperactive without a good night's sleep.

The effects of kids' interrupted sleep patterns often mimic the common criteria used to diagnose Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), he said.

Sleepy kids may be hyper, have lower attention spans, and poor performance in school, he said.

As kids grow into teens, they still need plenty of sleep- something that's hard to get in high school with the first bell ringing as early as 7 a.m.

Most teenagers need an average of at least 8 to 9 hours, compared with 7 to 9 hours for adults, according to the National Sleep Foundation's Web site.

During their summer break, teens usually go to bed later and sleep in, resetting their natural sleep patterns. When school starts, waking up at 6 a.m. is nearly impossible because they are in a deep sleep, Anderson said.

To readapt to high school's early start times, Anderson said teens need to get to bed an hour early about two weeks before the first day of school. Every few days, parents need to push bedtime up another hour until their teens can get to sleep earlier and get up in time and refreshed for school.

-From The Ledger

"Kids are too sleepy to learn well. They're too sleepy to be happy. And they're at great risk for such things as traffic accidents," said Dr. Mary Carskadon, who researches sleep patterns and is co-chairwoman of the National Sleep Foundation (NSF) task force on teenagers and sleep.

"Teenagers don't need less sleep the older they get. They still need as much sleep as they did when they were preteens," Caskadon told CNN. "We, as a society, are asking them to sleep at the wrong time."

Her research shows that adolescents tend to fall asleep and awaken later than adults and often experience an increase in daytime sleepiness- even when they get enough rest.

"This can put their circadian rhythm, or biological clock, in conflict with the school bell," Carskadon said. "The result illustrates a critical trend: too many teens come to school too sleepy to learn. And their fatigue often leads to behavior problems that contribute to a negative overall school performance and experience."

Among the NSF's recommendations is the creation of "sleep-smart schools" that adopt sleep education curricula and review school start times that more adequately respond to a teen's biological shift to a later sleep/wake cycle.

Hectic schedules are typical of many young people, according to Amy Fishbein, health and fitness editor of Seventeen magazine.

"Yes, it's really common," she told CNN. "There's a lot more pressure on teens to get into college, to excel academically. Social pressures are really high. There's the computer, all the stuff on the computer, it's more distracting. There are a lot more things to do."
Rep. Zoe Lofgren, D-California, who advocates schools setting later start times, has introduced a bill in Congress to provide financial incentives to districts that push back the opening bell.

"Teens are paying a heavy price for following the old adage, 'early to bed, early to rise,' she was quoted as saying in a NSF news release. "It's time for high schools to synchronize their clocks with their students' body clocks so that teens are in school during their most alert hours and can achieve their full academic potential."

-from CNN.com

Sleep deprivation affects adolescents in a number of potentially serious ways. A teenager's lack of sleep can:

- Impair school performance. As many as one in 10 adolescents is late to school at least a few days a month due to oversleeping or being too tired. An overtired student has problems concentrating and paying attention. As a result, he or she can't learn as well. Teens who get A's and B's get about 25 minutes more sleep a night than students who average C grades and lower.

- Affect emotions. Moodiness and irritability may be more common in sleepy teens. It's hard to control your emotions when you're tired.

- Interfere with coordination. Sleep deprivation can also hamper fine motor skills- a troubling effect for teens who drive. Sleepiness slows reaction time, and a split second's delay in braking or swerving can turn a near miss into a serious accident. Every year drowsy driving results in 56,000 automobile accidents and 1,550 fatalities. Almost two-thirds of these crashes are caused by drivers under 30.

- Increase the risk of substance abuse. Overtired adolescents may turn to stimulants, such as caffeine or nicotine, in order to stay awake.

Does Your Teen Need More Sleep?

If your teen isn't getting enough sleep, he or she may:

- Be reluctant to get out of bed in the morning
- Fall asleep during quiet times of the day
- Sleep late on weekends
- Be irritable late in the day

Everyone, including teens, has occasional sleep problems, but some adolescents have actual sleep disorders that require medical attention. Arrange for your teenager to see a doctor is he or she has any of the following signs and symptoms:

- Emotional and behavioral problems
- Habitual napping
- Struggling to stay awake while reading, watching TV, or attending class
- Difficulty falling and staying asleep

These signs and symptoms may signal sleeping disorders such as insomnia or narcolepsy, or they may be signs of depression of substance abuse.

Common Adolescent Sleep Disorders

Some of the more common sleep disorders in teens are:

- Delayed sleep phase syndrome. In this disorder, the biological clock, located deep in the brain, slows down. An adolescent with with delayed sleep phase syndrome doesn't being to feel sleepy until the wee hours of the morning. When normal waking time rolls around, he or she is in deep sleep and quite difficult to wake. And because the mechanism that triggers drowsiness is delayed , going to bed early doesn't help. Until the biological clock enters sleep mode, the youngsters will toss and turn for hours.

- Narcolepsy. This sleep disorder causes sudden periods of uncontrollable sleepiness and frequent napping. An adolescent with narcolepsy can be overwhelmed by daytime drowsiness and sudden episodes of falling asleep, regardless of how much sleep he or she had the night before. Low levels of certain brain proteins called hypocretins may trigger the disorder. Although narcolepsy can't be cured, medications and regular sleep schedules can help manage sleep schedules can help manage the symptoms.

- Obstructive sleep apnea syndrome. This potentially serious disorder causes breathing to stop- sometimes for 10 seconds or more- and restart during sleep. Obstructive sleep apnea is most common among the obese. Episodes of apnea occur all night, making it impossible to reach the deep stages of sleep. Loud snoring, labored breathing, and daytime drowsiness also are signs and symptoms of the disorder.

- Insomnia. More than just a night of sleeplessness, insomnia is the inability to get sufficient sleep on a frequent basis. Signs and symptoms include difficulty falling and staying asleep, as well as daytime fatigue and irritability. There are numerous possible causes, such as anxiety, stress, medications and illicit drugs.

Steps to Take

- Discuss convenient bedtimes and wake-up times. Be realistic but also try to help your child maintain a regular sleep schedule and get enough sleep each night. Determine how this schedule will work with other family routines.

- Decide on a reasonable amount of time to devote to extracurricular activities. Many of today's adolescents are too busy. With sports, clubs, and after school jobs, they simply don't have the time to get enough sleep. Encourage your child to choose one or two after school activities and, if possible, limit work to part-time job on weekends. Also, if your teen participate in sports, try to make sure practices and games are over at least six hours before bedtime.

- Create a relaxed evening atmosphere. Ideally, your teenager should be through with exercise, sports and extracurricular activities early enough to enjoy at least an hour of calm before bedtime. Consider establishing an official quiet time in your home when loud music, video games and Internet use are restricted or not allowed. Keep lights dim as bedtime approaches. Discourage your teen from falling asleep with the TV on, as it also can disrupt sleep.

- Keep a consistent schedule. Encourage your teen to go to bed at the same time every night and wake at approximately the same time each morning. It's OK to sleep an extra hour or two on weekends, but sleeping until noon on Saturday and Sunday makes getting up for school on Monday even harder.

- Watch what your adolescent eats. Teens' erratic schedules may interfere with meal plans as much as they disrupt sleep. Few active teens manage to eat on time every day, but at a minimum, they should avoid heavy meals just before bed. A light bedtime snack, on the other hand, may help your teen sleep better.

- Gauge caffeine and tobacco use. Does your adolescent rely on caffeine from soda or coffee to stay alert? Caffeine can keep you awake for several hours after you consume it, so the best bet is to encourage your teen to cut out coffee and catenated cola after 4 p.m. Tobacco, besides increasing the risk of many diseases, is a stimulant that can contribute to sleeplessness at the end of the day.

- Set a positive example. Practice good sleep habits yourself. If lack of sleep is a widespread problem among teenagers in your community, try organizing a group to lobby school administrators for a later start time and fewer activities that last well into the evening. You might also want to see if the school curriculum in classes such as biology or health emphasizes the importance of getting a good night's rest.

- Arrange for your child to see a doctor if problems continue. If daytime sleepiness or nighttime insomnia persists despite changes that should promote better sleep, contact your child's physician and ask about a sleep evaluation. Your adolescent may be suffering from a sleep disorder.

- From MayoClinic.com

"Our previous studies demonstrated that a period of sleep could help people improve their performance of 'memory tasks,' such as playing piano scales," explains the study's lead author Matthew Walker, PhD, director of BIDMC's Sleep and Neuroimaging Laboratory. "But we didn't know exactly how or why this was happening.

New memories are formed within the brain when a person engages with information to be learned (for example, memorizing a list of words or mastering a piano concerto). However, these memories are initially quite vulnerable; in order to "stick" they must be solidified and improved.

In this new study, twelve healthy, college-aged individuals were taught a sequence of skilled finger movements, similar to playing a piano scale. After a 12- hour period of either wake or sleep, respectively, the subjects were tested on their ability to recall these finger movements while an MRI measured the activity of their brain.

According to Walker, who is also an Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, the MRI results showed that while some areas of the brain were distinctly more active after a period of sleep, other areas were noticeably less active. But together, the changes brought about by sleep resulted in improvements in the subjects' motor skill performance.

"The cerebellum, which functions as one of the brain's motor centers controlling speed and accuracy, was clearly more active when the subjects had had a night of sleep," he explains. At the same time, the MRIs showed reduced activity in the brain's limbic system, the region that controls for emotions, such as stress and anxiety.

"The MRI scans are showing us that brain regions shift dramatically during sleep," says Walker. "When you're asleep, it seems as though you are shifting memory to more efficient storage regions within the brain. Consequently, when you awaken, memory tasks can be performed both more quickly and accurately and with less stress and anxiety."

The end result is that procedural skills - for example, learning to talk, to coordinate limbs, musicianship, sports, even using and interpreting sensory and perceptual information from the surrounding world -- become more automatic and require the use of fewer conscious brain regions to be accomplished.

This new research may explain why children and teenagers need more sleep than adults and, in particular, why infants sleep almost round the clock.

The new findings may also prove to be important to patients who have suffered brain injuries, for example, stroke patients, who have to re-learn language, limb control, etc.

"Perhaps sleep will prove to be another critical factor in a stroke patient's rehabilitation," he notes, adding that in the future he and his colleagues plan to examine sleep disorders and memory disorders to determine if there is a reciprocal relationship between the two.
"If you look at modern society, there has in recent years been a considerable erosion of sleep time," says Walker. Describing this trend as "sleep bulimia" he explains that busy individuals often shortchange their sleep during the week - purging, if you will - only to try to catch up by "binging" on sleep on the weekends.

"This is especially troubling considering it is happening not just among adults, but also among teenagers and children," he adds. "Our research is demonstrating that sleep is critical for improving and consolidating procedural skills and that you can't short-change your brain of sleep and still learn effectively."

- From Newswire.com

-Pearl S. Buck

Wishing you well,
All of us at LEGACY
Susie Vanderlip - Ken Vanderlip - Veronica Garcia
800-707-1977