The research for the study was conducted by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Students participating in the 2007 national Youth Risk Behavior Study were asked to report on how many hours of sleep they achieve on the average school night. Just about 3/4ths of the teens reported insufficient sleep which was defined as less than 8 hours a night.

While it is pretty obvious that lack of sleep causes difficulty in concentration the next day, leading to learning ability deficits, not getting enough ZZZ’s has other consequences as well. This study indicates that those teens who report insufficient sleep are more likely to participate in health-risk behaviors including physical inactivity, poor dietary choices, drinking alcohol, smoking cigarettes, using marijuana, and being sexually active.

“Many adolescents are not getting the recommended hours of sleep they need on school nights. Insufficient sleep is associated with participation in a number of health-risk behaviors including substance use, physical fighting, and serious consideration of suicide attempt,” Lela McKnight-Eily of the CDC said in a statement.

Of course, poor sleep isn’t limited to teens. Younger children have also been found to sleep less than the recommended number of hours per night. The National Sleep Foundation found that elementary school aged children who do not achieve 9 to 10 hours per night are more likely to have lower grade point averages and have an increased risk for ADHD-like symptoms, including hyperactivity and impulsivity. There is also a link between lack of sleep and childhood obesity.

College students, especially those away from home for the first time, are also at risk for insufficient sleep. Roommates, dormitory noise, late-night snacks, and social opportunities can all affect the time that students hit the hay and they tend to get less than 7 hours of sleep per night, notes Kathryn Orzech, a postdoctoral fellow in sleep research at Brown University.

To prepare children and teens for adequate sleep during the school year, National Sleep Foundation offers the following tips:

• While it is too late to start the school year sleep routine early (like in August before school actually starts), you can still introduce a gradual change in a child’s sleep schedule one or two weeks time, such as going to bed 15-30 minutes earlier each night.
• Encourage good sleep habits for all family members. These should include a nightly bedtime routine such as 15-30 minutes of relaxing, quiet activities immediately prior to bedtime, as well as regular (and appropriate) bed and wake up times.
• Create a special comfortable place for sleep. The bedroom (or other sleeping quarters) should be cool, quiet, and dark. Televisions and computers should be placed in another room. Some children and teens find soft music helps them relax and get ready to fall asleep.
• Achieve a balanced schedule. Identify and prioritize activities that allow for downtime and sufficient sleep time. Help students avoid an overloaded schedule that can led to stress and difficulty coping, which contribute to poor health and sleep problems.
• Look for signs of sleep problems. The most common sleep problems in children include difficulty falling asleep, nighttime awakenings, stalling and resisting going to bed. Snoring, which can be a symptom of sleep apnea, is prevalent among children and teens.

Source: Denise Reynolds, Examiner

Ben Franklin was right, at least on the healthy part. “Early to bed and early to rise” appears to have helped a cross-section of early-bird Australian youths keep slimmer and more physically active than their night-owl peers, even though both groups got the same amount of sleep.

A study in the Oct. 1 issue of the journal SLEEP recorded the bedtimes and wake times of 2,200 Australian participants, ages 9 to 16, and compared their weights and uses of free time over four days. Children who went to bed late and got up late were 1.5 times more likely to become obese than those who went to bed early and got up early. Furthermore, late-nighters were almost twice as likely to be physically inactive and 2.9 times more likely to sit in front of the TV and computer or play video games for more hours than guidelines recommend.

“The children who went to bed late and woke up late, and the children who went to bed early and woke up early got virtually the same amount of sleep in total,” said co-author Carol Maher, PhD, a postdoctoral fellow with the University of South Australia. “Scientists have realized in recent years that children who get less sleep tend to do worse on a variety of health outcomes, including the risk of being overweight and obese. Our study suggests that the timing of sleep is even more important.”

Maher said mornings are more conducive to physical activity for young people than nights, which offer prime-time TV programming and social networking opportunities. This relationship between time of day and available activities might explain why more sedentary and screen-based behaviors were observed with later bedtimes, she said. At a time when research is showing that teenagers have a natural tendency to stay up late and wake late, the results of this study could stand as a warning.

“It is widely accepted that the sleep patterns of adolescents are fundamentally different from children and adults, and that it is normal for adolescents to stay up very late and sleep in late in the morning,” Maher said. “Our findings show that this sleeping pattern is associated with unfavorable activity patterns and health outcomes, and that the adolescents who don’t follow this sleep pattern do better.”

Other findings from the University of South Australia study:

• Early-bed/early-risers went to bed 70 to 90 minutes earlier, woke up 60 to 80 minutes earlier and accumulated 27 minutes more moderate to vigorous physical activity each day than late-risers.
• Late-bed/late-risers watched TV, played video games or were online 48 minutes longer each day than early-bed/early risers, primarily between 7 p.m. and midnight.
• Only 12 percent of late-bed/late-risers had an average of two hours or less screen time per day, which is recommended for children and teens by the Australian Department of Health and Aging. In comparison, 28 percent of early-bed/early risers met the recommendation for screen time.
• On a broad scale, late-bed/late-risers replaced about 30 minutes of moderate to vigorous physical activity with 30 minutes of sedentary behavior each day, relative to the early-bed/early-rise group.
• Body-mass index (BMI) scores were higher in late-risers than early-risers, and late-risers were more likely to be overweight or obese.
• Late-bed/late-risers tended to have few siblings, live in major cities, come from lower household incomes and have a part-time job.

Source: Doug Dusik, American Academy of Sleep Medicine

That was the conclusion of a University of Michigan study published in the journal “Sleep Medicine” last month that suggested children who are bullies are more likely to have sleep problems.

It’s also something Elgin School District U46 officials said they see in schools “all the time.”

“We say this to parents all the time: If your kids don’t get enough sleep, they’re not going to do well in school,” U46 Safety Coordinator John Heiderscheidt said.

Of the 341 school-aged children the University of Michigan surveyed, 32 percent (or 110 students) were rated by a parent or teacher as having a “conduct problem,” according to the abstract of the study. And 23 percent (78) had “symptoms suggestive of sleep-disordered breathing,” it said.

The children with conduct problems, bullying or discipline referrals more often were the ones who showed symptoms of sleep problems, according to the abstract.

“Urban schoolchildren with aggressive behaviors may have symptoms of sleep-disordered breathing with disproportionate frequency. Sleepiness may impair emotional regulation necessary to control aggression,” it said.

Dr. Ashby Jordan, a sleep specialist with practices in Elgin and Barrington, said a lack of sleep shows itself in different ways in different people.

In adults, “it’s what you would think,” Jordan said. That includes the inability to stay awake or concentrate.

But in children, he said, “Frequently it will result in irritability before they’re falling asleep.”

U46 Supervisor of Health Services Debbie Miller said the fact a lack of sleep can affect a student’s behavior and readiness to learn is common knowledge to the Elgin school district. That’s why nurses ask parents about their children’s sleep habits when evaluating children for special education services, she said.

There are many reasons students might not get enough sleep, Miller added.

In middle school, she said, many students move away from the idea of a set bedtime. But adolescence is a time when the body needs more sleep because it’s growing, she said.

Parents could work a late shift, leaving students home alone in the evening, she added. Those children might be waiting up late to see Mom or Dad, or they just might not have someone there to enforce bedtime.

Jordan said overachieving students also can fall into the camp of Americans’ “cultural denial of sleep: ‘I’ll sleep when I’m dead’ and things like that.”

And its not just students’ grades or rap sheets that can suffer, he said.

A lack of sleep can affect the immune system, making the body more susceptible to infections, he said. It also makes it difficult to control other medical problems like hypertension and diabetes.

The sleep specialist also pointed to disasters like Three Mile Island and Chernobyl. Both were linked to sleep deprivation, he said.

“They all occurred in early morning hours at the end of a shift. When we’re tired and fatigued, we’re making bad decisions,” Jordan said.

“We do it for a third of our lives, so it must be important.”

Source: Emily Mcfarlan, Courier News

“Most children sleep less than is recommended for their intellectual development, which is hindered because the lack of sleep cannot be recovered. This is the first Spanish study that proves that losing out on hours of sleep and bad habits affect school children’s academic performance,” stated Ramón Cladellas, researcher at the Faculty of Psychology at the UAB.

The study’s authors, published in the journal Cultura y Educación, assessed a total of 142 primary schoolchildren (65 girls and 77 boys) from different schools and which did not have any sleep-related pathological changes. Parents were asked to fill out a questionnaire, concerning the children’s habits and number of hours slept per night. The experts also assessed a series of academic skills: communicative, methodological, transversal and specific.

“Although the sample of children sleep almost 8 hours, their sleeping habit shows us that 69% return home after 9pm at least three evenings a week or they go to bed after 11pm at least four nights a week. As such, pupils that sleep 8 or 9 hours have a worse performance than those that sleep 9 or 11 hours,” the experts pointed out.

“Taking into account the results obtained, we believe that more than 9 hours sleep and a nightly routine favours academic performance,” added Cladellas.

Losing out on hours of sleep and bad habits produced negative effects, especially on more generic skills (communicative, methodological and transversal) which are essential for academic performance. However, there is a lesser effect on the specific skills, more related to cognitive aspects, such as memory, learning and motivation, and they are seen to be more altered by irregular sleep patterns.

“To this end, the lacking hours of sleep distorts children’s performance in linguistic knowledge, grammar and spelling rules, and key aspects in the organisation and comprehension of texts, to name a few examples. They are basic skills, meaning that if the pupil, due to a lack of sleep, develops problems in this area, it could have a repercussion on all subjects,” explained Cladellas.

The authors concluded that maintaining a healthy sleep pattern at this age contributes to positive cognitive development. They suggest that parents attend prevention programmes to become more aware of the matter.

“Nowadays, there is great concern because children are glued to the television, computers, and videogames, but the same importance is not given to them going to bed at the same time every night,” concluded Cladellas.

Source: SINC, FECYT – Spanish Foundation for Science and Technology, via EurekAlert

Study author Jon Quach, from the University of Melbourne, and his team found that when they had sleep-related consultations with parents, children tended to have fewer sleep problems and better bedtime habits than children whose parents didn’t get counseled.

The study, published in Pediatrics, was small and didn’t show that the sleep improvements led to changes in academic achievements later in the year.

“Sleep problems are common in young school children and are treatable using … a brief behavior-based intervention,” Quach told Reuters Health in an email.

“Parents should seek advice for their child’s sleep if they are concerned.”

In five- and six-year-olds, most sleep problems are related to the children’s behavior, researchers said.

“Some of them still have poor sleep habits where they are going to bed too late, they don’t have a bedtime routine, and many of them are still having parents stay with them when they go to sleep at night,” said Jodi Mindell, a pediatric sleep specialist at St. Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, who was not involved with the study.

“You also get in this age group some night-time fears,” she added, with anxiety possibly increasing as those children start school.

The study focused on the back-to-school time frame and included children who were heading into their first year of elementary school.

Quach said that’s an important window for addressing sleep problems, because children who don’t sleep well might have more trouble making the transition to school, which sets them up for worse academic performance and poorer relationships later on.

Quach and his colleagues surveyed about 1,500 parents of children starting at 22 different elementary schools in Melbourne. Of these parents, 161 said their child had a moderate or severe sleeping problem and 108 were recruited for the study. Children with more serious sleep-related breathing problems, for example, were excluded.

Half of the participating parents had a private consultation at school, followed by a telephone call two weeks later, to discuss behavioral sleep strategies based on their child’s specific issues. The other half weren’t offered any extra help.

Over the next year, the researchers surveyed parents again about their children’s sleep. Six months after the initial consultation, they also gave all children a learning assessment.

Sleep issues tended to resolve in both groups, but children whose parents had sleep-related counseling generally did better.

After six months, 26 percent of children in the consultation group and 47 percent in the no-consultation group still had moderate or severe sleep problems. By one year, however, there was no difference and about one-third of children in both groups had sleep problems.

Children in the consultation group had less resistance at bedtime and took less time to go to bed, according to their parents’ reports. But there was no difference in how well they did on academic tests designed to measure reading, math and spelling skills.

Quach and colleagues noted that the study was small and that a follow-up including more children will be needed, including one that tracks students’ academic progress for more than a year.

Mindell said the study pointed to a need for teachers and school psychologists to look for sleep problems, adding that some really simple changes could help.

“Making sure your child goes to bed before nine — we know that that’s the tipping point, including reading as part of the bedtime routine — it helps calm children down, it gives them a focus, it helps with literacy, it’s all good. Then encouraging children to fall asleep on their own,” she said.

Also, make sure there are no distracting electronics in the room, she added.

“Get rid of the Game Boys, get rid of the computers, get rid of the cell phones,” she said.

Source: Fox Health News

Long summer days lend themselves to later nights and fewer hours of restorative slumber, something pediatricians say is especially necessary for kids to have to succeed upon their return to the classroom.

“From memory to judgment, attention span, emotional stability and even immunity, sleep deprivation negatively affects school-age children,” explains Kristin Avis, M.D., UAB assistant professor of pediatrics and a sleep specialist.

If you think your child is different and does not need the required amount of sleep, think again. Of children under the age of 18, 60 percent polled by the National Sleep Foundation complained of being tired during the day, and 15 percent reported they fell asleep at school. To curb the feeling, doctors say, get kids to bed early, starting before the bell rings on the first day back.

“About a week ahead of school starting, begin to back up their bed-time and wake-up times. This incremental change may start off rough, but it will get easier and ensure they are not miserable on their first day at school,” says Stephenie Wallace, M.D., UAB assistant professor of pediatrics.

The NSF has guidelines for how much sleep children of various ages require. Three to 5-year-olds need 11 to 13 hours per night, while 5 to 12 year-olds need 10 to 11 hours each night.

“As for adolescents, it’s a common myth that they need less sleep, and can handle only seven or eight hours, but they actually need nine hours of sleep. That’s typically the most sleep-deprived population in school,” says Avis.

A lack of one good night’s sleep can be made up for, Avis says, but going an entire school week without sufficient rest can be detrimental.

“You can sleep until noon on Saturday and feel caught up, but then you will go to bed later that night, sleep in on Sunday, and then have the cycle repeat itself into the new school week,” says Avis.

So the best bet is to make sure your child is getting suitable snooze-time every night. To guarantee their sleepy time is spent well, say both doctors, it is important to make kids’ bedrooms as tranquil as possible, which means getting rid of all those noise-makers.

“On average, there are three to four electronic gadgets in a kid’’ room. It’s been shown that even sleeping with a television on deprives them of 20 minutes of sleep per night, which may not sound like a lot but adds up over a week’s time,” says Avis.

“Cell phones are often used as an alarm clock, but for about five dollars you can invest in a real alarm clock so the phone can be turned off,” Wallace adds.

Avis also is further examining what a bad night’s rest can do to a child. Working alongside David Schwebel, Ph.D., UAB professor of psychology and director of the UAB Youth Safety Lab, sleep deprivation and children’s pedestrian injury and general safety risk are being studied, with results expected by late 2011.

Source: CBS42

“We know that marital problems have an impact on child functioning, and we know that sleep is a big problem for parents,” said Jenae M. Neiderhiser, professor of psychology, Penn State.

New parents often report sleep as being the most problematic of their child’s behavior. Neiderhiser and colleagues found that poor sleep patterns in children from ages 9 to 18 months are likely influenced by conflict in their parents’ marriage, the researchers report in the current issue of Child Development.

Past research has shown a connection between marital distress and child sleep difficulty, but this study looks specifically at adopted infants and their families. By studying adoptive families, the researchers focused on environmental factors because there are no shared genetic factors if the child does not share genes with his or her parents. Infancy is a developmental period when sleep tends to become regulated.

“It is important to understand how parenting comes in to play here,” said Neiderhiser. “Looking at the marital relationship is not direct parent-child interaction, but it is an index of stress in the family.”

The researchers interviewed 357 sets of adoptive parents both together and separately, assessing their own habits and emotions as well as their children’s behaviors. The parents were interviewed twice–first when their children were 9 months old, and again at 18 months.

Parents were asked a series of questions, such as “Have you or your partner seriously suggested the idea of divorce?”

Then they were asked to describe their child’s behavior at bedtime, by rating several behaviors listed in the survey, such as “child needs parent in room to fall asleep” or “child struggles at bedtime.”

The researchers showed that marital conflict in the first survey at 9 months predicted that the child would be more likely to have sleep problems at the time of the second survey at 18 months. However, if the child had sleep problems at 9 months, the parents were not more likely to have marital stress at 18 months.

“Research indicates that stress can negatively impact sleep,” said Neiderhiser. “We also know that infancy is an important time for the development of sleep patterns. Our study suggests that marital instability is impacting change in the child’s sleep patterns over time, and it could be that this is setting the child up for a pattern of problematic sleep. Hopefully the next part of the study will help to clarify that.” This is a longitudinal study currently funded to follow these children through age 8.

Source: Victoria M. Indivero, Penn State, via EurekAlert

Polysomnography (PSG) is presently the gold standard for diagnosing and quantifying sleep disordered breathing in children. SDB affects approximately 12% of children with manifestations ranging from simple snoring to potentially serious conditions, including sleep apnea. SDB is also the most common indication for tonsillectomy with or without adenoidectomy in the United States. Since more than 530,000 tonsillectomies are performed annually on children younger than the age of 15, primarily for SDB, clear and actionable guidance on optimal use of PSG is strongly needed.

“Less than 10% of children get a sleep study before tonsillectomy,” notes Richard M. Rosenfeld, MD, MPH, guideline author and consultant. “The polysomnography guideline will empower doctors and parents to get the right test for the right reasons, leading to safer surgery and better outcomes for children with tonsils that block their breathing while asleep.”

The primary purpose of this guideline is to improve referral patterns for polysomnography among these patients. In creating this guideline, the American Academy of Otolaryngology—Head and Neck Surgery Foundation selected a panel representing the fields of anesthesiology, pulmonology medicine, otolaryngology–head and neck surgery, pediatrics, and sleep medicine.

Source: Sleep Review Mag

So, what are these studies saying about sleep and our kids? Well according to an October, 2007 article entitled Snooze or Lose in New York Magazine on-line, most elementary to high school students are getting one hour less of sleep each night than they used to get 30 years ago. Maybe an hour doesn’t seem like much, but where sleep and kids are concerned, it can have a major impact on cognitive (thinking) abilities. Dr. Avi Sedah of Tel-Aviv University was able to demonstrate in one of his sleeps studies that 4th and 6th grade students who had just one hour less of sleep for three nights performed significantly lower on neurobiological functioning tests. In fact, he found that 6th grader’s who were sleep deprived by just one hour would perform worse than a 4th grader who had adequate sleep.

Now multiply this short-term sleep deprivation by many days and weeks because of our busier lifestyle, and you get kids who just can’t concentrate at school because they are feeling extremely tired.

Po Bronson in his article, Snooze or Lose, reports:

Dr. Kyla Wahlstrom of the University of Minnesota surveyed more than 7,000 high schoolers in Minnesota about their sleep habits and grades. Teens who received A’s averaged about fifteen more minutes sleep than the B students, who in turn averaged eleven more minutes than the C’s, and the C’s had ten more minutes than the D’s. Wahlstrom’s data was an almost perfect replication of results from an earlier study of more than 3,000 Rhode Island high schoolers by Brown’s Mary Carskadon. Certainly, these are averages, but the consistency of the two studies stands out.

Increased caffeine consumption, busy schedules, technology (including TV’s in the bedroom), homework and even parental guilt over not spending enough time with their kids all contribute to children getting less sleep than suggested. According to the National Sleep Foundation, children aged 3-5 should be getting 11-13 hours of sleep each night and school aged children aged 5-12 should be sleeping 10-11 hours each night. While it may present some challenges for students, parents, and schools, the effects of moving back start times are compelling.

The Battleground School District isn’t the first school district to make such a change. Many school districts around the country are making school start times later and seeing dramatic results from letting kids sleep longer. From increased SAT scores to a decrease in teen traffic accidents, one can’t help but admit that the lack of sleep is causing problems for many kids and parents. Improved mood, increased school attendance and ability to complete homework are also positive results of students getting more sleep due to later school start times.

So if it seems like your kids have struggled in school in the past, take a look at how much sleep they are getting and their pre-sleeping Maybe a few adjustments will allow them to be more successful in school. The pay could be even more far reaching than that.

Source: Lynn Moses, Examiner.Com

The European Medicine Agency said that Pandemrix should only be given to the under-20s if they are at risk of contracting swine flu and alternative jabs are not available.

Its announcement comes after studies showed that young people who were given the vaccine were at increased risk of developing narcolepsy, which causes sufferers to fall asleep unexpectedly.

But the British drug watchdog said it would not ban Pandemrix in the young and pointed out that the country’s stocks expire in a few months anyway.

Pandemrix, manufactured by the British pharmaceutical giant GlaxoSmithKline, was given to 30million people across Europe after the outbreak of swine flu – the H1N1 strain of the virus – that started in Mexico early in 2009.

It was approved by the European regulator in September that year but by the following August its safety was being reviewed after health officials in Finland claimed it had been linked to narcolepsy.

In total 335 cases of the sleeping disorder in people vaccinated with Pandemrix have been reported to GSK, with 10 suspected cases out of the 6million doses given in Britain.

In its review, the European watchdog said it looked at all the data as well as taking advice from experts, and found that the results of studies in Sweden and Finland suggested a six to 13-fold increased risk of narcolepsy among vaccinated children.

This means that for every 100,000 adolescents who are given the injection, up to seven are likely to develop narcolepsy.

However it added that a similar risk has not been confirmed in other countries, and the vaccine is likely to have interacted with “genetic or environmental factors” such as local infections in Scandinavia that might have raised the risk. Adults do not appear to be at greater risk, and overall its effects are said to remain positive.

As a result of the study, the agency said that Pandemrix should only be given to under-20s if they still need protection against swine flu but normal seasonal flu vaccines are unavailable.

The European Medicines Agency said: “The European Medicines Agency’s Committee for Medicinal Products for Human Use (CHMP) recommended that in persons under 20 years of age Pandemrix may only be used if the recommended seasonal trivalent influenza vaccine is not available and if immunisation against H1N1 is still needed (e.g. in persons at risk of the complications of infection). The CHMP confirmed that overall the benefit-risk balance of Pandemrix remains positive.”

But the Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, Britain’s drug watchdog, said the recommendations were not binding and that Pandemrix would not be restricted in this country.

A spokesman said: “The annual seasonal flu vaccines have not been associated with the development of narcolepsy, and there are no new safety concerns associated with these vaccines. These vaccines remain recommended for protection against seasonal influenza.

“The MHRA has been fully involved in the European safety review of Pandemrix vaccine. It is possible that other geographical factors in Sweden and Finland, at the time of the pandemic, have contributed to the cases of narcolepsy seen after vaccination with Pandemrix. These factors remain unknown, and further studies are ongoing to explore this.

“The regulatory action for Pandemrix vaccines recognises the potential seriousness of H1N1 infection and ensures that the vaccine remains a licensed alternative to protect children and adolescents in need of protection against H1N1, if seasonal vaccines are not available.”

The MHRA added: “As the shelf-life of remaining UK stocks of Pandemrix expires in October this year, the vaccine will not be used in the 2011/12 flu vaccine campaign.”

It is not yet known if new stocks of Pandemrix will be ordered this winter.

The drug’s manufacturer said: “GSK is committed to patient safety and will continue to work closely with the EMA and other national regulatory organisations in the best interest of patients.

“Further information from ongoing studies, including the final data from the VAESCO (Vaccine Adverse Event Surveillance and Communication) study and an epidemiological study in Canada being supported by GSK, is however still needed in order to gain additional insight into the cause of the reported cases of narcolepsy.

“In addition, GSK has committed to conduct further research into any potential association between Pandemrix and narcolepsy and will seek independent expert advice on this research activity, as agreed with the EMA.”

Source: Martin Beckford, The Telegraph