Sleep Can Improve ADHD Symptoms

A randomized Australian trial of 250 children with ADHD, most taking stimulants, and all experiencing moderate-to-severe sleep problems found a behavioral sleep intervention program resulted in significantly better improvements in parent-reported ADHD symptoms than the usual care group. Sleep problems, behavior, memory, and quality of life were all improved. Families were educated on normal sleep, sleep cycles,…

Your Child’s Sleep Environment

The National Sleep Foundation has summarized three important parts of a "sleep friendly" environment for children. They are noise, light, and temperature. The noise generated from the household and neighborhood can disturb sleep patterns. Unwanted light levels can disrupt sleep, although complete darkness isn't necessary. A room temperature that is not too cold, but is…

Screentime at Bedtime Robs Kids of Sleep

The National Sleep Foundation's 2014 survey found that almost 72% of children go to bed with an electronic device. The light from these devices disrupts the natural sleep patterns, causing children to sleep 1 hour less on average. Insufficient sleep can adversely affect children's school performance, decision making and overall behavior. PositiveTip: Parents should set…

Sleep is Critical to Scholastic Success

Sleep researchers recently found after clinical depression or tremendous stress, lack of sleep or poor sleep habits are the highest predictors of academic problems. From a sample of 43,000 college students they found that sleep problems, binge drinking and marijuana use equally predicted lower GPA's. Sleep issues were the strongest predictor for a student dropping…

Straight to bed now for straight A’s later.

UK researchers followed over 11,000 children and found that inconsistent bed times, particularly at age 3, could predict poorer mental skills at age 7. They also found these effects may accumulate over time. Girls who had inconsistent sleep patterns at age 3, 5 and 7 had significantly worse scores on reading, math and spatial awareness…

Get Some Sleep!

Back in the mid-1990s I became very interested in how fatigue and sleep deprivation impacts human performance. There was a good amount of research tucked away in some obscure journals and on the shelves of almost unknown institutes. Yet what I found was very intriguing and startling. At the time media coverage of this topic…

Suicidal Thoughts Associated with Insominia

Researchers analyzed merged data from 471 people and found a significant increase in the risk of suicide among those who got less sleep. For each one hour increase in sleep duration there was a 72% decrease in the likelihood of moderate/high suicide risk. Apparently sleep mediates a synergy between insomnia, depression, and suicidal thoughts. (This…

Short Sleep Messes with Your Genes

Insufficient sleep is associated with obesity, cardiovascular disease risk, and even cognitive impairment. However, the mechanisms behind these effects remain somewhat ambiguous. In analyzing the whole-blood RNA of human test subjects, British researchers have recently found that 711 genes were up- or down-regulated by insufficient sleep after only 7 days with insufficient sleep. The genes they…

TV Before Bed–Robs Kid’s Sleep

New Zealand researchers found that children and teens who spend the most time watching TV during the 90 minutes prior to sleep onset got less sleep than those who who engaged in non-screen sedentary activities. Late sleep onset was associated with significantly (P<0.001) more screen-based activity (TV, video games, computers) versus earlier sleep onset. Although casualty can…

Sleep and Athletic Injury

Data from a private school in California revealed student athletes who reported sleeping less than 8 hours per night were significantly (P=0.04) more likely to suffer an injury playing sports. In this group of students, more than 75% reported getting less than 8 hours of sleep. This early study based on a single school and…