Going to bed a little earlier dramatically increases total sleep time for teens

By Steven Reinberg Health Day Reporter

MONDAY, June 12, 2023 (HealthDay News) — Going to bed earlier is one way teens get the sleep they need, according to new research.

That may be easier said than done, the researchers admitted. But their study shows that if you can get teens to go to bed earlier, they’ll increase their sleep time by 41 minutes for every extra hour they spend in bed.

“The idea that there is a circadian phase delay that prevents adolescents from going to bed earlier is not true,” said the lead researcher. Ian CampbellProject Scientist in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of California, Davis.

Circadian phase delay occurs when your sleep pattern is delayed two hours or more from a conventional sleep pattern, causing you to fall asleep later and wake up later.

As children enter adolescence, changes in sleep and circadian rhythms allow teens to stay awake longer at night. Less sleep leads to daytime sleepiness, poor school performance, and behavioral and mental health problems, Campbell said.

Teenagers sleep less, he said, with smartphones, tablets, games and increased school pressure all contributing to less sleep.

The goal of Campbell’s team is to determine the ideal amount of sleep needed at different stages of life to achieve the best academic results.

Instead of starting school later, which has been suggested as a way to get children to sleep more, asking teens to go to bed earlier could work, Campbell said.

“It’s a paper [that] came out of our study on how sleep needs change during adolescence, and the main goal of this is to change sleep duration by advancing time in bed with three different times in bed conditions – seven, 8.5 and 10 a.m. in bed – and look at how that affects daytime performance,” he said.

The end results of the best sleep patterns for teens aren’t complete, Campbell said. So how much sleep teens need and when is the best time to go to bed and wake up is still unclear.

“But just the basic fact that they’re able to increase their sleep duration by moving their bedtime forward, we thought it was worth letting people know that’s been successful,” he said. he explains.

For the study, Campbell and her colleagues enrolled 77 children, ages 10 to 16, who were studied for three years. Additionally, they studied another group of 67 participants between the ages of 15 and 21. This group has only been studied once.

Each year, participants kept three predetermined hours in bed – seven, 8.5 and 10 hours for four consecutive nights. They also kept the same wake-up time.

Investigators found that on the fourth night, average sleep increased by more than an hour as time in bed increased from seven to nine hours, and increased by an additional hour with 10 hours at bed.

Although teens sleep slightly less as they age, earlier bedtimes increase sleep regardless of age, the researchers noted.

The results were published online June 12 in the journal Pediatrics.

Despite this finding, one expert worries that getting teens to go to bed earlier is difficult given all the things they have to do and all the distractions they face.

“My biggest concern is that you need to get these teenagers to go to bed early because 90% of the time it’s not just biological, but also environmental,” said Dr Sanjeev KothareChief of Pediatric Neurology at Cohen Children’s Medical Center in New Hyde Park, NY

“So the circadian shift is happening but unfortunately all of the electronic and social media and technology is keeping teens busy for longer durations,” he said.

Teenagers need about eight to 8.5 hours of sleep each night, Kothare said. “And one thing is for sure, we know that not getting enough hours of sleep on weekdays and trying to make up for the weekend by taking naps and longer sleep duration actually doesn’t work,” he said. added.

Starting school later is a good idea, but it’s fraught with pitfalls, from difficulty figuring out bus schedules to parents’ work schedules, Kothare said.

“The problem is that you can somehow get these teenagers to turn off all their blue light sources and go to bed so they get more hours of sleep at night,” Kothare said. “I think if they can be convinced it’s doable and there’s a reward for it, they will.”

SOURCES: Ian Campbell, PhD, project scientist, department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, University of California, Davis, Sacramento; Sanjeev Kothare, MD, chief, pediatric neurology, Cohen Children’s Medical Center, New Hyde Park, NY; Pediatrics, June 12, 2023, online

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