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Let Them Sleep, Let Them Sleep
Raise your hand if you want your offspring to grow up to be grumpy! No? None of you? Thought not. This is a sentiment that no parent of sound mind would strive for, and for the sake of argument I’m assuming you are in that group. A new study says that there is one big thing you can do to keep your child from growing up to be surly and sour… Continue reading »
We all know our kids need a good night’s sleep to function well. Put them to bed too late, and they turn into Gremlins the next day. Cranky, tantrum-throwing Gremlins.
It’s not just tantrums we have to watch out for with sleep deprived schoolchildren. Their performance at school can suffer too. Being tired makes it harder to learn, to pay attention, and to behave in class.
A new Spanish study found that kids need 9 to 11 hours of sleep every night to perform their best at school. Less than that, and you start seeing issues with behavior and learning.
If you could have one superpower, what would it be?
OK, now that you’ve indulged your dreams of flying, turning invisible or having your own personal Tardis, check out this seemingly magic power: short sleep.
Short sleep is the ability to genuinely thrive on 4-6 hours a night of sleep. Short sleepers don’t just get by on less than seven hours a night like every parent I know; they genuinely don’t need any more sleep.
It’s a real-life superpower that one to three percent of the population is blessed with, giving them an extra couple of hours every day to do what they want with. Short sleepers go to bed after midnight and wake up with the early birds, fresh as daisies and ready to start the day all over again.
Often blamed for contributing to nighttime insomnia, the Internet can also help parents struggling with sleep problems. Staring at a screen late at night may not help you get to sleep, but a new program promises to get your little ones sleeping soundly.
The program, currently available through Johnson&Johnson’s website, was created by a team of researchers at Children’s Hospital in Philadelphia. You give it data on your family’s bedtime routines and sleep problems, and it gives back customized advice to help everyone under your roof get a good night’s sleep. Most of the families involved in a clinical trial of the program reported improvements, and many planned to continue using it.
What magic tricks does the Custom Sleep Profile have to offer?
Would teens be better off with a 10 o'clock start time in high school?
Would your high schooler be better off starting the school day at 10 a.m.? A weekly public affairs magazine in Canada says yes.
At Eastern Commerce Collegiate Institute in Toronto, students are in their second year of a later start time for classes and some are claiming it’s a better fit with the biological clocks of teens. In an opinion piece, Maclean magazine said other schools should consider following suit.
Because of the shift in sleep patterns that are a natural accompaniment to sexual maturation, teens have an ability to stay up later and sleep in — a feature that one study called part of the definition of adolescence. (“You’re officially an adult when you can’t stay up all night anymore,” the study said.)
Bottle feeders are tired too.
When my oldest was born, I tried very briefly to breastfeed. I probably would have succeeded had I stuck with it, but I was so exhausted and she was so hungry that I gave up within a few weeks.
Bear in mind that this was in 1982 and I was an overwhelmed 17-year-old. Breastfeeding didn’t enjoy the high profile that it does today and my desire to do it had nothing to do with the health benefits. I wanted to breastfeed because it was free.
But my need for sleep quickly overcame my financial concerns and I gave up. She got a bottle and I got more sleep. Or did I?
According to new research out of West Virginia University, the idea that bottle feeding moms get more sleep than breastfeeding moms is nothing more than a myth. In fact, not only are both getting the same amount of sleep, they are getting plenty of it. Continue reading »
You need zzz's to lose fat
A study in the Annals of Internal Medicine suggests that when you’re trying to lose weight, if you sleep enough, you lose body fat — if you’re sleep deprived you just lose muscle.
The population in the study was small (10 overweight or obese adults participated), but it was highly controlled, so the results are still interesting. Most large scale studies rely on self-report and it’s hard to account for all the variables in a person’s life. In this case the subjects were in a controlled environment for four weeks, where their eating, sleeping, and exercise patterns were closely monitored.
How much sleep did the adults need to lose body fat? Continue reading »
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