- :: Atom & Cosmos
- :: Body & Brain
- :: Earth
- :: Environment
- :: Genes & Cells
- :: Humans
- :: Life
- :: Matter & Energy
- :: Molecules
- :: Science & Society
- :: Other Topics
- :: Science News For Kids
Text Size
Most adolescents can get by with at least eight hours of zzzzz’s a night, studies show, but ideally should garner at least nine. A new study tells us just how many kids meet their ideal slumber quota: a whopping 7.6 percent.
The number comes from a tiny paper published early online, this week, in the Journal of Adolescent Health. Danice Eaton led a research team at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that surveyed a statistically representative sample of more than 12,000 U.S. high school students. They probed a range of issues as part of a Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance. Among those questions: “On an average school night, how many hours of sleep do you get?”
Roughly one-quarter of the kids fell into the borderline-acceptable category, meaning they reported eight hours of shuteye nightly. The overwhelming majority fell short — with 30.2 percent reporting seven hours, 22.8 percent slumbering closer to six hours, 10 percent catching a mere five hours of sleep, and 5.9 percent claiming to nod off for no more than four hours most weeknights. Just the thought makes me yawn.
What the study didn’t explore is why kids aren’t sleeping enough. Certainly, schools don’t help the situation by starting classes earlier for teens than they do for younger kids — even though puberty and other developmental changes lead to adolescents needing more sleep than grade schoolers, not less.
But there could be other issues.
Like what share of teens don’t get enough sleep because they’re naturally night owls (like me) and find almost anything before 2 or 3 a.m. more interesting than slumber? Or what share suffer from a recurrent resetting of their biological clocks from exposure to night-time exposure to blue light — including that spooky glow given off by computer screens — so that their bodies no longer recognize when it’s bedtime? Or do today’s teens so drug themselves with caffeine to stay alert while doing homework that when it’s over they can’t immediately nod off?
Insufficient sleep impairs learning, impulse control, and judgment. It appears to even predispose people to disease. Indeed, one motivation for the survey was to probe kids’ behaviors and the extent to which these might help explain four leading causes of death among 10- to 24-year olds: motor-vehicle crashes, other unintentional injuries, homicide and suicide
Even a day's sleepiness, recent studies have shown, can perturb hormone concentrations in the body in ways that not only foster hunger, but also can encourage the preferential use of calories to produce body fat, not heat and energy. And not surprisingly, 29 percent of the students in this study were overweight, if not obese. Other studies have also observed that kids who sleep less tend to be heavier.
If we want to find ways to encourage healthy habits, we need to understand what the obstacles to them are. And this new study certainly jolts us awake as to the magnitude of our kids’ potentially risky sleep deficits.
Found in: Behavior, Body & Brain, Humans and Science & Society
- Dying to Sleep
- Sleep Gone Awry
- The Why of Sleep
- A gene for a short night’s sleep
- Neurons take a break during stage 2 sleep
- Sleep may clear the decks for next day’s learning
- Sleep makes room for memories
- Sleep disruption and glucose processing
- Too little sleep may fatten kids
- XXL from Too Few Zs? Skimping on sleep might cause obesity, diabetes
- Sleepy teens haven't got circadian rhythm
- Light Impacts
- Eaton, D.K., et al. 2009. Prevalence of Insufficient, Borderline, and Optimal Hours of Sleep Among High School Students -- United States, 2007. Journal of Adolescent Health (in press). DOI:10.1016/j.jadohealth.2009.10.011
- National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. YRBSS: Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System Home Page: [Go to]
- Science & the Public : GNP’s glaciers: Going, going . . .
- Science & the Public : Insurance payouts point to climate change
- Science & the Public : Bush meat can be a viral feast
- On the Scene : Vying for the title of World's Fastest Cell
- Deleted Scenes : Moony shot
Please alert Science News to any inappropriate posts by clicking the REPORT SPAM link within the post. Comments will be reviewed before posting.
The amounts of fluoride used in these studies is comparable to the amounts humans ingest on a daily basis. Some of these studies have rats on 7-75 ppm fluoride, which is more than the EPA's limit for humans at 4 ppm. But the respected Phyllis Mullenix, Ph.D. states "When rats consumed 75-125 ppm and humans 5-10 ppm fluoride in their respective drinking waters, the result was equivalent ranges of plasma [blood] fluoride levels." in this letter: [Link was removed] So they are comparable. In addition to that, humans frequently ingest much more than 4 ppm per day. Surprisingly, our biggest source of fluoride intake is not toothpaste, or even water, but common foods. This is because foods that are processed with water that is fluoridated (and 66% of the water in the US is), sometimes several times, absorb and accumulate fluoride, leading to levels much higher than what was in the water. This is how seemingly unrelated foods like mechanically deboned beef can have up to 42 mg/kg fluoride. This applies to pesticides too, which commonly contain fluoride or fluoride-containing compounds, and are administered over and over. Tables of fluoride content in foods were assembled by the USDA and can be seen here: [Link was removed] However, these results may have been cherry-picked; this site lists much higher values and has credible references for many of them: [Link was removed] Non-organic fruits and vegetables have been found to have 3-8 ppm fluoride.
And expect even more fluoride to show up in grain-based foods. In 2004, the EPA made it legal to use sulfuryl fluoride instead of methyl bromide for use in fumigating silos and storage facilities where "post-harvest" crops are kept. They shockingly set the limits for acceptable fluoride residues at 70 ppm "in or on" all processed foods (except for the processed foods otherwise specified), 130 ppm "in or on" wheat, and 900 ppm "in or on" dried eggs, etc. See [Link was removed] for the full list, which they got from here: [Link was removed]
I hope this information convinces you that fluoride is a serious problem in our world. If not fluoridated water, the majority of the world is currently implementing fluoridated salt at 250 ppm, including Europe and Latin America. [Link was removed]
So obviously there are other health problems with fluoride, but I think our chronic sleep trouble, i.e., NOT getting sleepy at night, is a more observable consequence.
"Fluoridation is the greatest case of scientific fraud of this century, if not of all time"
--Dr Robert Carton, a scientist who spent 20 years working for the US Environmental Protection Agency.
“The individual is handicapped by coming face to face with a conspiracy so monstrous he cannot believe it exists.”
--J. Edgar Hoover, founder and director of the FBI, 1935-1972, 33rd degree Freemason
[Link was removed]
[Link was removed]
You must register with Science News to add a comment. To log-in click here. To register as a new user, follow this link.