Naps may mean worse sleep in children

A study out of Australia shows that napping may be tied to children getting worse quality sleep.

New research has raised questions about something that's common practice in 80 per cent of Queensland childcare centers.

The Sleep in Early Childhood Research group found children exposed to more than an hour of forced napping at centers slept worse at night, even when they started school a year later.

Lead researcher Dr. Sally Staton, from the Queensland University of Technology, said childcare providers needed to question whether mandatory nap times were appropriate.

"Certainly we're not suggesting that sleep time is not an important component or providing for sleep is not an important component," she said.

"But certainly (they need to be) thinking about whether mandatory sleep times, in particular really long mandatory sleep times, are actually the most appropriate way of meeting sleep needs, particularly for these pre-school aged children where their needs are so diverse."

Dr. Staton said another recent study found children had grown out of napping by the time they were three or four years old.

Federal legislation calls for centers to cater to the individual sleep needs of all their students but there is limited guidance about what exactly that means.

In practice, Dr. Staton's previous research found about 80 per cent of centers enforced mandatory nap times, where children were forced to lie on their sleeping mat without access to any other activities.

Those sleep periods could be as long as two and a half hours but were about an hour on average.

But the study, to be published in the US-based Journal of Developmental and Behavioral Pediatrics next month, found even in long mandatory nap periods only half of the children actually slept.

The QUT research fellow's study of 168 children across 130 services, which were selected from a larger representative study, found children exposed to mandatory napping slept an average of 24 minutes less at night.

"I guess what's particularly concerning is when we got to the second year of the study, so once the children were in school, they were getting less sleep overall," Dr. Staton said.

"So their total sleep was less, probably because now they weren't napping and the amount of sleep they were getting was actually dropping below what we could consider the normal range for children of that age group."

Australian Childcare Alliance CEO Gwynn Bridge disputed the 80 per cent figure, saying most centers gave children options to cater for their individual needs.

"Most of them are encouraged to read a book or they can lay next to their friend and have a chat," she said.

"A lot in the older groups aren't even putting mats out now.

"[For] the children who want to sleep and the ones the educators know will sleep mats will be offered, but it's certainly not the case where every child must sleep for an hour and a half."

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At what age should a child stop napping?

This article discusses at what age a child should stop napping.

Whether you’re a helicopter, free-range, or pro-attachment parent, one thing most moms and dads can agree upon is that young kids need daily naps. But that blessed hour or so of peace and quiet may not actually be such a great thing, according to a new report. 

The study, published online Sunday in the Archives of Disease in Childhood by lead author Karen Thorpe of Queensland University of Technology, posits that daytime snoozing after the age of two can actually have a negative impact on kids’ nighttime sleep. Researchers arrived at their findings after analyzing 26 studies to assess “evidence regarding the effects of napping” on child development and health. 

“The evidence suggests that beyond the age of 2, when cessation of napping becomes more common, daytime sleep is associated with shorter and more disrupted night sleep,” Thorpe, a professor in development science, told Today. In other words, so much for that “sleep begets sleep” mantra.

Just keep in mind that “as children will crawl, walk and talk at different times, so too will sleep patterns differ for each child,” Thorpe tells Yahoo Parenting. “The age of cessation of napping varies considerably for individual children typically between 2 and 5 years and likely reflects individual differences in development.” What this study suggests she explains “is that is important for parents to respond to their individual sleep need.”

Two is a pivotal age for sleep, Heidi Connolly,  M.D., director of pediatric sleep medicine services at the University of Rochester Medical Center’s Pediatric Sleep Disorders Center tells Yahoo Parenting, but that’s because “around two is when most toddlers stop napping twice a day and consolidate to once a day,” not because napping becomes a negative practice for all kids at that age. “There are still a lot of kids who nap at age 4 and 5.” 

The aim for children under five should be to get between 11 and 14 hours of shuteye during a 24-hour period, she says, also acknowledging that “the more a child is sleeping during the day, the less they need to sleep at night.” 

To determine if a child of any age needs a nap, observe how they behave in the morning. “If he doesn’t wake up on his own, or is very hard to wake up, he isn’t getting enough sleep and likely needs a daytime nap,” she says. Likewise, if he’s having afternoon meltdowns on daily basis, he may need naps. “But if he’s functioning fine during the day and chipper in the morning, a nap just is not needed,” says Connolly. 

For the restless snoozers, Connolly says to first consider whether a nap is needed, then change behaviors around bed- and naptimes to help kids become better sleepers. For example, establish consistent evening routines and a cool, quiet, dark environment for optimal shuteye. Without help, “Some kids are just good sleepers,” she says, “and some just aren’t, regardless of their age.” 

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Tips to beat insomnia

This article gives 10 tips to help you beat insomnia.

Insomnia is the inability to get enough sleep needed to wake up feeling refreshed and well-rested.  Millions of people are suffering from this sleeping disorder.   You can cure insomnia without the additional cost of medication with just little changes in your lifestyle.

1. What you drink and eat before bedtime are also factors that can induce insomnia.  Cut down on alcohol, and do not eat heavy meals before bedtime.  Stick to light snacks and chamomile tea.Cut the caffeine – caffeine is a stimulant.  Cut down on other drinks and foods that have caffeine also, like sodas, teas, and tiramisus.  Coffee should be drank in the morning or at least eight hours before sleep.
2. Keep a quite, dark, and cool bedroom – an uncomfortable sleeping area will not induce sleep. Noise, light, and heat interfere with sleep.
3. The bed is for sleeping and sex – train your brain and body that the bed is for sleeping and sex. Doing office work and reading in bed is a no-no.  The goal is to associate the bed with relaxation and sleep.  Avoid watching TV while lying down in bed, watching TV stimulates your brain to think.  It may make your eyes tired, but the brain is busy converting images to thoughts.  Better yet, transfer the TV to the living room.
4. Avoid naps – try hard not to get that super nap in the afternoon. Naps disrupts sleep at night.  If you really can’t avoid it, limit it to 30 minutes before 3 pm.
5. Quit Smoking – nicotine, like caffeine, is a stimulant. The more you smoke, the more awake you’ll be.  Aside from the hazards of smoking, quitting will do wonders on your sleeping habits.
6. Change the way you think about insomnia – self-defeating thoughts help fuel insomnia. Think positive.  Instead of thoughts like “It’s the same every night,  another night of misery’, think this way instead “This does not every nught, some nights I get enough rest.”  Don’t worry too much, quit this mental habit.
7. Do away with stressful situations before bedtime – avoid heated discussions, heavy mental activities, even strenious activities before bedtime. Try some relaxing activities instead, listening to soft music with keeping the lights low will help in relaxing the brain.
8. Ban Blue Light in the bedroom – Short waves from blue light interferes with sleep. Use devices that have blue light an hour before going to sleep.  This includes TV, cellphones, and digital clocks.
9. Fat or Flat – not the body types, this refers to pillows. The discomfort you give your necks affects the quality of sleep, aside from having a sore neck upon waking up.  Pillows should be just the right size.  Side sleepers should have their nose align with the center of the body while sleeping.  Stomach sleeping should be avoided as this cranes the neck.
10. Control your body clock – go to sleep and wake up around the same time daily, irregardless if its a holiday or a weekend the next day. Our bodies have biological clocks and it is light regulated.  Try getting a ray of sunshine the minute you wake up, for 5 to 30 minutes.

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Confused arousal associated with behavioral issues

Confused arousal or "sleep drunkenness," which is waking up in a state of confusion, is linked to other behavioral issues.

"Sleep drunkenness" is more common than previously thought, affecting about one in seven Americans, or 15 percent, according to a new study that looked at the sleeping habits of more than 19,000 adults.

Also called confusional arousal, the condition causes people to wake up in a confused state, not knowing where they are. In the most severe cases, they can injure themselves or others, explained lead researcher Dr. Maurice Ohayon, a professor of psychiatry at Stanford University School of Medicine.

"There was a case of a man on a ship who awoke in a confused state and fell off the deck to his death," Ohayon said.

In addition to such extreme cases, there have been cases where waking up in a confused state led to the person striking a bedmate. Most people can't remember the incident afterwards.

Ohayon noted that these episodes can occur even while taking a nap. "This happens to most people occasionally, like when you are jet-lagged," he said. The difference is that these episodes are frequent among those who suffer from confusional arousal, he noted.

Treatment for confusional arousal hinges on treating the other sleep problems patients have, Ohayon said. When these problems are treated, the condition often disappears.

Whether sleep drunkenness is its own condition or a symptom of other sleep problems is an ongoing debate, Ohayon noted.

The report was published in the Aug. 26 issue of the journal Neurology.

Dr. David Rye, a professor of neurology at Emory University in Atlanta, said, "Confusional arousals exist -- and are probably more common than we thought."

But, he added, "As in most epidemiological surveys, what is reported are associations, not causes and effects."

For the study, researchers interviewed more than 19,000 people aged 18 and older about their sleep habits and if they had experienced any symptoms of confusional arousal. They were also asked whether they had been diagnosed with a mental illness and about the medications they took.

The researchers found that 15 percent of the participants had a confusional arousal episode in the last year. Over half of those people said they had more than one episode per week.

In most cases -- 84 percent -- the study participants said in addition to sleep drunkenness, they had other sleep disorders, a mental health disorder or used psychotropic medications such as antidepressants. Less than 1 percent of those with sleep drunkenness didn't have another sleep problem, the researchers found.

Among those suffering from confusional arousal, 37 percent also had a mental health problem. Those with depression, bipolar disorder, alcoholism, panic or post-traumatic stress disorder and anxiety tended to be more likely to also have sleep drunkenness, the study authors noted.

Sleep drunkenness was also associated with sleeping too little or too much. About 20 percent of those who slept less than six hours a night and 15 percent of those who slept at least nine hours suffered from sleep drunkenness, the investigators found. In addition, people with sleep apnea were also more likely to have the problem.

Rye doesn't think the study pinpoints the most common problems associated with sleep drunkenness.

Confusional arousal is poorly defined, he said. "We need to know more about how to define and recognize those with the problem, how it negatively impacts patients' lives, how large is the unmet clinical need, and determine whether a doc should care about the complaint," Rye said.

Dr. Scott Krakower, assistant unit chief of psychiatry at Zucker Hillside Hospital in Glen Oaks, N.Y., said, "Many patients and doctors are not aware of what confusional arousals are. They can often be misinterpreted for other neurologic and psychiatric conditions."

Krakower noted that it is important to treat the underlying medical problem to avoid confusional arousals.

"In addition, staying on a proper sleep regimen is very important to prevent these premature arousals," he said.

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Sleeping during the day can hurt your genes

This study shows that sleeping during the day can mess up a third or a person's genes.

Sleeping during the day -- a necessity for jet-lagged travelers and those who work overnight shifts -- disrupts the rhythms of about one-third of your genes, a new study suggests.

What's more, shifted sleep appears to disrupt gene activity even more than not getting enough sleep, according to the research.

For the new study, which was published in this week's issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, British researchers put 22 healthy, young volunteers in a dimly lit sleep lab for three days.

During the first day, they disrupted the participants' sleep at regular intervals to reset their body clock to its innate rhythm. On the second and third days, the volunteers ate and slept on a 28-hour schedule, so their longest period of sleep was from noon until about 6:30 p.m.

The researchers drew blood samples all three days so they could watch what happened to the timing of gene activity.

During the first day, when the body reset its circadian rhythm, nearly 1,400 genes -- about 6.4 percent of all genes that were analyzed -- were in sync with that rhythm. On the days of shifted sleep, however, the number of genes tied to the body's clock dropped dramatically, to 228 genes, or only 1 percent of genes analyzed.

The researchers estimated that the sleep disruptions would ultimately impact about a third of a person's genes.

That's an even greater disruption than scientists saw in a previous study when they tested the effects of sleep deprivation on gene activity. In that study, which had study volunteers sleeping about five and half hours each night, the number of genes that were in sync with the body's clock dropped from about 9 percent to 7 percent.

"These are quite fundamental processes that are being affected," said senior study author Derk-Jan Dijk, a professor of sleep and physiology at the University of Surrey, in the United Kingdom.

"We think that may be related to the negative health outcomes associated with long-term shift work," Dijk said. Shift workers are at higher risk for many health problems, including obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, disrupted menstrual cycles and cancer, he said.

This study didn't directly connect health problems and night-shift work, but experts said it does start to help them understand why sleep might have such a powerful influence on a person's health.

"This study suggests that mistimed sleep can alter circadian rhythms, so the cycling of many, many genes is impaired," said Dr. Mark Wu, assistant professor of neurology, medicine, genetic medicine and neuroscience at Johns Hopkins University. "What this could cause, they can't really say -- except it's probably not good." Wu was not involved in the new research.

Genes carry the instructions for making proteins. Proteins make up just about every kind of chemical signal, hormone and tissue in the body, the researchers said.

The timing of when proteins are made is important because their production should correspond to our behaviors, said Frank Scheer, a neuroscientist at Harvard and director of the Medical Chronobiology Program at Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston.

When the body anticipates a meal, for example, the liver has to stop releasing into the blood the carbohydrates it has stored and the pancreas has to make more insulin, while the muscles have to become more sensitive to insulin that's released so they can take in blood sugar, Scheer said.

"If these processes are working in concert and they're synchronized to when you eat and when you fast, then the system is very efficient and effective at absorbing these sugars quickly and minimizing any adverse consequences of elevated blood sugar levels," Scheer said.

"If these are not rhythmic, then you can easily imagine that, during the nighttime, you have this machinery up and running without need," he said. "During the daytime, when you actually do need it, it's only running half speed."

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Preschoolers learn better with midday naps

Research shows that a midday nap helps preschool children retain what they learned that morning showing how important sleep is for learning and creating memories.

A midday nap can help pre-school children remember what they learned in the morning, according to a study by psychologists in the US.

The research suggests that carers and nurseries that phase out after-lunch sleeps may be harming children's ability to learn, by disrupting the way their brains store memories.

Pre-schoolers who went without a midday sleep fared worse on memory tests than those who napped. They also failed to improve their scores even after a good night's sleep, the researchers found.

The findings highlight the crucial role of sleep in consolidating memories, a process that underpins the brain's ability to learn new information.

The children who benefited most were "habitual nappers" who would sleep when carers encouraged them to, rather than more mature children who had outgrown the need for a nap.

For the study, psychologists went into pre-school classrooms and taught 40 children aged three to nearly five years old a simple computer game. It required them to memorize the positions on a grid of images including a cat, an umbrella, and a policeman. The children were trained from 10am until they could remember the positions of around 75% of the pictures.

The scientists visited each child twice over the course of the study. On one visit, the child slept for an hour or so between 1pm and 3pm, and stayed awake on the other. To see how sleep affected their memory, the scientists tested each child again later the same afternoon.

Those who napped saw no change in their morning score of 75%, but the ones who stayed awake fared much worse, averaging scores of 65%, according to a report in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

"If they stayed awake they forgot more of the items they had remembered in the morning, whereas if they took a nap, they remembered all the items they had learned in the morning," said Rebecca Spencer at the University of Massachusetts in Amherst.

To check whether the nappers were simply more alert and attentive than the others, the scientists returned the next day and tested the children again. Their scores did not change, suggesting that daytime sleep was crucial.

Spencer said that parents and pre-schools are steadily cutting down the time given to children's naps to fit a convenient schedule, or to make more time for a curriculum.

"You often see children forced out of napping, and hopefully this will help parents and pre-schools to understand that maybe that's not the best decision, and that a nap is an important part of the day," said Spencer.

"This is the science that's needed to preserve nap time. If our goals are to prepare children for early education, the naps are consistent with that goal because it's really helping them to learn," she added.

The scientists went on to look at the brain activity of 14 children while they slept in the unversity's sleep lab. They found that children with the best memory recall experienced more "sleep spindles" – brief bursts of activity thought to happen when the brain shunts memories from short-term storage in the hippocampus to the neocortex.

"This demonstrates very vividly the value of sleep for consolidating memories. Very young children find it quite difficult to retain information over the course of a full day, so in those circumstances, a nap is going to be useful for ensuring that whatever they learn is retained in the longer term," said Gareth Gaskell, professor of psychology at York University.

"At these ages, children are shifting from multiple sleeps in 24 hours to a single sleep overnight. It may well be that non-habitual nappers are becoming more adult-like, and have got that little bit further in the process."

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Factors affecting a baby's naps and sleep at night

Genetics play a role in if a baby sleeps through the night, but sleep habits determine how well a baby naps during the day.

Genes play the biggest role in getting toddlers to sleep through the night, but environmental factors are more important for daytime naps, a twin study showed.

Genetic influences explained about half the variability in nighttime sleep duration from ages 6 months through 2 years, Jacques Montplaisir, MD, PhD, of Sacré-Coeur Hospital in Montreal, and colleagues reported in the June issue of Pediatrics.

There was a window of greater influence from surroundings and family habits at 18 months, which accounted for 48% of variability at that time. Environmental factors also accounted for up to almost 80% of variation in how long toddlers napped during the day by age 2.

Age 18 months may be a good opportunity to intervene for kids who don't sleep through the night, suggested Shalini Paruthi, MD, a pediatric sleep specialist at Saint Louis University in St. Louis.

"You really want to make sure your environment is as good as it can be," she told MedPage Today, which might include "keeping a dark and quiet room for them to sleep in and making sure they have their own sleep space so they're not bumping into a sibling on the mattress or on the bed."

"That doesn't mean every child in the same family is going to have the same sleep patterns," Paruthi noted, cautioning against overinterpretation.

The study also shouldn't be generalized to older children, she added.

Environment seems the biggest contributor to how long adults sleep at night, with a prior adult twin study suggesting less than 45% heritability.

Teens and pre-teens seem to follow adults in that pattern. However, young children haven't been followed longitudinally in the same way through the period when sleep is shifting toward a mature circadian rhythm.

Montplaisir's study included 995 sets of twins (405 identical) in the population-based Quebec Newborn Twin Study, which included pairs born without major medical conditions in the greater Montreal area from November 1995 through July 1998.

Mothers reported on their twins' sleep at 6, 18, 30, and 48 months of age, with a 2-week period between assessment for the two children to minimize homogenization of answers.

Genetics explained 47% of variability in how long kids slept without waking up their parents at 6 months of age, 58% at 30 months, and 54% at 48 months.

Sleep appeared to be more fragmented than parents were aware of, though, because video recordings in a subgroup showed that even "good sleepers" woke up three times a night on average.

With regard to daytime naps, environmental influences shared by the twins appeared to explain more of the variance in sleep duration as they got older.

These factors accounted for 33% of nap duration at 18 months of age, 48% at 30 months, and 79% at 2 years.

Nap duration seemed moderately stable through age 2 and declined gradually over time, with only 4% having a faster than normal trajectory in that regard.

Only 4% had stopped taking naps by age 2.

Little variation in either daytime or nighttime sleep appeared linked to environmental factors unique to one twin, not shared with the other.

However, the researchers cautioned that the heritability estimate may have been inflated by using a single "informant" for the twin pairs.

Another limitation was use of ordinal categories for daytime and nighttime sleep duration, so the study needs replication with quantitative measures, such as actigraphy or polysomnography, they noted.

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When you should talk to a doctor about sleep issues

This article discusses signs that indicate you should talk to a doctor about sleep issues.

According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), about 70 million Americans suffer from chronic sleep problems. Unfortunately, we live in a fast-paced society where sleep is not always a priority. We often overlook feeling tired and sleep deprived, chalking it up to a necessary part of a busy life. But besides the obvious impact on quality of life, sleep issues have also been linked to injuries, chronic diseases, mental illnesses, increased health care costs, and lost work productivity.

If you regularly have trouble falling or staying asleep (insomnia), are tired during the day (even after getting seven or more hours of sleep the night before), or notice that your abilities to perform daily functions are reduced, you may have a sleep disorder. Start by keeping track of your sleeping patterns. Record what time you go to sleep, how many times you wake up during the night, what time you wake up, and how you feel during the day. Take note of clues like the following:

• nodding off while driving
• struggling to stay awake when inactive, such as when watching television or reading
• difficulty paying attention or concentrating at work, school, or home
• performance problems at work or school
• getting told by others that you look sleepy often
• difficulty with your memory
• slowed responses
• difficulty controlling your emotions
• needing to take naps almost every day

If you experience one or more of the symptoms above, you should seek the help of a professional who can determine what is preventing you from experiencing quality sleep and help to address the problem. In some cases, disturbed sleep can be caused by sleep apnea, a chronic condition in which you have one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths while you sleep. Many people don’t even know they suffer from this condition, but it’s important to find out what’s causing it because it can lead to an increased risk of more serious health conditions like heart attack, diabetes, stroke, and obesity.

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A Little Extra Sleep Pays Off Big For Kids

A new study discusses the benefits of about a half-hour extra of sleep per night has on a child.

Twenty-seven minutes. That’s how much extrasleep a school-aged child needs per night to be brighter and more productive the following day.

According to a new study, kids who slept that extra amount each night were less impulsive, less easily distracted, and less likely to have temper tantrums or cry often and easily. By contrast, losing just shy of an hour’s worth of sleep had the opposite effects on behavior and mood.

“Small changes in bedtime and daily routine could go a long way,” says researcher Reut Gruber, PhD. She is an assistant professor of psychology at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, Canada. Conversely, “one more video game and staying a little longer in a friend’s house … could add up and have a negative impact on the daytime functioning of healthy children.”

The findings are published in the November issue of Pediatrics.

Sleepless in Grade School

Gruber’s study included 34 kids aged 7 to 11 with no sleep, medical, behavior, or academic problems. The children’s bedtimes were moved up or back an hour relative to their usual bedtimes for one week. Their daytime behaviors were rated by their teachers and parents at the end of the week. Children slept wearing a wristwatch-like device to monitor their activity and sleep.

Those kids who got 27.36 minutes more sleep per night showed improvements, while those who got less sleep did not.

Is this modest amount really enough? 

“In daily life, if you think of the impact of short power naps, usually about 15 to 20 minutes during the day, you can see that this amount of sleep can have a significant positive impact on mood, attention, and well-being,” says Gruber.

Most school-aged children go to bed later than 9 p.m., and 43% of boys ages 10 to 11 sleep less than the recommended amount each night, according to information in the new study.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, children aged 5 to 12 need 10 to 11 hours of sleep a night.

Yawning and drowsiness are not the only signs that a student is getting too little sleep, Gruber says. Other symptoms include hyperactivity, crankiness, impulsiveness, and a short attention span.

9 Steps for More Sleep

As parents know, most school-aged kids would do anything to stay up even just a little bit later each night. But implementing nine simple steps can help assure that your kids get the sleep they need and are bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next day.

1. Lead by example. “Prioritize sleep in your daily choices,” Gruber says.

2. Set a fixed bedtime and wake time. “The body adapts to falling asleep at a certain time, but only if the sleep schedule is relatively consistent, with no more than one hour of bedtime difference between school nights and weekends or holidays,” she says.

3. Create a consistent, calm bedtime routine. “The ideal sleeping environment is quiet, dark, and cool in the evening, and well lit in the morning,” Gruber says. “It is important that the sleeping environment should be associated with positive experiences and emotions and, therefore, parents should not use the bedroom or going to bed early as punishments.” Along the same lines, TVs, computers, and cell phones should not be in the bedroom. “Internet use should be kept to a minimum in the evening.”

4. Avoid heavy meals during the two hours before bedtime. “A small snack close to bedtime is acceptable, so that the child does not go to bed hungry,” she says. Caffeine should also be avoided in the late afternoon and evening. This includes chocolate and soda.

5. No more naps. “Napping during the day may create difficulty in nighttime sleeping,” she says.

6. Exercise regularly, as long as it is done during the day and not too close to bed, Gruber says.

7. Do homework earlier. Staying up later to finish homework is a no-no, says Nina Shapiro, MD. She is the director of pediatric otolaryngology at Mattel Children’s Hospital UCLA. “If you have second- through sixth-graders staying up even an hour later each night to finish their homework, it has consequences.”

The solution? Start homework earlier.“This can be hard if a child has a full day at school, after-school activities, and working parents who like to have family dinner on the later side,” she says. “Kids can get crunched, but something has got to give.” This can be TV or computer time, an extracurricular activity, or simply trying to bemore efficient with homework.

8. Start the bedtime routine earlier. Telling young kids their bedtime got moved up is a hard sell, Shapiro says. Instead, start the whole process 30 minutes earlier. This includes brushing teeth and reading a book to or with your child. “Reading a book is a great way to drift off to sleep.”

Making the after-dinner routine more geared toward sleep makes sense, says Jeff Sapyta, PhD. He is a child psychologist at Duke University Medical Center in Durham, N.C. “It should be about slowing down, not speeding up.”

9. Aim for 10 hours of sleep a night for 6- to 12-year-olds. There is not necessarily a one-size-fits-all sleep prescription for kids, but shooting for 10 hours a night is a good goal, Sapyta says. It will pay dividends. “We see a significant difference in how a child behaves in school and emotionally based on restricting or allowing more sleep in just one week.”

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Researchers plan to study the value of preschool naps

A group of researchers have claimed that nearly nothing is known about daytime naps and how they affect children. They plan to research this in the future and determine how daytime naps affect children's behavior and learning.

Parents may feel it's clear that missing a nap means their young children will be grumpy and out-of-sorts, but scientists who study sleep say almost nothing is known about how daytime sleep affects children's coping skills and learning.

Now neuroscientist Rebecca Spencer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst has received a five-year, $2 million grant from NIH's Heart, Lung and Blood Institute to significantly advance knowledge about how napping and sleep affect memory, behavior and emotions in preschoolers.

Spencer says with pressure mounting in some school districts to eliminate naps, "we feel it's important to study this and know their value more precisely. There's a sense among some educators that kids have to 'get over' napping in preparation for kindergarten, but it could be misguided. There's some evidence in young adults and in older children that naps are beneficial. So I suspect there is a benefit for younger children too. We need to know whether keeping naps in the school day is important."

Attending preschool offers life-long benefits in physical health, emotional stability and quality of life, Spencer points out, and in the United States, 70 percent of four- and five-year-olds attend. There is a trend now toward incorporating new curricula in preschool such as anti-bullying messages and lessons on how to brush your teeth. If sleep protects and enhances physical and emotional learning in young children as it does in older kids, taking away naptime could undercut such efforts, she adds.

"Right now, there's nothing to support teachers who feel that naps can really help young children, there's no concrete science behind that," the neuroscientist says. "But if sleep is going to enhance all these benefits of attending preschool, we need to know it."

Over the next five years, Spencer and her graduate students hope to study about 480 preschoolers between 3 and 5 years old, boys and girls in diverse communities across western Massachusetts. The research will include fact-based and emotional memory studies with and without napping, measures of physical activity levels and parent reports of their children's' nighttime sleep, to find out how classroom experience interacts with sleep and physical activity and whether daytime sleep enhances learning. The research will also explore the relationship between sleep and behavior disorders.

"I think we'll have a rich data set for examining sleep, physical activity and the child's behavior," says Spencer. "We think that the nap benefit is going to be especially useful for kids who don't get optimal overnight sleep. Culture plays a role in how late you stay up, and some kids live in noisy inner city neighborhoods. If we can help them with a nap, we want to know that."

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National Institutes of Health's Tips on Getting a Good Nights Sleep

Below are tips from the National Institute of Health on how to get a good night's sleep. The website also contains a great sleep diary that is found here.

• Stick to a sleep schedule. Go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. As creatures of habit, people have a hard time adjusting to changes in sleep patterns. Sleeping later on weekends won't fully make up for a lack of sleep during the week and will make it harder to wake up early on Monday morning.
• Exercise is great, but not too late in the day. Try to exercise at least 30 minutes on most days but not later than 2—3 hours before your bedtime.
• Avoid caffeine and nicotine. Coffee, colas, certain teas, and chocolate contain the stimulant caffeine, and its effects can take as long as 8 hours to wear off fully. Therefore, a cup of coffee in the late afternoon can make it hard for you to fall asleep at night. Nicotine is also a stimulant, often causing smokers to sleep only very lightly. In addition, smokers often wake up too early in the morning because of nicotine withdrawal.
• Avoid alcoholic drinks before bed. Having a "nightcap" or alcoholic beverage before sleep may help you relax, but heavy use robs you of deep sleep and REM sleep, keeping you in the lighter stages of sleep. Heavy alcohol ingestion also may contribute to impairment in breathing at night. You also tend to wake up in the middle of the night when the effects of the alcohol have worn off.
• Avoid large meals and beverages late at night. A light snack is okay, but a large meal can cause indigestion that interferes with sleep. Drinking too many fluids at night can cause frequent awakenings to urinate.
• If possible, avoid medicines that delay or disrupt your sleep. Some commonly prescribed heart, blood pressure, or asthma medications, as well as some over-the-counter and herbal remedies for coughs, colds, or allergies, can disrupt sleep patterns. If you have trouble sleeping, talk to your healthcare provider or pharmacist to see whether any drugs you're taking might be contributing to your insomnia and ask whether they can be taken at other times during the day or early in the evening.
• Don't take naps after 3 p.m. Naps can help make up for lost sleep, but late afternoon naps can make it harder to fall asleep at night.
• Relax before bed. Don't overschedule your day so that no time is left for unwinding. A relaxing activity, such as reading or listening to music, should be part of your bedtime ritual.
• Take a hot bath before bed. The drop in body temperature after getting out of the bath may help you feel sleepy, and the bath can help you relax and slow down so you're more ready to sleep.
• Have a good sleeping environment. Get rid of anything in your bedroom that might distract you from sleep, such as noises, bright lights, an uncomfortable bed, or warm temperatures. You sleep better if the temperature in the room is kept on the cool side. A TV, cell phone, or computer in the bedroom can be a distraction and deprive you of needed sleep. Having a comfortable mattress and pillow can help promote a good night's sleep. Individuals who have insomnia often watch the clock. Turn the clock's face out of view so you don't worry about the time while trying to fall asleep.
• Have the right sunlight exposure. Daylight is key to regulating daily sleep patterns. Try to get outside in natural sunlight for at least 30 minutes each day. If possible, wake up with the sun or use very bright lights in the morning. Sleep experts recommend that, if you have problems falling asleep, you should get an hour of exposure to morning sunlight and turn down the lights before bedtime.
• Don't lie in bed awake. If you find yourself still awake after staying in bed for more than 20 minutes or if you are starting to feel anxious or worried, get up and do some relaxing activity until you feel sleepy. The anxiety of not being able to sleep can make it harder to fall asleep.
• See a health professional if you continue to have trouble sleeping. If you consistently find it difficult to fall or stay asleep and/or feel tired or not well rested during the day despite spending enough time in bed at night, you may have a sleep disorder. Your family healthcare provider or a sleep specialist should be able to help you, and it is important to rule out other health or emotional problems that may be disturbing your sleep.

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Why Americans Don't Sleep Well

Amen. JR

Why are 70 million Americans having trouble getting a good night’s sleep? Let us count the ways:

We are over-caffeinated (coffee, soft drinks, energy drinks, snacks) and over-medicated (prescription and over-the-counter drugs, including alcohol), wreaking havoc with slumber patterns.

We are over-wired (video games, Web browsing, social media, texting) and overstressed (money, work, relationships, overloaded schedules), making us too restless to doze off when we should.

We are overworked (longer hours, night shifts incompatible with our biological clocks) and overweight (perhaps a chicken-or-egg deal, as different studies have found that one leads to the other).

And then there’s societal pressure, what nationally recognized sleep expert Dr. Mark Mahowald calls “the pervasive, erroneous attitude that sleep is not a biological imperative, that it is negotiable. We have raised sleep deprivation to a badge of honor.”

The effects might outnumber the causes, and are hardly as benign as many of us might think. “Any degree of sleep deprivation will impair performance: behind the wheel, in the classroom or workplace,” Mahowald said.

He added that the Bhopal, Challenger, Exxon Valdez and Three Mile Island disasters “all are officially attributed to problems from sleep deprivation. But the biggest risk of sleep deprivation is car crashes, period.”

No wonder the number of accredited sleep centers has risen nationwide by 630 percent in just 15 years. And while sleep study results have been all over the map and sometimes contradictory, experts such as local doctors Mahowald and Michael Schmitz know a lot more than researchers did even a decade ago.

Effects:

• With sleep deprivation, some glucose metabolism problems might predispose one to diabetes. And if so, a consequence could be heart disease and stroke.

• With insomnia, there is no evidence of long-term physical problems or links to other diseases. But insomnia results in poorer quality of life and work absences and can lead to depression.

• There is some evidence that severe sleep apnea can lead to hypertension, heart problems and a higher risk of strokes.

Solutions:

• Improving sleep hygiene -- avoiding late eating and drinking, keeping the room cool and dark, winding down before bedtime -- can improve or resolve transient or acute insomnia but probably not chronic insomnia.

• For chronic insomnia, cognitive behavioral therapy is equally as or more effective than medications. Medication often is useful for acute insomnia.

• Naps can help -- except when they don’t. “We discourage napping when anyone has problems falling or staying asleep at night, which might be an untreated sleep disorder,” said behavioral sleep specialist Schmitz. “We encourage power naps, 30 minutes or less, when folks can’t stay awake or will have late-night events.”

• See your doctor if: You have had difficulty falling and staying asleep for more than a week. Or if you snore, have frequent awakenings and are reporting sleepiness during the day. Anyone with apnea symptoms should seek treatment.

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Rea
Read more here: http://www.macon.com/2012/04/09/1981741/americans-are-too-busy-drink-too.html#storylink=cpy