How Sleep Affects Teens
Everybody knows the fact that teens need at least 8-10 hours every 24 hours to maintain optimal health and well-being. It is also very important for learning, better memory, emotional well being, physical, and mental development.
How does sleep affect learning?
Not getting the right amount of sleep can decrease your ability to learn new things by 40%. Dr. Matthew Walker says, “You can’t pull an all-nighter and still learn effectively.” Dr. Walker is a sleep scientist at the University of California, Berkeley. This is why sleep is especially important for students. Deep sleep stages can help with problem solving.
How does sleep affect Memory?
The lack of sleep affects the part of the brain called the Hippocampus, the part of the brain that makes new memories. “When we first form memories, they’re in a very raw and fragile form,” said Dr. Robert Stickgold, a sleep expert of Harvard Medical school. Memories become more stable in the deep stages of sleep.
How does sleep affect emotional well-being?
Your mood and sleep work both ways. The amount of sleep you get will affect the amount of sleep you get and your mood can affect the amount of sleep you get and how well you sleep. Multiple studies have proven that lack of sleep can cause negative feelings such as anger, frustration, and sadness. Also, being unable to sleep is a symptom of major mood disorders such as depression and anxiety. Lack of sleep makes you more at risk of developing major mood disorders.
How does sleep affect physical development?
When sleeping, the body releases hormones that aid growth, build muscles, repair cells and tissues, the immune system stress hormones, appetite, blood pressure, and cardiovascular health. In the first two years of life, the average person sleeps 13 months. All this sleep helps the baby’s brain develop. Lack of sleep can increase the risk of obesity, heart disease, and infections.
How does sleep affect mental development?
Studies have shown that a lack of sleep in childhood can be linked to future problems like a decrease of mental functions that can begin as early as the adolescence stage of a human’s life. Sleep helps your brain work properly. While sleeping, your brain is getting ready for the next day. Ze Wang, PhD, Professor of Diagnostic Radiology and Nuclear Medicine at UMSOM found that children that had insufficient sleep at the beginning of the study had less grey matter in areas of the brain in charge of attention and memory.
Written by: Ariya