We have all had those days in high school when we pulled all-nighters, slept in till noon, or stayed up on a school night to play video games or just have fun with friends. That's just the high school experience right? That scenario may have been a normal occurrence to us all, however, there were many repercussions going unnoticed due to those choices. Sleep deprivation in adolescents is found to be very common internationally, up to 73% of high schoolers report getting less than 8 hours of sleep, yet those years are the most crucial for growth and brain development. A teenager should be getting an average of 8-10 hours of sleep per day, however, the reality of it is that most teenagers only get an average of 7 - 7.25 hours of sleep each day (Paruthi 1560). The serious repercussions of sleep deprivation in teenagers are mainly found to affect focus and learning and cause depression and mood changes when prolonged. Schools have looked at some ways to help adolescents get more quality sleep by pushing back some of their start times and found that students are much more active and aware with just an hour or two hours delay. Unfortunately, not enough research has been done on a teenager's schedule to determine why there is such a prevalence of a lack of quality sleep.
An abundance of previous research has been done looking at light exposure before sleep and concludes that blue light exposure is detrimental to the sleep onset of adolescent teens. A study was done by Dr. Ieva Misiunaite et al., looking at the effects of sleep deprivation on teenagers when they stay up late during school nights and sleep in on the weekends. In their paper titled “Circadian Phase Advances in Response to Weekend Morning Light in Adolescents With Short Sleep and Late Bedtimes on School Nights”, they found that the circadian rhythms of these teenagers tend to have a phase advance meaning they naturally go to sleep and wake up earlier than they used to. This causes adolescents to fall asleep in class or nap after school much more than they should (Misiunaite 99). They concluded this by having 41 adolescents (19 of these being males) do a Sleep Habit Study and a pre-study sleep log. After the surveys, they had the participants sleep at home for 15 days with their normal sleep schedule. Then they had them go through a constant routine before exposing them to bright lights in the morning on the weekend. The researchers looked at how the amount of light shone onto the teenagers on the weekend affected what time they went to sleep. Through this, they concluded that bright lights in the morning would stimulate waking up late which in turn made the teenagers go to bed early to fix their sleep schedule (Misiunaite 99). This means that the cost of staying up late on school days, averaging about 5 hours of sleep in the study population, is reflected on the weekends when the bright lights cause an advance in sleep onset.
This conclusion ties in with the conclusion found in Dr. Tomas Andreani et al., a research paper titled “Circadian programming of the ellipsoid body sleep homeostat in Drosophila” which proves that sleep is dependent on the molecular proteins clock (clk) and period (per). By manipulating sleep by sleep-depriving drosophila flies they found that more sleep delay caused increased sleep rebound or increased time sleeping. Specifically, the neurons that mediate morning and evening sleep rebound, glutamatergic ND1p circadian neurons, are what also regulate body sleep homeostasis of the r5 ellipsoid. Overall in this study, they concluded that the necessary neurons, in this case, the r5 ellipsoid neurons, show increased levels of gene expression in activity/wake-dependent genes in the morning rather than the evening (Andreani 7).
These research findings are a major stepping stone for Dr. Misiunaite and their investigation into the reason behind a high schooler's lack of quality sleep as the light manipulations are done caused the clock and period proteins to advance in deterioration. These findings can help teenagers get the quality sleep they need to grow and develop into adulthood. Implicating a better schedule both at school and at home for teens would be vital for their sleep health, especially when limiting light intake before bed and as they are waking up. Just this small change can be the small boost they need to succeed in their high school experience and onward.
Citations:
Misiunaite, Eastman, C. I., & Crowley, S. J. (2020). Circadian Phase Advances in Response to Weekend Morning Light in Adolescents With Short Sleep and Late Bedtimes on School Nights. Frontiers in Neuroscience, 14, 99–99. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00099
Andreani, Rosensweig, C., Sisobhan, S., Ogunlana, E., Kath, W., & Allada, R. (2022). Circadian programming of the ellipsoid body sleep homeostat in Drosophila. eLife, 11. https://doi.org/10.7554/eLife.74327
Paruthi S, Brooks LJ, D’Ambrosio C, et al. Consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine on the recommended amount of sleep for healthy children: methodology and discussion. J Clin Sleep Med 2016;12:1549–61.
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