A Healthy Child Needs a Healthy Brain, A Healthy Brain Needs Healthy Sleep

Nights 1 and 2 (Baseline): 

• All had a 10-hour sleep opportunity

Nights 3-8: 

• 3 groups of adolescents

1. 5-hour sleep opportunity (sleep restricted)
2. 7.5-hour sleep opportunity (sleep restricted)
3. 10-hour sleep opportunity (control)

Nights 9 and 10 (Recovery): 

• All had a 10-hour sleep opportunity

Here are the results:

Group 1. 

• Nights 3-8: Depressed Mood, Anger, and Confusion, Reduced happiness, and Less energy compared to baseline Nights 1-2.
• Nights 9-10: Depressed Mood worsened; Increased Happiness and Energy compared to Nights 3-8.

Group 2. 

• Nights 3-8: Less Energy compared to baseline Nights 1-2.
• Nights 9-10: Increased Energy compared to Nights 3-8.

Group 3. 

• Nights 3-8: Increased Happiness compared to baseline Nights 1-2.
• Nights 9-10: Increased Happiness more compared to Nights 3-8.

Conclusions

• Sleep restriction (Group 1) increases negative mood and decreases positive mood (Blog Post 75). “Two nights of recovery sleep (nights 9-10) was not sufficient to recover from increased negative mood states (depression), although recovery occurred for positive mood states (happiness and energy).”

• Adolescents, who slept more than 8 hours each night, when given the opportunity to obtain more sleep (Group 3) exhibited increased happiness (Blog Post 6). “This demonstrates that obtaining optimal sleep increases happiness by more than 10% over the course of the study.”

Sleep Banking (Blog Post 63) may help recover from sleep loss.

(To be continued.) To stay updated with my latest baby and child sleep blog posts, be sure to subscribe today.