The Lost Hour

Studies found that about twice a month some teens suffered emotional meltdowns. Possible causes of this lack of sleep are over scheduling of activities, burdensome homework, lax bedtimes, and televisions and cell phones in the bedroom. Parents did not find it too alarming because they believed that kids get tired sometimes and will outgrow it. A big problem about this is there is a direct relation between sleeping and grades, something I found very interesting. It was found that kids' sleep is qualitatively different than grownups' sleep because children spend more than 40% of their asleep time in the slow-wave stage, which is a deep slumber without dreams. Sleep deprivation hits the hippocampus harder than the amygdala. It was also found that the circadian system - the biological clock - does a "phase shift" that keep adolescents up later, and adolescent brains don't release melatonin for another 90 minutes. There have also been many studies of childhood obesity increasing rapidly with loss of sleep and a big suspect is television. It has been shown that the less sleep kids get, the less active they are during the day. My overall lack of sleep has not specifically cut my exercise level because I cannot help but keep active nevertheless. However, I have noticed that my grades have dropped a little bit from middle school to high school and there is a large gap of sleep deprivation between those times.