The Toll of Sleep Deprivation
The National Sleep Foundation estimates that sleep deprivation costs American business an estimated $18 billion annually in lost productivity. Drowsy driving accidents cost an additional $12.5 billion each year in lost productivity and property damage. For kids, the cost can also be dear — missed learning opportunities, diminished school performance, and sleep-related disease and illness.
Cognitive Impairments
Every parent knows that fuzzy-headed feeling that comes with an inadequate night's sleep. Whether you're at the staying-up-all-night-with-a-fussy-baby-stage, or in the waiting-up-for-a-teen-who's-out-past-curfew era, you know that a poor night's rest puts you off your game for the whole day. Your child may have even more at stake. His brain is developing, and he faces new tasks and opportunities to learn daily at school. If he's unable to concentrate and think clearly due to fatigue, he's going to miss out on those opportunities.
Clinical studies have linked sleep deprivation to poor performance on some memory tasks, contextual and abstract learning difficulties, delayed mental and physical reaction times, and changes in behavior and mood such as irritability, hyperactivity, and frustration. High school students who get lower grades also tend to get less sleep and have more irregular sleep patterns than their higher-achieving peers.
Over a quarter of adolescent students surveyed by the National Sleep Foundation reported that they get 6.5 hours of sleep or less per night — far less than the recommended 9.25 hours. Compounding this problem is the fact that once puberty arrives, teens have a naturally occurring shift in the timing of the melatonin release that signals the start of their sleep cycle. Their bedtimes naturally shift to later, yet they still have to get up at the same time for school, and they still require the same amount of sleep to function properly.
Physical Toll
Chronic sleep deprivation can also affect your child's body as well as her mind. It promotes insulin resistance (associated with Type 2 diabetes) and can weaken her immune system, making her more susceptible to infections. It can also impact hormone levels. Secretion of the hormone leptin, which helps regulate body fat and food intake, is synchronized by circadian rhythms. Lack of sleep lowers circulating leptin levels, and low leptin levels have been associated with weight gain and Type 2 diabetes.
Driving While Drowsy
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) attributes at least 100,000 traffic accidents annually to a driver who got behind the wheel without sufficient sleep. Teens and young adults between the ages of sixteen and twenty-nine, particularly males, are at highest risk being involved in a drowsy driving accident. Undiagnosed sleep apnea also increases risk. Parents should be just as vigilant about educating their driving teens about the dangers of falling asleep at the wheel as they are about talking about drinking and driving.
The delayed reaction times caused by sleep deprivation can be just as dangerous, if not more so, than driving under the influence of alcohol. A 2001 Queen's University study found that subjects kept awake for 18.5 and 21 hours had driving deficits similar to those subjects who had slept normally but imbibed to a blood alcohol concentration of .05 and .08 percent, respectively.
