DENVER -- Teens who don't get enough sleep have more difficulty regulating their moods than those who do, and lengthening sleep times of teens who are natural 'short sleepers' during the school year may improve both mood and academic performance, researchers reported from a series of prospective trials.
Their research findings -- likely to surprise virtually no one living with a teenager -- suggest that getting too little sleep is associated with increased emotional dysregulation during adolescence, and that promoting healthy sleep may decrease mood swings.
Action Points
- Note that this study was published as an abstract and presented at a conference. These data and conclusions should be considered to be preliminary until published in a peer-reviewed journal.
Short-sleeping teens instructed to sleep, on average, about an hour longer on school nights in one study reported less anger, tension, and fatigue.
In another study, nightly fluctuations in sleep were predictive of worse mood the next day, said researcher , of Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center.
Beebe presented findings from several randomized trials that explored the impact of sleep on mood, learning, and function among teens at the meeting here.
"Moodiness in teens is often attributed to hormones, but our research finds that lack of sleep has a causal association with anger, sadness, fatigue and other emotions," he told MedPage Today.
The APSS and the National Sleep Foundation both recommend that teenagers get 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night -- about an hour longer than is recommended for adults. This goal might seem unattainable to teens and parents of teens navigating early school start times and packed schedules, but Beebe told MedPage Today that it is not.
While research suggests that teens may be biologically hardwired to wake later than adults, that does not mean they can't go to sleep at a reasonable time on school nights, he said.
He said delaying school start times would certainly help teens get more sleep, but parents can also make a difference by imposing bedtimes like they did when their children were younger.
"Regularly going to bed after midnight on school nights is not a great idea," he said.
Beebe and colleagues tested their hypothesis that teens would exhibit more mood variability when sleep deprived by enrolling 97 healthy high schoolers (age 14 to 17) in a 12-night study. For five consecutive nights, sleep was restricted (6.5 hours in bed), followed by a 2-night washout, and 5 consecutive nights of extended sleep (10 hours in bed).
The teens self-reported their feelings of nervousness, sadness, anger, energy, fatigue, ability to concentrate, and daytime sleepiness daily throughout the study.
Variance analysis (ANOVA) showed that during the sleep deprived days the teens exhibited significant increases in anger, sadness, and daytime sleepiness.
Beebe said promoting healthy sleep in adolescents can reduce emotional variability and potentially prevent the development and/or maintenance of more severe psychopathology.
In a separate study presented at SLEEP 2016 and also led by Beebe, the researchers found that getting more sleep may be especially important for teens who are naturally short sleepers.
The 5-week study included 47 high schoolers who regularly slept 5 to 7 hours a night on school nights. On week one there were no set sleep-wake times to confirm typical sleep (baseline). The teens then entered a 2-week sleep condition in a randomly counterbalanced order that included either typical sleep or an hour and a half longer than typical sleep on weeknights. Weekend bedtimes were self selected.
On the Friday afternoons of weeks one, three, and five, parents and teens completed validated questionnaires to provide data on the teens' behaviors and moods.
Similar to baseline, school-night sleep averaged a little more than 6 hours on the typical sleep nights, and school-night sleep times were extended by just over an hour (7.4 hours both weeks) during intervention weeks.
Both parents and teens reported reduced daytime sleepiness, and improvements in metacognitive skills (planning, organization) during the extended sleep nights, and the teens self-reported less tension, anger, confusion, and fatigue associated with sleeping an extra hour.
The study is among the first to show that lengthening the sleep of naturally short-sleeping adolescents can alleviate these symptoms during the school year, Beebe said.
Disclosures
The researchers reported no relevant relationships with industry.
Primary Source
SLEEP 2016
Beebe DW, et al "Short sleep induces variable mood in adolescents" SLEEP 2016; Abstract 0024.