Science Says Kids Who Don’t Get Enough Sleep May Age Faster
“Early to bed; early to rise.” It is something we’ve often heard from our parents who insisted that sleeping early and sleeping well made us healthy. Well, we wouldn’t want to believe them at that point. Not until we became parents ourselves! Now, we try to instill the same ‘good’ habit in our children too. And let’s not forget, their school timings are scheduled in such a way it becomes imperative for them to hit the sack at the right time. But have you ever been caught in a situation where your kids questioned you about the validity of your claims? If sleeping long enough did indeed benefit them at all? If yes, then here’s Science to your rescue – hurray!!
A recent study has pointed out the long-term ill effects of inadequate sleep in children and how good sleeping habits can benefit them. For the study, a team of researchers from Princeton University analyzed data on sleeping habits of nearly 1600 kids in America. These kids were all born between 1998 to 2000 and were all 9 years old then. The researchers then measured each child’s telomere length against the child’s usual sleep duration, which was reported by their primary caregivers. The association between sleep duration and telomere length was then estimated using the linear regression method. Through this analytic study, the researchers found that children who slept for fewer hours had shorter telomeres compared to those children who slept for longer hours. Each hour of less nightly sleep duration resulted in telomeres that were shorter by 1.5 percent. This essentially means that children who sleep less at night could be aging faster. However, there was no association between faster aging and a child’s race, gender, or socioeconomic status (1) (2).
Now, you must be wondering what the whole fuss is about shorter telomeres? Telomeres are the hats at the end of our chromosomes in our cells. They protect the chromosomes from environmental damage or accidental fusing with neighboring chromosomes. The length of the telomeres is usually taken into account to measure cellular aging. When we age, these telomeres contract and shrink. This makes the chromosomes more vulnerable to damage and distress. The shorter the telomeres get, the faster you age. This cellular aging process is technically called senescence. Shorter telomeres can also put one at high risk of developing ailments such as heart diseases, neurological disorders, cancer, and psychological issues (3).
The findings of this research were published in the Journal of Pediatrics. The findings of this research were consistent with a broader research literature on the subject linking suboptimal sleep duration to the risk for increased impaired health and physiological distress. A fact the team aptly concluded their research paper with. Since the children were still too young during the study, they did not show any obvious signs of high-risk diseases. However, it cannot be ruled out that they wouldn’t be prone to them in their later years as they age.
The research team, though, did point out that the study wasn’t really perfect. Since the duration of the children’s sleep was reported by their primary caregivers, it did leave room for some amount of ambiguity. Instead, devices that actively measure sleep durations should be used in future research.
Thus, while the results of this research may or may not be conclusive, it does offer some interesting insight into a link between aging with something as simple as sleep duration. Excessive sleeping might be harmful to an adult, but that is not the case with children. Incidentally, children who are in the age-group of those involved in the study need, on average, at least 9 hours of sleep. And this sleep should preferably be at nighttime. So, the next time you find your child sleeping less than those number of hours, make sure you change their routine to give them enough shut-eye time!
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