HHS HealthBeat (March 5, 2010)

Too little sleep

From the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, I’m Ira Dreyfuss with HHS HealthBeat.

Lots of homework, lots of after-school activities, a job, keeping up with friends – being a teenager these days is more than a full-time job. And this may be why a survey that looked at sleep finds high school students aren’t getting enough of it.

Danice Eaton of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention examined data on how much high school students say they slept:

[Danice Eaton speaks] ``Biological evidence indicates that adolescent functioning is optimized when they have 9 or more hours of sleep per night. Unfortunately, most adolescents fall short of this recommendation.’’

About 8 percent reported enough sleep. The rest were borderline or insufficient. Eaton says this puts them at risk of poor performance in school, depressed mood and drowsy driving.

The study is in the Journal of Adolescent Health.

Learn more at hhs.gov.

HHS HealthBeat is a production of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. I’m Ira Dreyfuss.

Last revised: May 7, 2011