Sleep for success | Special to Inspirations

by Dr. Reut Gruber

Sleep is essential for the health and well-being of children and adolescents, helping them to feel rested and focused throughout the day. While they sleep soundly through the night, their body and brain are hard at work. 

The brain’s neurons are repaired and restored during sleep, as they process the previous day and prepare for the next day’s activities. 

The brain is one of the most active organs in the body. When brain cells consume high amounts of energy, they spit out a lot of debris that floats around the brain. Sleep is the time for cleaning up this mess. Every night during the deepest sleep stage known as slow wave sleep, the brain clears the “neurological debris” created during the day’s activities. Sleep is the most powerful cognitive enhancer, outperforming stimulants, such as caffeinated products – like coffee – and pharmaceutical boosters. Optimized sleep is associated with superior vigilance, attention, learning ability and memory. Learning refers to the ability to record new information and skills. Sleep prior to learning is required in order to “charge” the neural circuits that support encoding of new information. Sleep deprivation results in a loss of 40 percent of newly acquired information. Losing so much information at the learning stage greatly reduces our ability to benefit from, or remember, new information. This results in poor academic performance. 

When it comes to academic performance, balancing the amount of time spent studying and sleeping is an important key to success. This is because the cost of reduced sleep outweighs the potential benefits of the added studying time. Cognitive processes that are the most crucial for academic success, such as attention, learning and memory, are also the most sensitive to inadequate sleep.

For example, an experiment conducted at Baylor University offered students extra credit if they averaged eight or more hours of sleep for students in a psychology class during their final exams week, and for students in a graphics studio class over five days leading up to the completion of their final assignment. The psychology students who averaged eight or more hours of sleep, as measured by watches that record sleep time, performed significantly better on their final exams than students who chose not to participate or who slept less than eight hours. 

For the graphics studio final assignments, participants who took the eight-hour challenge slept an average of 98 minutes more each night than non-incentivized students, and 82 minutes more than they self-reported sleeping during the semester. While they performed as well as students who devoted longer hours to studying and slept less, those students who experienced more consistent sleep, i.e., fewer nights of poor sleep followed by rebound sleep, performed better than students who showed inconsistent sleep. 

There are several things you can do to teach your child how to fall asleep and stay asleep: 

Create a consistent sleep routine. This is a series of short activities your child does in the same sequence each night as they prepare to go to bed. The sequence could include putting on PJs, brushing teeth and doing calming activities such as a bath, a song or a story. Repeating the same sleep routine each night creates an association between these activities and sleep. This helps the child transition to sleep. 

Keep bedtimes, wake-up times and nap times consistent throughout the week,  and try to avoid more than a one-hour difference between week and weekend schedules. 

If your child is very young (a baby), place the child in bed when he or she is drowsy but still awake and leave the room. This will help your child develop the ability to self-soothe. 

Get a healthy amount of light exposure throughout the day, with 30 minutes of sunlight before 1 pm. Avoid using electronics before bedtime to reduce blue light exposure and if using these devices, turn on blue light filters.

Be active during the day. Get some exercise during the day but avoid work-outs or overstimulating activities before bedtime.

Keep calm at night. Use calming activities at bedtime such as meditation or relaxation.

Keep bed for sleep only. It’s better to do homework, watch movies or enjoy bonding time in a different place. Create a healthy bedroom environment. Make sure the bedroom is cool, dark and quiet. Avoid caffeinated food and drink at least three to four hours before bedtime. 

Reut Gruber is a scientist, licensed psychologist and sleep expert. She is a full professor in the department of psychiatry at McGill University; director of the Attention, Behaviour and Sleep lab at the Douglas Mental Health University Institute; and diplomate of the American Academy of Cognitive Therapy.