Month: October 2020

It should come to no surprise to hear that teens are struggling to fall asleep and get the amount of sleep they need for healthy development. It is not a new issue and is one that has been plaguing younger teens for generations. However, there are indications that it is getting worse, and that this might have an impact on teens’ emotional, physical, and mental development.

The Importance of Good Sleep Hygiene for Teens

It is common knowledge that teens and children need more sleep than adults – the exact number varies individually, but it is generally around eight to ten hours. Some teens need a little less, some teens need a little more, and once we reach a certain age, we generally need less than we used to. However, it is also common knowledge that teens are not getting the sleep they need – and that this problem has been growing in intensity and scope for the past few decades.

Lack of rest can cause problems with mental and physical development, bring down grades as teens remain groggy throughout a signification portion of the day, and impact mood and behavior. Not only do teens get more moody with a lack of sleep, but they make worse decisions, don’t process information properly, don’t grow as much as they should, and have a much greater risk of developing chronic health issues as a result – from skin issues to rapid weight gain and chronic headaches.

These issues tend to become worse the less sleep teens get, and they get less the more hectic their school lives become. Teens tend to start falling into a rabbit hole of sleeplessness as soon as they hit high school, culminating in shorter rest periods throughout their senior and college years. Addressing sleeplessness in teens can have a big impact on their overall well-being, personality, and even their grades. But why do they have so much trouble falling asleep in the first place?

Why Do Teens Have a Hard Time Sleeping?

There are multiple factors contributing poor sleep hygiene for teens. The first is that teens are not wired to sleep as early as most adults do. The circadian rhythm of someone going through puberty is such that a teen will naturally have a harder time falling asleep before 11pm than most adults do. Obviously, this does not explain why sleeping schedules have shifted so much in recent years, and why the lack of proper sleep hygiene for teens has only become worse in recent generations. That can be explained by the other factors, including:

Exposure to Certain Types of Light

The human body has two internal clocks, both of which inform the rate at which our body regulates things like being awake and becoming drowsy. One of these clocks operates independently and runs on a timer that is roughly equivalent to a 24-hour cycle. It is our body’s natural sleep/wake homeostasis. The other is based on the timed release of certain neurotransmitters and relies on external stimuli to tell the time – most importantly, sunlight.

This is known as the circadian body clock and determines our circadian rhythm. This rhythm becomes accustomed to consistency and repetition, which is why it becomes progressively harder to wake up early the later you go to bed. Our eyes are incredibly sensitive to certain types of light, and we are more likely to become drowsy the darker our environment gets.

Not all light causes us to stay awake – blue light, which is harsher and colder, tends to keep us up the most, because it simulates the intensity of sunlight at midday. As the sun reaches the horizon and sets, its light becomes warmer and less harsh – as such, warm lights keep us up a little less. However, preadolescents and teens are more susceptible to all types of light, while adult brains are more able to perceive nuance in light.

This means even warmer lights – such as screens on reading mode – can help keep teens and preteens awake. While most teens likely already use battery-saving Dark Modes in many apps and some have their phones and screens set to dim and grow warmer as the sun sets, excessive screen use past a certain time of day may interfere with your teen’s natural sleep cycle.

Increased Consumption of Caffeinated Beverages

Caffeine is a stimulant that blocks the brain’s reception of adenosine, one of the neurotransmitters responsible for drowsiness, while slowing down the body’s natural release of melatonin, another chemical that signals us to go to sleep.

It’s important to note here that caffeine sensitivity is extremely varied and depends on age and genetics – which is why you might know someone who can hit the hay right after enjoying a post-dinner cup of coffee. Caffeine’s elimination half-life can vary between 1.5 and 9.5 hours.

However, given that teens have been more likely to hit up Starbucks and consume several energy drinks a day to supplement their studying routines and hang out with friends, too much daily caffeine (or consuming caffeine too late in the day) can play a role.

Increased School Stress

Teen stress levels rival that of their adult counterparts, research finds, and some studies indicate that teens are experiencing even more stress at school than some adults at work.

These stress levels are thought to be the result of poor or lacking stress management, excessive involvement in extracurricular activities, pressure of achieving admission in a top college, and the constant fear that their professional future and happiness hinges on academics – from small pop quizzes to major exams.

While these worries have been ever present for generations, they seem particularly exacerbated for today’s teens, especially as more and more people are encouraged to focus on a continuing education rather than finding a job after high school.

Tougher Schedules

Today’s teens generally have less free time than their parents did, and even recuperative months – like the summer vacation – have become a source of stress and school-related anxiety. This can have a detrimental effect on a teen’s mental health and well-being, as well as their sleep schedule.

While you’d think more activity would translate into a need for more sleep, many teens are instead continuing to try and make time for their friends well into the early hours of the morning, and school or work-related stress is causing many to become restless.

How Can Healthy Habits Promote Better Sleep?

Some factors are easier to control than others, including setting firm bedtimes, limiting screen time an hour before bed, creating a consistent and proper sleeping ritual that promotes good sleep hygiene for teens.

• • Set firm bedtimes: While most teens would argue that they’re too old for parent-set bedtimes, research shows that sticking to a strict curfew and bedtime typically get better sleep, and function better during the day.
  • Cut screen time at night: Teens may want to consider cutting down on screen time an hour or so before bed to ensure that their body’s natural clock does its job, rather than being tricked into thinking it’s far too early for bed.
  • Advocate for later start times: Adolescent brains are wired to sleep a little later than most adults, and sleep in a little longer as well. The CDC and other organizations have urged for later start times in schools, including teen advocacy groups and parent organizations. Urge your local schools to start classes at 8:30am at the earliest.
  • Creating a good bedroom environment: Temperature, lighting, noise. These are controllable elements that can make it easier or harder to fall asleep, and encouraging your teen to maintain a good bedroom environment by turning the temperature down a bit and keeping things dim and dark can help them fall asleep faster.

The factors at play are both inside and outside of our control, and our teens’ control. Minimizing these factors and coping with them may not only help lower rates of anxiety and generally improve academic performance but will help your teens just feel better, grow better, and be healthier.

As suicides continue to rise dramatically in adolescents compared to relatively steady rates in other age groups, it’s time to recognize the importance of helping our high schoolers and teens manage their mental health, particularly stress-related mood and anxiety disorders, and the rise in Internet-related victimization and self-esteem issues.

School is an especially difficult time for many high schoolers, as they are undergoing both physical and emotional changes, transitioning from a dependent childhood into the many expectations and burdens of adulthood in a precarious social and political climate. This is further complicated by the new and still under researched effects of online social media on the teen psyche.

As high schoolers develop, this also becomes a crucial time for introducing protective habits and healthy coping mechanisms that might help them deal with stressors in the future, develop a stronger feeling of independence, and grow the toolkit necessary to help manage their mental health in adulthood.

Overcoming the Stigma of Mental Health in High Schoolers

One of the more effective ways of combatting stigma and self-stigma in high schoolers is through awareness and education. Studies have shown that anti-stigma intervention programs, which aim to shed a light on some of the facts surrounding the most common and destructive mental health issues among teens, how they develop, and why they occur, can help teens better understand their peers and separate the illness from the person.

The issue of stigma is overwhelming because it can lead teens to ignore or deny their problems or turn to victimizing others for their symptoms to deflect from themselves. By minimizing the problem of mental health as being overblown or a mark of shame, many teens are missing out on the opportunity to seek help and intervention at a time in their lives when a potential mental health issue is often easier to manage and treat.

Adolescence is often the earliest and most common period of onset for many mental health issues, so identifying them during the teen years is important. Anti-stigma education can help teens become comfortable with the idea of approaching professionals regarding their problems and concerns and ease their fears and misconceptions.

Friends and Family Play an Important Role

High schoolers spend a lot of time at school, but the role of family cannot be understated. While parents might feel like they’re losing influence over their child as they become increasingly independent, parent-teen relationships remain one of the most important factors in mental health, often more so than a teen’s relationship with other high schoolers.

By approaching the topic of mental health and support seriously, and by seeking to learn more about their teen’s psychological wellbeing, parents can help teens take their treatment seriously as well. Just as important as family support is the quality of the relationship between teens and their parents. A strong, healthy parent-teen relationship – predicated through trust, high levels of communication, and low alienation – is often a good indicator of better mental health.

More Than Just Treatment

Mental health and wellness are about ultimately more than just identifying and addressing instances of mental illness. We need to worry about not just eliminating risk factors, but about promoting protective factors – about helping teens and students improve their psychological wellbeing and manage the daily stressors in their lives before these issues compound and worsen.

There are many concrete ways to help teens prioritize their mental wellbeing, past learning more about how their mood and mental health can be influenced through stress and certain self-destructive behaviour or improved through direct and indirect support and treatment. These include:

• • Seeking out friends and peers online and elsewhere. Social connection is especially important for teens, and even more so now. Many teens haven’t been able to engage in their usual hobbies or activities with friends due to the dangers these activities might pose – and while many teens understand the responsibility they bear during a pandemic, it’s important for teens to continue to interact with one another in a healthy manner. That is where online activities can become an important source of joy and fond memories for many, whether it is through team games, Discord calls, or group workouts on Zoom.
  • Prioritize sleep hygiene. With the pace at which the world is moving, it often feels like there are not enough hours in the day to get everything done. Yet at the same time, some days can feel like they are an endless crawl. This dissonance is highlighted in the early hours of the night, when anxieties, racing thoughts, and doomscrolling can keep teens up way past their bedtime. Learning to appreciate and prioritize sleep – not just because mom or dad said so, but because of the benefits of being well rested – is a greatly underappreciated part of maintaining one’s mental wellbeing.
  • Limit social media hours. While it’s important to stay connected with our friends, there are still some negative elements to being constantly online – or “Too Online”, if you will. Social media is curated for each user, typically along the lines of what interests them the most. This can be great for discovering new artists, but it can lead to feeds dominated by negative headlines and news, polarizing content, and a slew of depressing data, not to mention hater discourse, and content that promotes self-loathing. Research show that it’s not necessarily social media itself, but the intensity of its use, that predicates negative impact. Self-limiting social media to certain time slots can do a lot to help teens focus on things other than their feed.
  • Exercise or get moving several times a week. A few minutes of exercise per day can go a long way towards regulating mood and reducing negative thoughts, effectively having an antidepressant and calming effect on most of us.
  • The quality and quantity of the exercise matters little past a certain point. What’s more important is finding something you can do consistently, and something you genuinely like doing, whether that’s hardcore weightlifting, a light swim, dancing in your room, or walking the dog.
  • Plan a healthy and individualized diet. Studies show that Americans are paying more attention to what they eat, and that they generally understand the importance of a healthier diet. Yet knowing what is healthy and implementing a healthy diet are two very separate things.

Just as with exercise, it helps to take small steps and consider changes that are both realistic and consistent in the long-term. Teens should also be encouraged to take a greater part in determining what they eat, as it can be beneficial to start forming healthy eating habits at an earlier stage in life.

Coping With Mental Health Issues Through Small Lifestyle Changes

The emphasis on “small” is to focus on the first step. One of the hallmarks of school-related stress in high schoolers is the unending feeling of being constantly overwhelmed – the last thing you would want is to add onto that. However, by making small steps towards committing to one’s own mental wellbeing, teens can be encouraged to think of their needs and develop the habits needed to manage stress in the long-term, without feeling like they’re being tasked with too much.

A big part of embracing adulthood is stepping up to the plate of individual responsibility, for oneself and one is impact on others especially. But too much too quickly will backfire. Expecting teens to take on all the burden for their mental health is unwise, as well. Mental wellbeing is about both internal and external support, through self-love and healthy coping mechanisms, but also a robust relationship with friends and family, and access to important mental health resources.

Tackle different habits and strategies one at a time, encouraging teens to focus on their sleep first, or create a schedule for when they should and shouldn’t check their social accounts, and ensure that they understand they have the option to ask for help whenever they need it.

Just as our mental health has an impact on our physical well-being, so does our mood influence how and what we eat – and the reverse is true in both cases, as improving physical health and eating healthy has shown to have a significant impact on mood and mental health. A good diet correlates with fewer instances of depression, even when accounting for other factors and stressors, and improving one’s nutrition can relieve and reduce anxiety.

This is doubly important for teens, who are still growing and need as many quality nutrients as possible to reach their full potential. How and why food interacts with the mind is a complex question, and the answer lies in the many interactions between nutrition, nutrients and the brain, as well as the effects of so-called micronutrients – minerals, vitamins, beneficial fatty acids, antioxidants, and polyphenols.

On the flip side, there are the negative effects of certain additives, calorie-dense but low-nutrient foods, diet-related inflammation, and meals loaded with simple sugars and trans fats. Maximizing the good and minimizing the bad – and identifying between them, as well as cost-effective and simple ways to eat “clean” – can go a long way towards reducing symptoms and helping in the management of anxiety and depression.

How Nutrition Shapes the Developing Teenage Brain

A healthy diet and a conscious approach to nutrition is no substitute for an individually-tailored treatment plan – but it can be a critical part of it. Identifying a teen’s eating habits and improving on them can help improve symptoms of mental health conditions by:

Improving Mood via Key Nutrients

The mysteries and complexities of the mind are ultimately tied to the mechanical and physical nature of the brain, and like most thins, the brain needs fuel to run well. Premium fuel does less damage and gives you more mileage, and the same goes for food. Key nutrients can protect the brain from oxidative stress, eliminate potential deficiencies, and correlate with better mood regulation. These include:

• • Polyphenols: A family of thousands of different compounds (mostly found in plants) thought to play a role in anti-inflammation.
  • Omega-3: A fatty acid found mostly in oily fish, certain types of algae, and flax, and a key nutrient that is often missing in standard Western diets and correlates with better heart and brain health.
  • Vitamin D: The most important source being ultraviolet light. Vitamin D supplementation is not heavily researched, and a good dietary source would be eggs and fish. However, making sure to get plenty of outdoor activity in during the summer months is often enough to reduce the likelihood of deficiency. Vitamin D may be linked to seasonal affective disorder.
  • Folic Acid: A deficiency of which is often linked to depressive symptoms and low mood. Folate supplementation may help improve mood regulation and serotonin levels.
  • Tryptophan: An amino acid found in several different protein sources, may have a link to serotonin release and mood regulation. However, more research is needed.

Better Gut Health

Scientists have increasingly been paying more attention to the neurological role that our gut plays, to the point that our digestive tract has colloquially been named the “second brain”. Every human body contains billions of bacteria living in a microbiome within our digestive system, and careful balance and health of these bacteria seems to play a vital role in mood, emotion, and even thoughts.

Our guts are individual enough that people will be sensitive to different foods, meaning your teen may require minor dietary adjustments to keep their gut healthy, and in turn influence their mental health. Probiotic foods have long been associated with better gut health. Some teens are more sensitive to certain foods that may negatively impact their gut.

Experimenting with probiotic foods and food sensitivity diets may impact your teen’s mental as well as physical health. Future, more in-depth gut-related treatments for mood and mental health may include fecal transplants, but it will take time before we fully unlock the mysteries between the gut and our mental health.

Addressing Inflammation via Food

Inflammation is a critical function in the body for preserving important life processes and fighting off potential foreign bodies and infections. It is by no means “bad”. But prolonged inflammation, and inflammatory foods, are associated with several chronic illnesses, stressors, and low mood, as well as much more oxidative stress.

Managing sources of inflammation from outside via anti-inflammatory foods may help certain teens better manage both their physical and mental health. Polyphenols and antioxidants may help reduce unnecessary or excessive inflammation or aid the body’s own antioxidant functions.

The Benefits of Homegrown Food

There’s more to food than just eating it, and another way in which our diet and nutrition may play a role in treating mental health issues is by taking more interest in the way we grow and precure our own food. Even when space is an issue, certain herbs and spices can be grown on minimal real estate with nothing but a south-facing window and some do-it-yourself (DIY) pots.

For families with more space, setting up a small vegetable patch can be incredibly rewarding, and can make for a source of nutritious food. Pumpkins, leafy greens, potatoes, peppers, and various herbs can easily be grown in a backyard, and gardening has a number of benefits from the rewarding feeling of nurturing something, to the benefit of an outdoor physical activity. A meta-analysis on the topic shows that growing your own vegetables can have a tremendous effect on mood and mental health.

Why Teens Should Learn to Cook

Growing and eating good food can affect mental health, and so can preparing it. Not only does preparing a meal help teens cultivate a greater understanding and respect for the ingredients they’re working with, but cooking itself is a creative craft, one that requires a lot of improvisation and leaves room for experimentation with a myriad of potential results.

Not everyone can be a great cook, but it does not take much effort or practice to be a good cook. Learning to prepare and enjoy a variety of meals can also instill a sense of independence and freedom, and help a teen feel like they are ready to live on their own at some point.

While formal research on the topic has led to positive albeit limited results, demanding more qualitative research, cooking interventions may be an effective way to further boost a teen’s self-esteem, help them embrace a creative endeavor, potentially discover a new talent, and learn to provide for themselves and feel accomplished in the process.

Food, from its origins in the soil to how it interacts with the bacteria in our gut, plays an important role in our mental and physical development and health. We eat and enjoy food every day, usually multiple times a day, and developing a healthy relationship with nutrition pays dividends.