As Pr Damien Léger and Dr François Duforez, hospital doctors at the Hôtel-Dieu Sleep and Vigilance Center like to remind you, sleep is one of the essential factors for the proper physical and mental development of a patient. teenager. “It is at the beginning of the phases of deep slow sleep that there is secretion of growth hormone. Ditto for the process of maturation of the nervous system: it is during sleep that it happens! A teenager who sleeps less grows less and makes the bed of future pathologies such as obesity ”they insist.
However, adolescents sleep less. The last two surveys by the National Institute for Health Prevention (Inpes) on the health of young people point to a significant sleep deficit among them: nearly 30% of 15-19 year olds are in sleep debt and at 15 years old, 25% of adolescents sleep less than 7 hours per night. Ideally, they should sleep 9:30 on average to be in good shape.
Teens: an extra half an hour of sleep in a good bed
Professor Léger and Dr Duforez therefore sought to measure the impact of bedding on adolescent sleep. In a previous study, in 2009, they noticed that many adolescents take the beds of other family members, too small to adapt to their rapid growth, which does not help them. necessarily to benefit from a good sleep (moreover already disturbed by the presence in the room of the cell phone, television, computer …) In this new clinical study called Actijeune, they therefore measured the effects of ‘a change of bedding on teenage sleep.
The doctors included in this study 9 adolescents aged 16 years on average, and studied the quality of their sleep by polysomnography (a recording of the signals which make it possible to recognize the succession of the various stages of sleep). This examination was carried out twice, at their home. The first time they slept in their usual bed. The second time they slept in a new large bed (100 cm X 190 cm).
“This study showed that sleeping in new, quality bedding gave adolescents 31 minutes more sleep, that they took half the time to fall asleep (9 minutes on average instead of 18 minutes) and that there was also an increase in the duration of the phases of deep slow sleep (+ 22mn) and paradoxical sleep (+8mn) ”explain the doctors.
Teens: tips for better sleep
As Professor Léger and Dr Duforez point out, “it is in childhood but also in adolescence that good habits are formed, including that of sleeping. A teenager who sleeps well is less likely to come to one of our sleep consultations as an adult ”. But how do you get a 16-year-old boy to go to bed at a reasonable time when online games, social networks, and texting are time-consuming practices that inevitably reduce sleep time? Doctors therefore recall a few tips for falling asleep easily and having a good quality of sleep:
– Get enough movement during the day.
– Dinner around 7:30 p.m. – 8:00 p.m., two hours before going to bed, so as not to digest while lying down. And for dinner, avoid protein and take a sweet treat at the end of the meal because the sugar helps you fall asleep.
– At the end of childhood, the lowering of body temperature which promotes the onset of sleep, takes place later. The temperature of the room should therefore ideally be 18 ° C.
– Do not outlaw sleeping in on the weekend because it allows you to recover the sleep debt for the week, on condition that you do not exceed 10 a.m. on Sunday at the latest, to avoid the jet lag on Monday.
