Catch some zzz's, you need it

“Sleep is the golden chain that binds health and our bodies together”, says Thomas Dekker. There are so many things that cause people to sleep poorly and as teenagers we are affected by many of those things. These vary from all of the stress from school to electronics at night. So, if you find yourself constantly falling asleep in class, you probably aren't getting the sleep you need, to perform your best. In this article, you will learn how much sleep teenagers should get and why it is important. There will also be tips to improve your sleeping and what you should do if you do if you can’t sleep.

According to Nationwide Children’s, an average teenager, between the ages of 13 and 18, gets an average of 7 hours of sleep each night, but the recommended amount is about 9 hours of sleep. People think that you shouldn’t be staying up as late as most teens do, which is about 11:00 at night, but you are just getting older. When you grow older, Melatonin, a hormone that makes you tired, peaks later at night so you are able to fall asleep later (The Washington Post). Just because you can stay up later, doesn’t mean that you should stay up till 12:00 on a school night if you have to wake up at 6:00 in the morning the next day.

The Depression and Bipolar Support Alliance says, when you are asleep your body is restoring brain chemicals and storing memories. Without this time at night, it can be hard to function during the day. The amount of sleep most students are getting, doesn’t help students perform well in school. Healthy Sleep warns that if you go to school with little or no sleep it is difficult to focus. When students are sleep-deprived, it is harder to remember previously-learned information. This is why getting a good night sleep the night before you have a test, improves the likelihood that you will do well.

Studies show that about 20 million people in the US suffer from sleep problems, and that might be you. Following, are some ways that you can improve your sleeping. It is known to many, that you shouldn’t look at electronics about an hour before you go to bed, but why is that? Your electronics emit a blue light that is disturbs sleep. This is why many iPhones have Night Shift. This setting makes the blue colors on your phone look a little yellower. Dr. Alon Avidan, a professor of neurology and director of the Sleep Disorders Center at the University of California, Los Angeles says, “... using Night Shift ‘doesn’t immunize them from having a sleep or circadian disorder.” Although, the setting definitely reduces the negative impact of looking at a device at night.

On Help Guide it states, there are many other ways you can achieve the sleep your body needs. You should try to keep a consistent sleep pattern. This helps the quality of your sleep, because you will get used to falling asleep at the same time. Exercise has its many benefits, and one of those is your sleep quality.

Exercise during the day helps your breathing rate while you are asleep. But, just like looking at electronics to close to when you fall asleep, you shouldn’t exercise about 3 hours before you fall asleep. As stated on Spoon University, this is because your heart rate is up when you exercise and your body is working so hard so when your body needs to relax to sleep, it can’t.

Another problem many people have is trying to go back to sleep after you wake up in the middle of the night. When this happens, you tend to stress over you inability to fall asleep again because the stress what is keeping you awake. Attitude is everything for sleep, so if you find yourself with this problem you should try to calm your body down. One way to do this is to focus on breathing not falling asleep.

Hopefully this article helped you make an effort to improve the quality of you sleep. Obviously, there are many other ways to get a good night's sleep, so if you need extra help try to talk to a doctor. If you think that you are having lots of difficulties sleeping feel free to contact a psychologist about possible sleep disorders that you might have, such as insomnia.