Monique Schoenfeld, Town Crier
Juha Book, left, president of Home Sleep Diagnostics, Inc. shows a Mountain View High School psychology class a computerized readout of a person's sleeping patterns.
Town Crier Staff Writer
Kevin Mendoza said he can hardly make it through the school day without nodding off at least once. The Mountain View High School senior said he sometimes has to take a nap in the quad between classes.
Mendoza, 18, said video games, reading, school projects and other hobbies keep him up late. He said he sleeps an average of five hours each night. Recently he pulled his first "all-nighter."
"It's very easy for me to stay up late," he said.
Mendoza said his habits are beginning to catch up with him. He has overslept and been late to his morning classes several times in the past month.
His classmate, Richard Tongol, doesn't get much sleep either. Tongol said he doesn't average more than six hours of sleep a night after finishing his school day and his job at a local video store. Tongol said his routine, "doesn't bother me."
Ken Cooper, director of the Sleep Disorder Center in San Jose, said the students will feel it, eventually. He said people who sleep less than six hours have a 70 percent higher mortality rate and get sick more often than those who sleep more. He said sleep deprivation can cause problems in the classroom, too.
"It's often masked by other things," Cooper said. "Kids go to class, they find it hard to concentrate, and then they get tagged as Attention Deficit Disorder." Cooper was at Mountain View High School last week as part of the school's stress awareness week to talk about sleep deprivation. The school hosted the week-long activities in order to educate students about the causes and effects of stress, as well as ways to prevent and alleviate it.
Cooper said a lack of sleep is a real problem in high school and even worse in college. He said he sees more and more kids getting less and less sleep. He said stress and time constraints are contributing factors.
Cooper said teens need at least eight to 10 hours of sleep each night. Of the approximately 175 students who attended his seminar, about 60 percent said they slept less than six hours each night.
"They're just not getting enough sleep," he said. "That's a lot of kids."
Cooper said adding one more hour of sleep each night can make a big difference. He said if teens can establish some good sleep patterns in high school, sleep won't be as big a problem later.He made the following suggestions:
After school activities are fine as long as you keep to a schedule.
Maintain a routine: get up at same time every day, including weekends.
Create comfortable sleep conditions.
Avoid alcohol, caffeine and heavy meals just before bed.
Use the bedroom for sleeping only, so you won't associate it as a fun place to play video games, for example.
If you can't sleep, get up.
A 30-90 minute nap can help as long as it doesn't interfere with your nightly sleep patterns..
It's better to get up early to finish homework, than to stay up late.