Stinky Teens: Promoting ‘Bedroom Hygiene’ For Better Sleep

by Daniel LaPonsie at Psychology Punk 

Colin Espie, professor of sleep medicine at University of Oxford, talked to the press about his Teen Sleep study, which is looking at adapting our lifestyles to what we now know about our sleep needs. As the name of the study indicates, the study focuses on the particular sleep needs of teens.

A component of the study will be to educate teens about steps that can be taken to get better sleep, including talking to teens about better sleep hygiene.

He told the Sunday Times: “Young people never open their windows, their rooms are never ventilated.

“The smelly teenager’s bedroom is a byproduct of the fact that the room is full of rebreathed air, which is low in oxygen and high in nitrogen. If you keep on rebreathing the same air in a small bedroom that is hot and not ventilated you will wake up with a headache after a poor night’s sleep.”

Professor Espie has been working to educate the public in how developmental needs at different stages of our lives should be informing sleep schedules (for example, both infants and teenagers require more sleep than the rest of the population). To this end, he’s conducting his Teen Sleep study.

The study involves using wrist trackers to log sleep patterns of the participants, and using test grades at the start and end of the study as a measure of performance. As part of the study, teenagers will be advised to open their bedroom windows and turn the heating down.

Some 32,000 pupils will be tracked, in up to 100 schools, for a year. Sleep education lessons will be incorporated into the school curriculum. A later school start time is also being implemented at the some of the participating schools, to see how that impacts academic performance and mood.

“It’s not therapy but getting teenagers to take responsibility for sleep in the same way as sex education or exercise lessons. We won’t be giving them a list of don’ts,” he said. Rather, he said they would be “pointing out the benefits of sleep that are likely to appeal to teenagers — such as making them look more attractive.”

The results of his study should be published in 2018.

Psychology Punk at psychologypunk.com.