Teenage Sleep Disorder – Symptoms, Causes and Treatments

A line of teenagers stand waiting in front of a soda machine. A sixteen-year-old boy lies stretched across a bench inside the school. As you walk past a classroom, children sit with their heads resting on the desks, awaiting another day of school to begin.

As one walks through a typical suburban high school at 7:00 in the morning, it is not uncommon to see the aforementioned sights. What does this mean? Teens are tired! It is easy to blame it on the teens themselves—after all, why not just go to bed earlier? Well, experts have come to conclude that it really is not the teenagers fault at all. More likely it is a result of teenage sleep disorder.

Just for Teens: Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome
The teenage sleep disorder than most commonly affects teens is Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome. While this teenage sleep disorder doesn’t affect every teen, many teens can blame this teenage sleep disorder for their sleep problems. As teenagers enter in to the adolescent years; the circadian rhythms in their bodies change. The change causes teens to naturally be inclined to fall asleep later and wake up later as well.

This change occurs because melatonin is produced later at night, whereas children and adults produce melatonin earlier in the evening. The delayed production of melatonin, which is a sleep hormone, means that teens don’t begin to feel sleepy until later. Thus, the teenage sleep disorder Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome came to be.

Some Other Causes
Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome is not the only teenage sleep disorder. There are many other teenage sleep disorder that affect teenagers and cause them to not get enough sleep. For example, some other common teenage sleep disorder include: insomnia, Periodic Limb Movement Disorder, Restless Leg Syndrome, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Gastro Reflux Disease, nightmares, and sleepwalking.

Treatments
There are many ways to treat teenage sleep disorder besides going to the doctors. While the doctor can give you medication that could help teenage sleep disorder, there are also many behavioral changes that could be made as well. For example, many teens could stop drinking caffeine to help a sleep disorder. Or, teens could not play video games or watch television late at night. Making the small changes in your daily life can have an amazing effect on a teenage sleep disorder.

Next article: Sleep Disorders in Autism – Symptoms and Treatments