Health Express

Here's how much sleep your child should get each night!

Children need adequate sleep to ensure proper body and mind development. This indicates that sleep is no less important than food or drink in their lives.

Sleep deprivation affects children in different ways – both physically and mentally. Studies have shown how lack of sleep could affect a child's academic performance.

A good sleep pattern can lead to better health outcome like improved attention, behaviour, learning, memory, emotional regulation, quality of life, mental and physical health.

Now, a research team led by an Indian-origin scientist warns that both lack or excess of sleep can lead to health risks like hypertension, obesity, diabetes and depression among children and teenagers.

The findings showed that insufficient hours of sleep could increase the risk of accidents and injuries as also lead to self-harm, suicidal thoughts or suicide attempts among teenagers.

Conversely, sleeping for longer hours may also be associated with adverse health outcome such as hypertension, diabetes, obesity and mental health problems.

"Sleep is essential for a healthy life, and it is important to promote healthy sleep habits in early childhood," said Shalini Paruthi from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, Springfields, Illinois.

According to Nathaniel Watson, President at the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, adequate sleep is essential for the children who are in the critical years of early development.

But, how many parents know how many hours of sleep do children of different ages need per day? Here are the latest recommendations from the American Academy of Sleep Medicine for children of different ages:

• Babies 4 months to 12 months: 12 to 16 hours per day
• Children 1 to 2 years old: 11 to 14 hours per day
• Children 3 to 5 years old: 10 to 13 hours per day
• Children 6 to 12 years old: nine to 12 hours per day
• Teenagers 13 to 18 years old: eight to 10 hours per day

For the study, the team conducted a 10-month project and reviewed 864 published scientific articles addressing the relationship between sleep duration and health in children.

The research has been published in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine.

Global Wellness Day: 7 basic steps to kickstart a healthy lifestyle!

Health is our most valuable asset. Yet, we tend to neglect it willingly or unwillingly while striving to fulfill our never-ending responsibilities.

Although a good life is the entire world's shared dream, it's sad that either we're being too busy or lazy to spend a few minutes for our health, which is truly valuable to all of us.

But, it's not too late to give our health a chance and revive the damage we've done as you know 'one day might change your whole life'.

To create awareness about the importance of living well and to encourage healthy lifestyles, each year, the second Saturday of June is celebrated as Global Wellness Day (GWD), a day dedicated to living well.

In order to make wellness a lifestyle, the day aims to adopt the following seven simple steps. It may not be possible to implement all of the steps all at once, but you can incorporate at least just a few of them into your daily life on a regular basis.

Here are the 7 basic steps to help you start living a healthier and better life:

• Walk for an hour
• Drink more water
• Eat organic foods
• Do not use plastic bottles
• Do a good deed
• Have family dinner
• Go to bed at 10:00 pm

Whether you're at home or traveling abroad, try to embrace these steps and get one step closer towards living well.

The campaign challenges you to ask yourself the question, "How can I live a healthier and better life?", even if for just one day. The purpose is to -

• recognize the value of our lives
• be free from the stress of everyday city life and bad habits
• make peace with ourselves, and
• raise awareness about living well and increase motivation, not just for today, but for the remaining days of the year.

First celebrated in 2012, the Global Wellness Day was established in Turkey as the “first” day dedicated to living well. However, the days has now been accepted world-wide and was officially celebrated in 73 countries in 2015.