“Growth experts advise that if your child is tall, it’s best to be in bed by 8.30pm and no later than 9.30pm.”
Pocket jun said it was false, rumor, don’t believe it.
But my friend still had some letter, and highlighted a picture of “sleep and height” in the article.
So what is the truth of the matter?
Today we’re going to start a nursery tale.
1 | is a crazy picture
While the article discussed the relationship between height and sleep, here’s a very “professional” looking graph:
To summarize, the main point of this chart is:
Human height is affected by growth hormone;
Growth hormone must be asleep to secrete, and 9 PM and 5 am are the two peak secretion, so to want the baby to grow tall, to sleep early (before 9 PM), so not miss ZOMACTON growth hormone secretion peak!
It seems to make a lot of sense and to be “professional” and intuitive.
After all, when we were growing up, we heard and believed the phrase “go to bed early” many times.
So this article, this picture, has been circulating on the Internet for a long time…
2 | who drew this picture
But wait a minute, have you ever thought about this, this looks like a “professional” picture, where does it come from?
Who drew it?
After a little searching, you can find this “professional” picture. It was originally reported by a newspaper in 2012 that “Sleep has become the first external factor affecting children’s growth”.
The picture was drawn by her newspaper reporter based on the opinions of several doctors interviewed (one of whom was a Chinese medicine practitioner).
Frankly, there is a big question mark over whether the views of these Chinese clinicians are valid.
It’s okay for | babies to stay up late!
In fact, the report that the reporter did in 2012 is completely wrong.
“Growth hormone peaks at 9 p.m. and 5 a.m.” that’s not true.
Why is that?
Here we go into more detail:
Growth hormone (HGH) is a hormone secreted by the pituitary gland that, as its name suggests, promotes the growth of human tissues.
So growth hormone is very much involved in human development, and of course it’s an important factor in height.
But pay attention to, the influence factor of human body height is very much, growth hormone abnormality, may lead to developmental abnormality “short stature”;
But normal growth hormone is not necessarily tall, because there are other genetic factors that come into play.
In other words, “growth hormone” is a necessary but not sufficient condition for a child to grow taller.
But normal growth hormone does not necessarily mean that children grow tall.
The daily secretion of growth hormone in the human body presents the way of pulse, which is to secrete more and less for a while, with peaks and troughs.
Research has found that growth hormone secretion is probably related to sleep: during the first NREM period, when the body falls asleep, growth hormone secretion peaks, producing 50% of the growth hormone throughout the day!
Tip: Cycle through every 90 minutes before and after an 8-hour night of sleep.
The first four stages are non-rapid eye movement sleep (NREM), or slow-wave sleep (SWS), and the last stage is rapid eye movement sleep (REM).
SWS and REM alternate regularly throughout the sleep cycle.
Each cycle lasts 70 to 90 minutes.
Let’s put it simply, that is to say, growth hormone peak, often in the hour after sleep, when you will secrete 50% of the growth hormone throughout the day;
When you go to sleep at 8 o ‘clock, the 9 o ‘clock peak comes.
You fall asleep at 9 o ‘clock, and the 10 o ‘clock peak arrives.
You go to sleep at 10 o ‘clock, and that 11 o ‘clock peak comes…
When do you go to sleep, the growth hormone peaks about an hour later!
It is the time you fall asleep that determines the peak of growth hormone production, not the peak of growth hormone production that affects your sleep time!
So the above figure, growth hormone secretion peak “fixed point”, is completely wrong, cut foot to fit the shoe!
Small blackboard, knock down the key point: the secretion of growth hormone is different from person to person, its peak is determined according to different people’s sleeping time, not the fixed point secretion!
So, the baby in the end when to sleep at night, in fact, it doesn’t matter;
Anyway after sleeping for an hour or so, growth hormone begins peak to secrete again!
Ps: The idea that growth hormone is secreted during the first PERIOD of NREM sleep by 50% of the whole day is controversial in itself.
Other studies have found that the amount of growth hormone produced daily is fixed regardless of sleep habits.
Let’s say you switched from a regular shift to a night shift and made a dramatic change in your sleeping habits.
But growth hormone has a compensation mechanism that we don’t yet understand, so that no matter how much you change your sleep habits, the amount of growth hormone per day is fixed!
It’s the length of your baby’s sleep that matters
The most important thing for a baby to sleep is the total amount of sleep per day, which ensures that the baby’s sleep is healthy.
The following sleep schedule circulated on the Internet is reliable, and bao Ma can use it as a reference:
Note: The above total sleep time includes naps
For instance darling 5 years old, go to bed at 10 o ‘clock every night, can not?
That’s because waking up at 8 a.m. adds up to 10 hours of sleep per day.
For children aged 3-5, 10-13 hours is recommended, so enough!
Why let the baby go to bed at 8pm?
5 | baby sleep and height
So, bao Ma’s most concerned about the question: baby sleep and height, in the end there is a relationship?
There is no strong research evidence linking height to sleep.
Instead, some studies have found no link between height and sleep.
Such as:
Sleep Habits and Height At Ages 5 to 11, a 1990 study of 5,145 children, concluded that changes in Sleep time had no significant impact on a child’s development.
It is concluded that variation in sleep duration between children is unlikely to have an important influence on growth.
Of course, chronic sleep deprivation can affect all aspects of development, such as height.
Here’s an example of what this means:
For example, a 4-year-old child should sleep 10-13 hours a day. If the baby sleeps less than 8 hours a day for several years, the child’s development is likely to be affected, including height!
Although there’s no evidence for that yet.
However, if the child is already sleeping well enough, do you think the baby will grow taller by sleeping a little longer, say, from 10 to 11 hours a day?
Even less proof!
So when it comes to sleep and height, mothers need look no further than this: is the baby getting enough sleep?
If you get enough sleep, you don’t have to worry about “sleep and height,” or “go to bed early or late,” and you can assume that your child’s height has nothing to do with sleep.
Not only is sleep not the primary external cause of a child’s height, but its effect is likely to be minimal.
The real external cause that affects a child’s height is the nutrition that takes in (milk amount and vitamin D) and physical exercise!
Finally, the article discusses the relationship between “going to bed early and height” and refutes rumors on this issue rather than suggesting that babies should go to bed later.
If some precious mothers want their babies to go to bed early from the perspective of their baby’s lifestyle habits, this is the parenting style of different families and is not the scope of this article.