HALO Director Dr. Mark Tremblay was quoted in a recent story by the Globe and Mail, “A good sleep makes everyone sharper, healthier and calmer – especially teens,” where the importance of sleep for healthy active living was discussed.
From the article:
Dr. Gruber is leading a national committee of psychologists, pediatricians and scientists that is developing new guidelines for healthy sleep for children and youth and strategies to prevent sleep deprivation. When it comes to public health policy, prominent researchers argue that sleep deserves a higher profile – right up with making sure a child gets 60 minutes of exercise a day.
In fact, stressing exercise without giving sleep equal weight may have done some harm, suggests Mark Tremblay, director of the Healthy Active Living and Obesity Research Group at the Children’s Hospital of Eastern Ontario in Ottawa.
Dr. Tremblay led the committee that revised the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines last year, and says that “sleep has been largely lost in this discussion” even though it is vital to a healthy lifestyle.
He worries that parents feel that it’s enough to take their kids to hockey practice on Saturday morning. “As a parent of four kids, I don’t know if I can recall … when I have ever talked casually to neighbours about sleep as an important thing in our children’s lives …,” he says.
“We need to draw sleep into the popular vernacular.”
Click here to read the article in full.
