by admin on July 27, 2010
You probably noticed that your kid isn’t getting enough sleep, in most cases that is normal, your kid is just overloaded or likes to stay up at night. In some cases that may be because of a sleep disorder. Although it may sound normal or worrying, it is in fact a bad thing for teens, especially if it happens over a longer period of time. If the sleepless nights continue your child may develop a sleep deficit, that is when you want to sleep but can't, the body has set its own schedule because of it is used not to sleep. But that can have harmful effects, like depression, lack of concentration and many other things.
In most cases this happens because when kids get to the teen years the melatonin hormone is produced late at night, unlike with kids and adults, and that makes it harder for teens to fall asleep at night. In some cases it is insomnia, trouble falling asleep at all. Many things lead to teen insomnia, in most cases stress is the cause, but everything from emotional issues, uncomfortable space, headache or any other physical discomfort may be the reason behind insomnia.
Having insomnia for a few days or a week is nothing to be concerned about, it happens to everything from one or more reasons stated above. But, if insomnia consists over a few weeks or more that is considered as chronic insomnia and must be treated.
Another thing that stops and prevents teens and everyone else from sleeping are nightmares. Yes, nightmares over a longer period of time are considered dangerous. In most cases nightmares are caused by stress, alcohol, medication, even sleep deprivation, so having nightmares on a regular basis means you are doing something wrong and need to revise that.
And we also have the famous narcolepsy, sometimes narcolepsy is caused simply by the fact that teens are not sleeping at night. Over exhausting themselves can lead to narcolepsy, but like with insomnia that lasts for a few days or a week until the body rests. But there are cases when people suffer from chronic narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is very dangerous as it can’t be controlled, so things like driving are out of the question, as a person may fall asleep without any warning.
If your child is having any of the symptoms that point to a sleep disorder over a longer period of time you should immediately take him to the doctor. Sleep deprivation can have many of unwanted side effects on the brain, growth, healing, attention, and learning, even weigh gain and weight loss and severe medical conditions such as diabetes. So getting your child to a doctor before it comes to some of these consequences is a must, sleep deprivation and sleep disorders can be very serious and are not to be underestimated.
by admin on July 24, 2010
Over the years our looks have been emphasized and pushed to the limits, it is not enough that we have to deal with teen and child obesity, but we also have to worry if all that pressure coming from the media will make our children the total opposite. We have the right to be worried, after all that is exactly what is happening. From one side we have experts telling us that our children are obese and they are explaining consequences of obesity from both health and social perspective. On the other side we have tabloids, news magazines, health magazines, TV shows and about everything else showing us pictures of extremely well built men. So when you think about it, it is not unnatural for our teenage boys to want to look like a poster guy with mighty abs and great muscles, which is the part where we talk about the Adonis Complex.
Adonis Complex is basically an eating disorder for boys, which is the same as anorexia is for girls. Although they are too different types and Adonis Complex covers much more problems than anorexia, they both appear because of the same reasons; teenagers wanting to look good, teenager not satisfied with how they look at the moment and want to look better. As for girls the standard is to lose weight and look like models, for boys it’s a bit different, the current golden standard is have muscles like a gladiator, and you can see more and more teenager built like they came out of a Terminator movie. When you look at teen starts like Taylor Lautner it is no wonder that other teen boys want to look like him. But the fact is that not all of us can achieve that with exercise, so most teens that are obsessing with their looks end up using steroids.
Adonis Complex is not only associated with steroids, in fact it describes the whole unhealthy process of teen boys wanting to be like some of their unrealistic role models. That simply can’t be achieved with workout, so they go on unhealthy diets; they use excessive exercise methods and end up feeling depressed because they realize it will not happen for them. That is when they start taking steroids and start destroying their health completely. In recent studies was shown that teen boys actively practicing any sport are less likely to use steroids than an average teen boy who isn’t much in contact with sport. That is simply because athlete teenagers have been told countless of times the consequences of using steroids, so it’s all about early education.
Which leads to helping your child if you notice that he has some of the symptoms mentioned above, like overly exercising, unhealthy eating, preoccupation with his appearance and of course using dietary supplements and steroids? There are two steps, first is to educate your child about the negative effects of such behavior and steroids, which is something you need to start early. The second is to try and get your boys confidence up, his self worth is all that ties him to the normal life. Once teenagers start having low self worth they will go to these desperate measures for people to like them and recognize them as men.
