This week you can expect to read and see countless news stories about "how sleep problems affect performance in nearly every aspect of teenage life – academically, psychologically and physically."
It's because of a promotional campaign called the 9th annual Sleep in America poll of the National Sleep Awareness Foundation.
They call it "National Sleep Awareness Week." I call it "National Sleeping Pill Advertising Week." The Foundation is run by drug companies that make sleeping pills, and by sleep lab operators and mattress makers. Not quite an unbiased source.
While the promotion will cite all sorts of statistics about sleep-deprived teens, they are not likely to brag about this: I read one estimate that the use of sleeping pills in kids ages 10 to 19 has skyrocketed 85 percent in recent years, with spending up 223 percent.
As a nation, we're spending billions on sleeping pills and drug companies are spending hundreds of millions to get us to use more.
That's what National Sleep Awareness Week means to me.
Posted by schwitz at March 28, 2006 07:35 AM | TrackBackGMTA and all that! This is from the HealthBehaviorBlog at www.cfah.org
Wake Up, Sleepy Teen
You would have to be in a coma or, similarly, plugged into your iPod 24/7 not to have heard the alarming news today that only 20 percent of teenagers are getting enough sleep each night. This "fact" is the result of a telephone survey conducted for the National Sleep Foundation, whose sponsorship of "National Sleep Awareness Week" coincides, like clockwork, with the advent of Daylight Savings Time, allergies and house flies.
Congratulations to the Associated Press, ABC News and Gannett News Service for being among the few news outlets that noted there may be strings attached to studies of this kind. Although the media did not go into detail, the NSF Web site does list these contributors to "Sleep Awareness Week:"
AstraZeneca Pharmaceuticals LP (Seroquel); Dove Calming Night® (sleep lotion); GlaxoSmithkline (Requip); Jazz Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Xyrem); King Pharmaceuticals, Inc. (Sonata); Nellcor Puritan Bennett (BCI FingerPrint® Sleep Pulse Oximeter); Organon International Inc. (Remeron; Pfizer/Neurocrine Alliance (Unisom); sanofi-aventis U.S. (Ambien); Sealy Inc. (Posturepedic®); Takeda Pharmaceuticals North America (Ramelteon); and Wyeth Pharmaceuticals (Sonata).