As per a recent surprising finding made by a University of Michigan Health System team, there is an underlying relationship between sleeping problems in toddler years and the probability of using alcohol, cigarettes, and drugs (marijuana, inhalants, cocaine, steroids, and other illicit drugs) early in teen years. These findings were revealed by the involved team as part of a family health study that followed 257 boys and their parents for 10 years.

It was also remarked during the study that teens whose preschool sleeping patterns were poor were more likely to use alcohol, drugs, or tobacco than their counterparts who enjoyed good sleep schedules.

From News-medical.net:

“What’s so interesting about this finding is that the effect exists regardless of a number of other factors that previously had been identified as relating to risk for substance use and abuse,” says senior author and UMARC director Robert Zucker, Ph.D. “It appears to indicate some shared neurobiological dysfunction whose details we don’t yet know. Further studies will be crucial to our understanding.”

“Taken together with other studies in this area, our findings help make up a chain of evidence linking sleep disturbances to alcohol problems across a large segment of the life span,” says lead author and research assistant professor Maria Wong, Ph.D.

The finding does not mean there’s a cause-and-effect relationship, notes co-author and psychiatry professor Kirk Brower, M.D., who has studied the interplay of alcohol and sleep in adults, and is Executive Director of the Chelsea Arbor Treatment Center, which treats teen and adult substance abusers. (Chelsea Arbor is a joint program of U-M and Chelsea Community Hospital.)

“Our finding sees early childhood sleep disturbances as a marker, or predictor, for early use of drugs and alcohol in adolescence, not a predetermined trajectory,” he says. “But for parents, this is one more reason to take your child’s sleep problems seriously, not to dismiss them, and to talk with your child’s pediatrician or family doctor.”

It was remarked by Wong that parents need to be more cautious and attentive to complaints raised by their wards regarding overtiredness and insomnia. It was also remarked that a regular sleep schedule and ongoing discussions with a health care provider can go a long way in ensuring balanced care and development of the young minds.

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