Lorna Caddick is a research fellow at the University of Edinburgh, working to complete a PhD by publication. She is passionate about co-production with adolescents to better explore and understand the links between sleep and circadian rhythms with mental health and physical activity. She has a background in sports science, and working with young people in sports clubs and school settings. Lorna is eager to meaningfully engage the younger generation in research. She was awarded a Circadian Mental Health Network Early Career Research Award to support her public engagement activities. Below, we hear about Lorna's activities.
I was awarded the Circadian Mental Health ECR fund to support public engagement activities promoting sleep education to adolescents. This is in collaboration with the Ambient Teens Sleep Study which aims to assess the acceptability and feasibility of a contactless sleep sensor in adolescents aged 8-18 years.
Recruitment for Ambient Teens during the school Summer break has presented challenges with young people away from their beds for long periods of time. This provided an opportunity to open recruitment and combine informative sessions with young people in-person.
I attended the Athlete Focused Sports Camps (Edinburgh and Glasgow) tailoring sleep education to provide information about enhancing recovery methods (sleep) for (sports) performance. I started with a presentation explaining the basics of chronotypes and circadian rhythms, correlations between sleep and sports performance, what happens when we sleep (sleep stages) and how we measure sleep.
We started with a quiz so the young people could find out their chronotype. Across the two camps, there were a mix of males and females aged between 12-15. This sparked a discussion about how chronotype changes with age, with most of the young people resonating as night owls.
We discussed the importance of sleep and routine. This was followed by an activity to think about their own evening and morning routines on school days and free days. We asked the young people to consider how different factors such as: light exposure, screen-time, timing of exercise, food and caffeine, time in bed, and their room environment (e.g. temperature, sound and light) could influence their sleep.
The adolescents were sent home with the contactless sensor to analyse their sleep for 4 nights. On the final day of the sports camp the young people received their summary sleep data with an explanation of definitions such as sleep onset, latency and efficiency.
I hope the young people enjoyed learning about their sleep and 4 young people signed up to the Ambient Teens Sleep Study, providing feedback and insights to their experiences with the sensors over 4 weeks of data collection.
I would like to thank the coaches and staff at Athlete Focused for welcoming us to talk about the importance of sleep. I also say a big thank you to all of the young people that took part testing out the contactless sleep sensor, sharing their own experiences of sleep routines and disturbances, and engaging with their sleep data.
Blog by Lorna Caddick
There is still time to apply for the Early Career Researcher Pilot Project Funding. Find out more information and apply here.
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