Taking steps toward better sleep habits
Great strides are being made to ensure the country gets quality shut-eye.
On Saturday about 30 people turned out to Brock University for a national campaign to promote better sleep habits.
“We are out for the first time ever for the Great Canadian Sleepwalk and our goal was to raise awareness about healthy sleep and the role of activity in sleep,” said Kimberly Cote, a Brock psychology professor and president of the Canadian Sleep Society.
“The idea is to raise awareness about healthy sleep and, in particular, we were focusing this time around on sleep in children and the role of activity in healthy sleep. The reason we did that is because ParticipAction just released a report card on children’s activity and this is the first time that they had a message about sleep.”
Saturday’s walk, which was organized by the Canadian Sleep Society and hosted Cote, raised funds and awareness for proper sleep habits and took place in four cities: St. Catharines, Halifax, Montreal and Quebec City. The local five-kilometre walk took place on Brock University grounds and part of the Bruce Trail.
“We want to raise awareness on healthy sleep,” said Allison Bowman, Brock University Lifespan Centre research coordinator.
“ParticipAaction released a report on sleep and everyone is getting bad sleep including children.”
The report showed 31 per cent of school-aged kids and 26 per cent of adolescents in Canada are sleepdeprived.
Healthy sleep is usually seven to nine hours per night with regular sleep schedules.
In addition to sleep deprivation, many school paged children are also not getting enough heartpumping exercise, which promotes good sleep, but they also spend too much time in front of a screen, which impacts their sleep.
“Over the four sites we raised over $5,000 the first time out and we are going to continue walks in other communities, and the reason we want to raise funding for our non-profit organization, The Canadian Sleep Society, is so we can do public awareness events create information for the public, like our brochures that are written by experts and to have more education for the public and increase public awareness about sleep,” said Cote.