Shreeya Shenoy is a Grade 11 student who has developed a web based application called the Teen Sleep Lab containing information to help teens improve their sleep habits. The 16-year-old was involved in the 18th annual Calgary Brain Bee competition in March, where she was a finalist, but what stuck with her was a section on sleep biology involving how teenagers sleep patterns change and she wanted to learn more. “I was in a neuroscientist competition and there was a chapter on sleep that really resonated with me,” Shreeya said. “As a teenager who had some struggles with sleep myself, I started to learn more about how important intricate sleep is and that’s how I thought about this idea.” Shreeya read all the information she could about teen sleep and presents that data to her peers through the web based app. “I created 48 short articles from peer reviewed articles,” she said. “In a five minute article manner so that people can read it quickly and don’t have to worry about all the scientific jargon.” Shreeya says she can tell in her classroom who didn’t get a good night’s sleep and she’s learning that is not a ‘badge of honor’ to stay up all night to work on a school project. “I have a lot of friends who stay up, do all-nighters,” she said. “They say that they’re fine and then you find out (when they get to) fourth period that they just can’t take it anymore and I really see that in myself too.” Shreeya says her research has shown her that reducing caffeine and screen time before bed is beneficial. “This has helped my sleep a lot,” she said. “I used to come back from school and I used to ask my mom to bring a coffee, but now I stopped doing that, I go to sleep much earlier now, I have a lot of schoolwork but I still decide to pick sleep over homework.” Daniel Kopala-Sibley, associate professor in psychiatry, University of Calgary focuses on child and adolescent mental health and education. “We’re doing research on sleep as it’s proven to be an important determinant of adolescent mental health,” he said. “So that’s kind of our interest in it is mood disorders, anxiety disorders and the role sleep might play in their onset.” Kopala-Sibley says Shreeya reached out to him about her idea he’s guided her through the project to make sure she’s following scientific research standards. “She has goal of building this accessible website to help teenagers sleep better and that’s really important and I think it’s a really impressive project that she has put together,” he said. “Honestly, she has been really independent on this and has been running with it on her own without too much help from me, which has been really impressive.” Kopala-Sibley says sleep issues are an on-going issue with teens and Shreeya’s work to educate and collect data though her peer-to-peer project is helpful. “This is a really ambitious, wonderful project, especially for someone in high school,” he said. “We estimate that something like 20 per cent of teenagers suffer from sleep problems and sleep problems are going to affect how you do in school, they affect your mood, your ability to just deal with the day and how you deal with stress.” Shreeya says she’s now advocating to school administrators, trustees and even the provincial government to bump school start times for high school students back by 30 to 60 minutes to help improve sleep habits for teens. “School start times are a huge thing,” she said. “Our circadian rhythms, our internal clock is delayed so we end up falling asleep much later than adults do but we have to wake up at the same time, waking up at 6 a.m. for teens is the biological equivalent of an adult waking up at 4 a.m.” Shreeya is using her web based app to not only educate teens about sleep, but also to collect more useful data for researchers. Learn more about Shreeya’s web app here: https://teensleeplab.ca/
