Consequences of the Timing of Menarche on Female Adolescent Sleep Phase Preference

Sylvia Frey, Silvia Balu, Sarah Greusing, Nicolas Rothen and Christian Cajochen

PLOS ONE, 2009, vol. 4, issue 4, 1-7

Abstract: Most parents experience their children's puberty as a dramatic change in family life. This is not surprising considering the dynamics of physical and psychosocial maturation which occur during adolescence. A reasonable question, particularly from the parents' perspective, is: when does this vibrant episode end and adulthood finally start? The aim of the present study was to assess the relationship between puberty and the changes in sleep phase preferences during female maturation and adulthood by a cross-sectional survey. The results from 1'187 females aged 5 to 51 years based on self-report measures of sleep preferences on weekdays and on free days as well as the occurrence of menarche, show that in contrast to prepubertal children, adolescent females exhibit a striking progression in delaying their sleep phase preference until 5 years after menarche. Thereafter, the sleep phase preference switches to advancing. The current study provides evidence that a clear shift in sleep-wake cycles temporally linked to menarche heralds the beginning of “adult-like” sleep-wake behaviour in women and can be used as a (chrono)biological marker for the onset of adulthood.

Date: 2009
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0005217 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 05217&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0005217

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0005217

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().