The summer vacation that children are looking forward to has finally arrived. Children are relieved of their academic “burden” and can spend a lot of time freely; parents are also relieved that they do not have to get up early and work hard to transport their children to and from school, and mentally and physically exhausted to help them with their homework. Xiaogang’s parents are busy, grandma is too old to manage, a summer vacation, Xiaogang is like a small horse off the reins, stay up late at night, sleep in the morning, play games, watch TV, eat irregularly, all day immersed in “a remote control + a mouse”. Xuan Xuan’s mother is different, once the summer vacation began, she ran around in calligraphy, English, essay all kinds of remedial training courses, early every morning to wake up the child from sleep, from morning to night to pick up and drop off her daughter five, six trips, parents and children are more tired than when school.
So, how to arrange your child’s summer work and rest to promote growth? First of all, we need to know that children grow taller because the pituitary gland secretes growth hormone. The pituitary gland is very busy and secretes many kinds of hormones every day, not 24 hours a day.
Infancy is an exception. During infancy, the pituitary gland is constantly secreting growth hormone, both during the day and at night, so infants before the age of one grow especially fast.
After infancy, the amount of growth hormone secreted during the day is very low, and the secretion is mainly concentrated at night during sleep. Growth hormone secretion increases during puberty, but the peak is also during nighttime sleep.
There are two periods of sleep that are crucial for growth – one is the highest secretion at night from 11:00 pm to 2:00 am, which can reach 5-7 times the amount during the day. In addition, there is a small peak of growth hormone secretion for an hour or two around 6:00 am. However, growth hormone does not start to be secreted in large amounts on time at 11:00 p.m. Its secretion must have a prerequisite: it only occurs during deep sleep. If you have not fallen asleep during this time, or if you have fallen asleep but have not yet entered deep sleep, then its secretion will be greatly reduced.
So the later you sleep, the less growth hormone is secreted, and the more detrimental it is to your child’s height.
Growth hormone is secreted strictly in accordance with the biological clock. Daytime work and nighttime sleep is the biological clock formed by human evolution over millions of years, and it silently controls the inner rhythm of life activities, and our body is powerless against the law of biological clock.
Therefore, in order to seize the opportunity to grow taller during summer vacation, we should follow the secretion rule of growth hormone and let our children go to bed as early as possible at night and get enough sleep in the morning, so that they can get two peaks of growth hormone secretion.