Justin Verlander is the star pitcher for the Houston Astros Major League Baseball team in Texas. His teammate Alex Bregman was struggling to hit his typical homeruns and seemed fatigued. Verlander advised Bregman to start getting more sleep. Bregman recalled feeling like increasing from six hours of sleep to Verlander’s recommended ten hours was way too much, but he was willing to try. Soon he was less fatigued and his power hitting came back, allowing him to hit 30 homeruns for the season. Verlander’s sleep advice worked.

Verlander credits some of his own success over the years to his sleep habits. He gets nearly 50 percent more sleep than the average American’s 6.8 hours a night. He aims for ten hours every night. To help him stay asleep that long, he uses block out blinds and always puts his smartphone on silent or airplane mode to avoid distractions. Quality sleep can provide a healthy foundation for professional athletes, but they aren’t the only ones that can benefit from healthy sleeping habits. Not only can a good night’s sleep have a restorative effect on your body, but it can help your ability to make decisions and improve your overall well-being.

Adolescent girls who reach puberty at an earlier age may also have a greater chance of developing migraine headaches, according to new research.

There is no association between exposure to the 2009 H1N1 'swine flu' vaccine during pregnancy and health problems in early childhood, concludes a new study.

New evidence suggests that adolescent bullying and victimization may have origins in the home. Many bullies have parents who are hostile, punitive and rejecting. A unique longitudinal study provides a more complete understanding of how parents' belittling and critical interactions with adolescents thwart their ability to maintain positive relationships with peers. Derisive parenting precipitates a cycle of negative affect and anger between parents and adolescents, which ultimately leads to greater adolescent bullying and victimization.

A new study shows that teens who use prescription opioids to get high are more likely to start using heroin by high school graduation.

Teenagers with large amounts of grey matter in the brain at age 14 are more likely to increase their alcohol use over the next five years, according to a whole brain imaging study.

Some young adults who were bullied as a child could have a greater risk of ongoing depression due to a mix of genetic and environmental factors.

A new study reviewed evidence from research conducted around the world and estimated the prevalence of conduct disorder to be around 3 percent in school-aged children and a leading cause of referral to child and adolescent mental health services. Yet paradoxically it is one of the least widely recognized or studied psychiatric disorders, and funding for research into it lags far behind many other childhood disorders.

Teenagers who can describe their negative emotions in precise and nuanced ways are better protected against depression than their peers who can't. That's the conclusion of a new study about negative emotion differentiation, or NED -- the ability to make fine-grained distinctions between negative emotions and apply precise labels.

Pregnant women with migraine have an increased risk of miscarriage, caesarean sections and giving birth to a child with low birth weight. This is shown by a comprehensive register-based study. The study also suggests that prescription migraine drugs may alleviate the complications.

A new study tracked the mental and physical health of US-born teenage children of Mexican and Central American immigrants in California in the years before and after the 2016 election. Nearly half of the youth reported worrying at least sometimes about the impacts of US immigration policy on their families, and those with more worries also experienced higher anxiety and poorer sleep quality than their peers.

The development of neural circuits in youth, at a particularly important time in their lives, can be heavily influenced by external factors -- specifically the frequent and regular use of cannabis. A new study reports that alterations in cognitive control -- an ensemble of processes by which the mind governs, regulates and guides behaviors, impulses, and decision-making based on goals are directly affected.

Adolescents with autism need the support of their parents or guardians to prioritize independence so that they are prepared for learning to drive, according to a study of specialized driving instructors who have worked specifically with young autistic drivers.

Are children, teenagers and adults who spend a lot of time playing video games really more obese? A meta study has looked into this question. The cliché is true -- but only for adults.

Four teens in Sapulpa, Oklahoma, are being praised for their courage and quick thinking after they rushed into a burning home to save a 90-year-old woman. The friends—Wyatt Hall, Nick Byrd, Seth Byrd, and Dylan Wick—were hanging out when they noticed smoke coming from the house across the street. Without hesitating, two of them called 911 and went to get help, while the other two forced their way into the house. Fourteen-year-old Nick found the woman inside and carried her to safety. The woman’s daughter thanked them for their selflessness, saying: “Young men who risked their own lives, their own safety, perhaps their good standing with their parents who might have chosen for them to do otherwise ... Thank you for being the kind of young men who thought about another person above yourselves.”

Preliminary findings from a new study of middle school and high school students suggest that they got more sleep and were less likely to feel too sleepy to do homework after their district changed to later school start times.

During the World Health Organization’s World Health Assembly in May 2019, gaming addiction was officially recognized as a modern disease. Members voted to include gaming disorder as an official condition in its most recent International Classification of Diseases, which is regarded as the international standard for diagnosis and treating of health conditions. The new definition states that gaming behavior changes into a disorder when it takes over other daily activities. It is when gaming begins to impair relationships and school or work for at least one year.

Hopes are that the inclusion of gaming disorder in the International Classification of diseases will raise awareness about people’s reliance on gaming, inspire new research on gaming behaviors and other technology-related behaviors. The current classification is specific to gaming. There is not enough data on people’s use of the internet, social media, and other online activities to show a “behavioral addiction” in the same way.

Teenagers who don't get enough sleep may be at an increased risk of engaging in unsafe sexual behaviors, such as not using condoms or having sex under the influence of alcohol or drugs, according to new research.

An imbalance of functioning in attention-related brain systems may help forecast the course of teen depression, according to a new study.

A new study explores emerging drug use in the form of adolescent vaping and its association with delinquency among 8th and 10th grade students.