Have some questions about sleep?

Do I need sleep to grow?

Notes:

  • Pokémon Sleep is intended for entertainment purposes only and is not intended for use in detection, diagnosis, or treatment of any medical condition or disease.
  • The information provided in this article—and the sleep score registered through Pokémon Sleep—does not represent or substitute for a diagnosis from a physician or health care professional, and it cannot be used as a diagnostic or therapeutic treatment for a sleep disorder. Users should seek medical attention in case they present signs or symptoms that could be associated with sleep disorders.
  • Please note that the information in this article is intended for adults regarding sleep unless otherwise stated.

How long we need to sleep depends on how old we are. In particular, kids need to sleep for longer than adults do.

There are recommended sleep durations by age based on pediatric research conducted in the United States. According to these recommendations, 16-year-olds should get 8.5 hours of sleep, and the recommended sleep duration for younger people is even longer. So, it is definitely true that healthy children need quality sleep.

Reference material: Nelson Textbook of Pediatrics (Nelson Pediatrics 2) (English Edition) 21st Edition, p.134f

About Dr. Yanagisawa

Masashi Yanagisawa
CEO of S’UIMIN Inc.

Born in Tokyo in 1960, Masashi Yanagisawa completed his medical doctorate at a graduate school in the University of Tsukuba and is a member of the National Academy of Sciences. In 1987, he discovered the vasoconstricting peptide endothelin while in graduate school, and in 1988 he discovered orexin, a neuropeptide that regulates sleep and wakefulness. At 31 years of age, Professor Yanagisawa came to the United States, where he presided over laboratories at the University of Texas and at the Howard Hughes Medical Institute over the span of 24 years. He founded the International Institute for Integrative Sleep Medicine (WPI-IIIS) in 2012, establishing it under the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology’s World Premier International Research Initiative. Professor Yanagisawa founded S’UIMIN Inc. in 2017 and currently acts as CEO.

He supervised the provision of sleep-related information during the development of Pokémon Sleep.

He was awarded a Japanese Medal with Purple Ribbon in 2016, received the Asahi Prize and the Keio Medical Science Prize in 2018, was named a Person of Cultural Merit in 2019, and received the Breakthrough Prize in 2023.