Children’s lack of sleep is “hidden health crisis (危机)”, experts say. Thousands of children and teenagers face a rising sleeplessness crisis, with the number of admissions to hospital of young people who have sleep disorders increasing sharply in six years, the Guardian reported.

Experts have described the problem as a hidden public health disaster, putting the waves down to a combination of exploding obesity (肥胖) levels, abuse of social media before bedtime and a mental health crisis.

The Guardian analyzed data from NHS Digital, revealing that admissions with a primary diagnosis of sleep disorder among those aged 16 and under has risen from 6,520 in 2012-13 to 9,429 last year. Despite all ages for sleep disorders it has fallen slightly since 2012-13, moving from 29,511 to 29,184 in 2017-18.

At Millpond Sleep Clinic, a private children’s sleep clinic in London, the founder, Mandy Gurney, said that in the last year there had been a 30% rise in anxiety-related references for sleep issues among school-aged children.“It is a very worrying increase, especially if this rate rise continues to go up,” Gurney said. She added that prescriptions for melatonin (褪黑激素), a hormone the body produces naturally in reaction to darkness that helps prepare us for sleep, had also risen. “We feel that the rise in sleep problems is very much based on anxiety--school pressure, peer pressure and social media pressure.”

Vicki Dawson, the founder of the NHS Doncaster----funded the Children’s Sleep Charity, said her charity was flowed by families seeking help. She said the rise was partly caused by technology and the fact that the blue light from screens reduces the production of the sleep hormone, making it harder to fall asleep. “We are increasingly seeing families where both parents are out working and this can mean that bedtime becomes later, bedtime routines may be rushed or abandoned all together,” she said.

Crossing your legs is an extremely common habit; most people don’t even notice that they’re doing it when they sit down. While you may find it comfortable to sit with one knee crossed over the other, it might be causing health problems that you are not aware of.

A study published in Blood Pressure Monitoring stated that sitting with your legs crossed can increase your blood pressure. The reason this happens is because the blood in your legs has to work against gravity to be pumped back to your heart, crossing one leg over the other increases resistance, making it even harder for the blood to circulate. This causes your body to increase your blood pressure to push the blood back to the heart. You won’t feel any immediate effects, but if you sit for long periods of time it’s important that you take note of how long you have your legs crossed for. You shouldn’t have your legs crossed for more than 15 minutes, and it’s important that you get up and walk around at least once every hour.

Crossing your legs can also lead to neck and back pain. Ideally, it’s best for our bodies to sit with our feet planted flat, hip width apart, on the floor, but it’s not easy to maintain perfect posture all day at the office. When you sit with your legs crossed your hips are in a twisted position, which can cause one of your pelvic(骨盆的) bones to rotate. Since your pelvic bone supports your neck and spine, this can cause pressure on your lower and middle back and neck.

You also might notice that when you sit with your legs crossed for long periods of time your feet and legs get tingly or have the feeling of being asleep. This is because when one leg sits on top of the other it causes pressure on the veins and nerves in your legs and feet. It can cause numbness and/or temporary paralysis in the legs, ankles, or feet. While the feeling of discomfort may only last a minute or two, repeatedly crossing your legs until they feel numb can cause permanent nerve damage.

So next time you sit down, try to get yourself in the habit of sitting with both of your feet on the floor. Not only will it help your posture and stability, but it will also save your health in the long run.

Kate Bowler had it all. She was married in her 20s, had a baby and landed her dream job teaching at Duke Divinity School in her 30s. Then she was told at age 35, when her son had just turned 1 year old, that she had incurable cancer.

Bowler is receiving her cancer treatment, and hopefully it will keep her cancer at bay, but she is not sure if she has months or even weeks left. Bowler has generously shared her insights in a recent essay in The New York Times. She wrote that each New Year most of us do with a "checklist of resolutions" in hand, but those are just things we plan to do in the weeks or months to come. Cancer has taught her to make the most of whatever time she has left rather than keep thinking about the past or future.

When I first worked with terminal cancer patients in my early 20s,as part of my internship（实习）training, I took it for granted that I could reward myself with a nice meal after work. When caring for patients, most of whom were confined（限制）to their beds all day and many of whom found it hard to keep food down, I learned to stop taking such simple pleasures for granted.

It is always believed that love is more powerful than suffering or death. and Bowler's focus on her husband and son even in the shadow of suffering and death witnesses powerfully to that truth. She begged her sister-in-law to tell her husband to remarry if she died because she didn't want her death to end his life as well. Bowler writes, "Life is so beautiful. Life is so hard." She explained both sides of that when she noticed an elderly gentleman lovingly adjusting his wife's hair as she received her treatment in the hospital.