What really is sleep? Sleep is a condition of the body and mind such as that which typically recurs for several hours every night, in which the nervous system is relatively inactive, the eyes closed, and the postural muscles relaxed, and consciousness practically suspended. As we all already know sleep is food for the brain. Food is one of the keys to getting good sleep. Whether it be real food or brain “food”, you need it. Going along with food, water ans sleep have been proven to help manage the stress of being a teenager. With all of these things being said teenagers need to get an average of eight hours to ten hours of sleep a night. In a lot of cases that is not happening, one study reported that only 15% are getting eight and a half hours of sleep on school nights. Getting less than eight hours of sleep can/will affect teenagers terribly especially in school. For example, a study with 28,000 suburban high school students, found that each hour of lost sleep is associated with a thirty eight percent  increased risk for sad and hopelessness and a fifty eight percent increase for suicide attempts(that study showed in 2010). Teenagers who sleep an average of six hours per night are also three times for likely to suffer from depression. Sleep deprivation has been related to substance abuse. One study found that for every 10 minutes later a teenager went to bed, there was a six percent increase in the chance they would use alcohol or marijuana in the past month(2012). While other research showed that sleep difficulties predicted substance-related issues like binge drinking, and drinking and driving.