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Understanding the Exposome
The Role of Mediator
A mediator is a factor that comes between the cause and effect. It is affected by the cause and then affects the outcome.
It is an intervening factor, which stands on the causal path between the exposure and the outcome in such a way that it “is caused by” the exposure and in turn “causes” the outcome (VanderWeele 2016). This means that the exposure, mediator, and outcome must happen in order over time. The mediator should appear after the exposure but before the outcome, even when using data that is collected at one point in time (Tate 2015).
The project tested key hypotheses about how factors like sleep, stress, restoration, and self-regulation might influence the link between environmental exposures and mental health and cognitive development. This approach was based on examining specific pathways to understand these connections.
What is sleep?
Sleep is crucial for our bodies and minds. While we don't fully understand all the details, we know it helps us recover and be alert during the day. Sleep changes as we grow older, with young children needing more sleep. Teenagers need enough sleep for their brains and bodies to develop properly. Factors like school start times and phone use can lead to not getting enough sleep.
Why is sleep important?
Sleep is crucial for our bodies and minds. While we don't fully understand all the details, we know it helps us recover and be alert during the day. Sleep changes as we grow older, with young children needing more sleep. Teenagers need enough sleep for their brains and bodies to develop properly. Factors like school start times and phone use can lead to not getting enough sleep.
How can we measure sleep?
We can look at sleep in different ways: how much we sleep, the pattern of our sleep, and how well we sleep. We can measure sleep through surveys, diaries, or more technical methods like polysomnography and actigraphy. Polysomnography records brain activity, eye movements, and muscle activity, while actigraphy uses movement to estimate sleep.
Sleep quantity and pattern include things like how long it takes to fall asleep, how long we sleep, and how often we wake up. Sleep quality is about how well we sleep and how it affects us during the day. Not getting enough good sleep can lead to problems at school and even impact our mood and emotions.
Sleep
What is stress?
Stress and restoration are crucial factors influencing cognitive development and mental health in children. Stress is a response to perceived internal and external demands that challenge an organism's balance/homeostasis, often exceeding adaptive capacities especially in unpredictable and uncontrollable situations. Responses to stressors can be physiological e.g. releasing stress-related hormones such as cortisol as a reaction to a stressful situation. Chronic stress, resulting from prolonged exposure to demanding situations perceived as harmful, is closely tied to mental well-being and mental illnesses like depression. Stressors are all demanding external and internal challenges, e.g., pollutants, social relations, economic and ecological stressors, critical life events, worries, and occupational stressors.
Stress
Why in Equal Life we are looking at self-regulation and coping?
In the Equal-Life project, we're looking at self-regulation and coping as possible ways that the environment (exposome) might affect mental health and cognitive development outcomes.
Self-regulation is about how we control our thoughts, emotions, and actions to achieve goals. It's important for short-term tasks, like paying attention in class, as well as long-term goals, like doing well in school. Children who are good at self-regulation tend to be happier and do better in school later on. However, there isn't a single definition of self-regulation that everyone agrees on.
Coping is another way we handle stress. It involves efforts to control our emotions, thoughts, behavior, and even our bodies in response to stress. Kids who face many challenges might lose their confidence in coping, which can lead to negative outcomes. They might see threats everywhere and feel helpless, which makes them use avoidant coping strategies. This can create a cycle where poor coping leads to more challenges.