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Students need sleep to succeed
21/07/2008 08:35 - (SA)
New York - Teenagers need nine
hours of sleep a night and parents can help by getting them
back on a school sleep schedule,
researchers suggest.
Early morning classes can be particularly hard on teenagers
because "their circadian rhythms change at puberty and they
want to go to sleep later and wake up later," Robert Roberts, a
professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health,
said on Friday.
"Adolescents need nine hours of sleep a night and about a
fourth of them get six hours or less," he said. "Most classes
begin very early and for adolescents that's the worst
combination."
A sleep study involving more than 3 100 students at four
Massachusetts public high schools produced some eye-opening
results, according to Roberts' colleague, Professor Michael
Smolensky.
"The top students, the ones earning mainly A's and B's,
went to bed earlier on both weeknights and weekends than those
who received C's, D's and F's. The high achievers slept about
25 minutes longer on school nights than did the low achievers,"
Smolensky wrote in his book, The Body Clock, Guide to Better
Health.
Roberts suggested, only partly in jest, that "students
would be better off if high school classes started at noon and
ended six or seven in the evening. They'd be much happier. Of
course, their teachers might not be."
- Reuters
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