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Delay School Benefits Teenagers' Health
Schools should delay their start times to at least 8.30am to benefit the health and welfare of teenage students, say leading doctors. Postponing the start of the day would help curb teenagers' lack of sleep, which has been linked with poor health, bad grades, car crashes and other problems, says a large organisation of U.S. paediatricians. Instead of teenagers being in school by 7.30am or 8am, delaying the start time has been found to improve their quality of life, the American Academy of Pediatrics says in its journal, Pediatrics.
'We’ve been steadily accumulating the evidence to demonstrate that chronic sleep loss has very significant health safety and performance outcomes,' said study author Dr Judith Owens, a Teenagers also experience a biological shift in sleep patterns after puberty that makes it difficult to get to sleep before 11 pm, she added. Their sleep needs of eight to nine hours don’t change, however. Delaying school start times has been tied to better graduation and attendance rates, fewer children reporting sleepiness during class and better test scores, the doctors write in their new policy guidelines. When asked if pushing back the time school starts will just keep teens and adolescents up later, Dr Owens said research hasn’t shown that to be true. In fact, one school that delayed it start time saw its students get an additional 50 minutes of sleep, because the students began going to bed even earlier. 'More is better, but even that modest amount of a shift can have very, very positive effects,' she told Reuters Health. 'We want to engage in at least starting a discussion in the community. Hopefully as a result of that the importance of sleep health as a priority will become more prominent.' Dr Owens also led the AAP’s Adolescent Sleep Working Group in writing the new policy. In addition to encouraging later start times, the panel's statement also says pediatricians should educate young people and their parents about proper sleep needs. The statement says schools should take travel time into account when adjusting their start times.
Commenting on the proposals, Dr Umakanth Khatwa, director of Sleep Laboratories at the Center at Boston Children’s Hospital, said the suggestion to push back the start time of school is good - but sleep behavior must also improve among students. 'It will definitely help them to get more sleep but if they continue without improving their sleep hygiene, the school start time could soon be 10am,' he said. When school starts before 8:30 am, he added, parents and students should take into account how much time they need in the morning to get ready and get to school. They should then count back eight to nine hours from there to find a suitable bedtime. And weekend lie-ins are a no-no, too. 'I think the most important advice I’d give to parents is keep the wakeup time consistent on weekends,' added Dr Khatwa. 'If young people wake up on noon on weekend, there is no way they’re going to fall asleep again at 10 or 11 at night.' Written by Anna Hodgekiss Retrieved from:
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