Why We Sleep
-
@kluurs recommended this book a while ago, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Learned SO much.
One of the points that Walker makes is that our circadian rhythm's clock shifts as we get older. In fact, getting our kids up at 6AM to go to school might actually be harmful, or at least not helpful. A teenager's day "starts" later than an adult's.
Well...
https://www.upi.com/Health_News/2021/04/15/sleep-teens-school-start-study/2681618492332/
Starting school later in the morning allows adolescents and teens to get the sleep they need to perform well in the classroom and maintain overall health, a study published Thursday by the journal Sleep found.
By pushing the school day back an hour, high school students obtained an extra four hours or so of sleep per week, the data showed.
More than 10% of students in grades 9 through 12 surveyed as part of the study reported they slept better, and about 20% indicated they experienced less daytime sleepiness, or feeling the need for sleep during the school day, the researchers said.
For this study, the researchers surveyed approximately 28,000 elementary, middle and high school students and their parents before changes to school start times and for two years afterward.
Elementary schools participating in the study started classes 60 minutes earlier, while middle schools started 40 to 60 minutes later and high schools started 70 minutes later, according to the researchers.
Both student and parent surveys asked about students' usual bedtime and wake time on both during the week and on weekends. Respondents also were asked to report on students' quality of sleep and their experience of daytime sleepiness, the researchers said.
Elementary school-age children saw minimal gains in sleep duration and sleep quality as a result of the earlier start times, likely due to their earlier "bedtimes," which essentially remained the same, according to the researchers.
Children in grades kindergarten through 5 in the study averaged between nine and 11 hours of sleep per night before and after the school start time change, which is the exact range recommended by the Sleep Foundation for people in that age group.
However, high schoolers, or those in grades 9 through 12, saw average sleep times increase by about 45 minutes per night -- or 3.8 hours per week -- due to the later start, to about eight hours, 15 minutes from 7 1/2 hours, the data showed.
This change put them within the eight to 10 hours of sleep per night range recommended by the Sleep Foundation.
In addition, these older students had, on average, 77 minutes per night less of "weekend oversleep," the difference between weekday and weekend sleep times, the researchers said.
Similarly, middle school students obtained 2.4 additional hours of sleep per week with the later school start time, and 12% fewer students in this age group -- grades 6 through 8 -- reported daytime sleepiness, the data showed.
"It is important for families to make sleep a priority [by] having a consistent bedtime and wake time, with no more than an hour delay to either bedtime or wake time on weekends," Meltzer said.
-
When I was in high school back in the 1990's, I had to get up real early.
I hated it.
And all these later, I'm still not a morning person. At the age of 42, I still do not like having to get up real early.
-
More...
I find the physiology of sleep just fascinating. I wonder if there's an update to Walker's book....
-
Depends on what one needs to do.
In agrarian societies it seems people have to get up early and start work early else the day gets too hot for outdoor work. So, circadian cycle or not, teenagers or not, you get up early else work does not get done.
For the most part we are not an agrarian society anymore but old habits mislabeled as virtue still telling us that getting up early is good. But more practically, we are limited by transportation and childcare. Grownups have to get to work, so children have to be dropped off (or at least picked up from the house) before grownups start working. For certain age range, school takes on the childcare function. Add transportation time and the desire to avoid adding more buses to “rush hour” and voila, school age children has to get up early and get onto school buses early, circadian rhythm be damned.
Local high schoolers (some of them, anyway) have been advocating for later school start time. They have been at it for years, but has yet to succeed. The pandemic has mixed things up a bit, showing us some alternatives. Maybe that will shake somethings loose for the high schooler’s plight. :man-shrugging:
