Sleep Deprivation In Early Schools

Early school start times affect the mental and physical health of students. If schools start later, students would be more ready to learn. With the early start times, students are not getting enough sleep and that is affecting their performance in earlier classes. They come to these classes like zombies and do not really take in what they are hearing.
Janet Croft studies teens and sleep in Atlanta, Georgia. U.S. High schools, she says, “start at such an early time that most teens are essentially brain dead when they go to these early classes.” This causes teens to act like “walking zombies.” Too little sleep has become so common among teens that it has been called an epidemic, or a widespread public health problem.
Many teens get too little

sleep because they attend middle and high schools that start earlier than 8:30 a.m. Studies in the past have shown over and over again that sleep-deprived teens face higher risks of obesity and depression. The early start times throw off a student’s internal body rhythm, called the circadian clock.
“For biological reasons, the average teen can not go to sleep much before 11 p.m.” says Judith Owens from Children’s National Health System. Middle and high schoolers typically require 8.5 to 9.5 hours of sleep per night, but very few get that. Researchers in the 1990s began to show that during puberty, the time at which the body naturally wants to enter sleep move to a later time. An adolescent needs just as much sleep at they did as a young child-but they need to start later at night and last until
About a decade ago, scientists showed that sleep cycles of teens shift later each year by 12-18 minutes That trend continues every year between the ages of 10 and 20. So, a 10-year-old might easily fall asleep by 8 p.m., but by the time they are 17 or 18, however, their body wants to fall asleep at about 10:30 or 11 p.m. One aspect of biology that may contribute to this shift is melatonin. Melatonin is a hormone secreted by the pineal gland, a tiny structure deep inside the brain. Melatonin helps to regulate the body’s natural day-night rhythms. It does this by causing a person to become drowsy and by lowering the body’s core temperature. During adolescence, melatonin is secreted lated in the day and ramps up during the night. This means teens can have trouble if they try to fall asleep before enough chemical is released.
Most people do not understand the changes that affect a teen’s circadian clock-not even teens themselves. Some people say “teens should just go to bed earlier” to get enough sleep, Owens notes. “But for biological reasons, the average teen just can not go to sleep much before 11 p.m.
Acting like a zombie is not the only downside to sleep deprivation. Studies have shown that not enough sleep can lead to dangerous behaviors. About 100,000 car accidents each year occur when a driver is too tired to drive. More than half of those were under the age of 25. Some of those accidents may have been prevented if teens got more sleep. The accident rate is already declining in school areas that have later start times. For instance, 16-18 year old drivers in Wyoming’s Teton County School District were in 23 crashes in 2011-2012 school year. The next year the start times shifted to an hour later and the number of crashes dropped to 7.
Several studies have shown that children and adolescents who do not sleep enough are more likely to become obese, or extremely overweight. Sleep-deprived teens are also more likely to suffer from anxiety, depression, and mood disorders.
School start times vary considerably, both across the nation and within individual communities with some schools beginning earlier than 7:30 a.m. and others after 9:00 a.m. DIstricts often stagger start times in order to reduce transportation costs by using fewer buses. If beginning the school day early in the morning has a negative impact on academic performance, staggering start times may not be worth the cost savings.
Proponents of later start times, who have received a considerable media attention in recent years, argue that many students who have to wake up early for school do not get enough sleep and that beginning the school day later would boost their achievement.

“Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety, and learning. Most teenagers undergo a biological shift to a later sleep-wake up cycle, which can make early school start times particularly challenging.” says Boergers.
Boerger’s team administered the School Sleep Habit Survey to boarding students attending an independent high school both before and after their school start time was delayed from 8:00 to 8:25 a.m. during the winter term. The delay in school start time was associated with a significant increase in sleep duration on school nights, with the percentage of students getting 8 or more hours of sleep at night jumping from 18 to 44 percent. Once the earlier start time was reinstituted during the spring term, teens went back to their original sleep

levels.
Daytime sleepiness, depressed mood, and caffeine use were all significantly reduced after the delay in school start time.

Boergers, who is also co-director of the Pediatric Sleep Disorders Clinic at Hasbro Children’s Hospital, said these finding have important implications for public policy. “The result of the study add to a growing body of research demonstrating important health benefits of later school start times for adolescents,” she said. “If we more closely align school schedules with adolescents circadian rhythms and sleep needs, we will have students who are more happier, alert, and better prepared to learn.”
Studies conducted over a nearly 30 year span have consistently shown only a small fraction of adolescents get the 9 or more hours of sleep they require to function at their best. While teenagers are notorious for causing their own sleep difficulties, sleep loss among adolescents is confined primarily to school nights. “Sleep deprivation is epidemic among adolescents, with potentially serious impacts on mental and physical health, safety, and learning. Most teenagers undergo a biological shift to a later sleep-wake cycle, which can make early school start times particularly challenging.” says

Boergers.
Gwen McCranie, manager of the St. Mary-Corwin Sleep Disorders Center, said the issue of sleep is one that should be paramount to parents. “We do not realize how debilitating lack of sleep is,” she said. “We are a 24-7 society and we have passed that to our children.” School-age children should get no less than 8 hours of sleep each night.