That’s why delaying school start times may make more sense than enforcing earlier bedtimes. Mary Carskadon, a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University Medical School and director of sleep and chronobiology at Bradley Hospital. ”It doesn’t change how much sleep they need, but it makes it easier for them to stay awake longer,” says Dr. Puberty also pressures kids to stay up later because the normal sense of tiredness that builds up during the day is slower to develop among teens, so they can’t fall asleep earlier even if they wanted to. Something about the hormonal changes occurring during that period of development shifts their body clocks, which regulate the balance between sleeping and waking, later, like daylight savings in reverse. The AAP committee studied the issue of adolescent sleep for nearly four years to come up with this policy statement, says Owens, and that data show that puberty may biologically wire teens to stay up late and wake up late-which means that forcing them to bed earlier won’t do much good. MORE: The Most Well-Rested and Sleep-Deprived Cities in the World Even a half-hour delay, some studies showed, can have dramatic effects on improving children’s health and academic performance. The evidence, they concluded, supports giving teens more time in bed by pushing back the time they have to be at school to at least 8:30am. They even analyzed studies linking poor sleep to increased reliance of substances like caffeine, tobacco and alcohol and the effect of sleep deprivation on academic performance. In a statement published in the journal Pediatrics, the Academy’s Adolescent Sleep Working Group reviewed the studies to date involving how inadequate sleep among teens-which means anything less than 8.5 hours to nine hours a night on school days-can contribute to health issues such as obesity, diabetes, mood changes and behavior problems. Judith Owens, director of sleep medicine at Children’s National Medical Center and lead author of the report. “The evidence is clearly mounting both in terms of understanding the repercussions that chronic sleep loss has on the health, safety and performance of adolescents, and there is also really solid compelling data supporting the fact that delaying school start times is a very important intervention that can mitigate some of the impact of sleep loss,” says Dr. And in a report released Monday, the American Academy of Pediatrics supports pushing back start times for older kids, particularly teens, because it’s better for their mental and physical health. When it comes to the importance of sleep, it’s all about the biology, say pediatric experts.
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