How often have children heard that phrase over the years? Every parent knows that the surest way to compromise success for young people in school is to limit their sleep. Yet this is precisely what parents and educators are doing, albeit unwittingly.
The problem is biology…aided and abetted by unyielding tradition and seductive technology. While there often may be sound underlying reasons for many of the customary child raising methods and education traditions we currently employ, just as often the original purpose for our choices may no longer exist; take for instance summer vacations, or non college preparatory courses of study (subjects for future blog articles!). And sometimes new data may indicate that long accepted practices are in reality counter-productive. The case in point: clear evidence suggests that early school start times for students in grades 8 to 12 actually diminish academic performance, a result that is probably not part of the original intention. Research has found that melatonin secretion, a marker for sleep onset, is later by almost an hour for most post puberty children. In essence, a biological change takes place at puberty causing these children to resist sleep longer. It is why adolescents struggle to wake up in the morning and don't want to fall asleep at night.
This is not recent knowledge. It is simply undersubscribed. In November 2006, Mary Carskadon, PhD., a researcher at the E.P.Bradley Hospital Sleep Research Laboratory of the Brown Medical School, presented her findings to an audience of educators and scientists at the 15th Learning & the Brain Conference in Boston. Her accompanying paper had actually been submitted to the New York Academy of Sciences two years earlier in 2004. Dr. Carskadon's findings support the evidence of sleep pattern changes during pubertal development. In fact, she concluded that "many adolescents have too little sleep at the wrong circadian phase. This pattern is associated with increased risks for excessive sleepiness, difficulty with mood regulation, impaired academic performance, learning difficulties, school tardiness and absenteeism, and accidents and injuries."! Work by Robert Stickgold of Harvard University and a host of other researchers around the country is supportive of the science. Yet with the exception of one or two west coast schools which have instituted dual start times an hour apart (students may select their start dependent upon their desire to participate in competitive sports) and high schools in Minneapolis and West Des Moines which have adopted later start times, this information appears minimally disseminated and even more minimally acted upon.
Which is why I was heartened to read a recent Associated Press article describing a study undertaken by St. Georges School, an exclusive private boarding high school in Middletown, R.I. The study was guided by Dr. Judith Owens, a sleep researcher and pediatrician at Hasbro Children's Hospital in Providence, R.I. The results appeared in the July edition of Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine and "add to a growing body of evidence" supporting the findings from sleep researchers that biological changes take place in adolescent children that dramatically alter their sleep times. The St. Georges School starting time was shifted from 8 to 8:30 am. The findings for 201 students participating:
• 55% (increased from 16%) reported a full 8 hours sleep
• 20% (decreased from 49%) reported daytime sleepiness
• 50% decrease in first period tardiness
• 50 % increase in hot breakfasts served
These results are not surprising to me. Students really do want to feel well and be alert and perform well. Young people at this age are characterized by their confusion and lack of understanding about their own physical development. They require our help to establish safe and healthy practices (St. Georges School, by the way, intends to keep the later start time).
Among the practices contributing to late sleep onset may be, yes kids, homework…and TV watching. Not just for all of the commonly rehashed reasons, but because of blue light, that is 460 nanometer light, the light that is perceived by the retinal cells, those photo receptors in the eye. Our circadian rhythms are established largely by this level of light which occurs naturally in the morning and at night (the blue hour…). As Carskadon (et al) report, "Light occurring in the early part of the circadian night (evening and early nighttime) produces a delay resetting response in the (body) clock, whereas light signals in the late night/early morning result in an advanced resetting response". In other words, when my retinal photo receptors perceive blue light for a period of time in the evening, my internal sleep clock will reset itself for a later hour and in subsequent evenings I will feel wakeful longer. And here is the really interesting news…computers and televisions (and video games) emit this same blue light. The inference is clear. The use of these electronic devices after natural blue light occurrence will readjust the user's circadian rhythm to sleep later.
And so the irony is revealed. Because of a natural biological change at puberty causing sleep onset to occur an hour later, and augmented by homework assigned by teachers which must be completed on computers emitting blue light that resets the circadian rhythm to later sleep times, students from puberty onward are now struggling to meet early school start times and increasingly find themselves in a growing sleep deficit which is effecting their performance…and they have been placed in this situation unknowingly by educators and parents!
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