Sleep deprivation in teens
...on’t get enough sleep, not only are they crankier but they are more likely to feel depressed which could lead to lead to a very serious emotional problem. Having a class room full of cranky teenagers is a confrontation waiting to happen, Studies show that one half of all behavioral actions taken against teen students occur during the first two hours of the school day and reflect the fact that teens may still be half asleep and irritable. Difficulty retaining information is another problem of early starting times. Education is being jeopardized because of chronic lack of sleep. Ninety percent of teachers confer that students have more trouble staying alert in their first period classes than any other class during the day (Survey). Last year Minneapolis High Schools started at 7:15 a.m.. Now that the same schools in Minneapolis start at 8:40 a.m. teachers report that students are more alert and ready to learn during the first two classes of the day. Instead of getting a full night of sleep many teen students are forced to a life of late-night studying, not knowing that staying awake could be a bigger nightmare than not studying. “Sleep deprived teenagers who finally get enough sleep for a whole week will notice a difference” (Carskadon). They will notice a sharp increase in the information that will be able to retain. Teens that do not get enough sleep miss school more often, they are tardy more, and get poorer grades than their well rested classmates. There is no comparison with a teen that has enough sleep and one who hasn’t. It is clear that the student who has slept more can acquire more information and retain what he or she hears better than the person who is fatigued can. Why don’t students just go to bed earlier? Mr. Peterson states that the teen’s biological clock is naturally set to go to bed and sleep later (Chapman). Morning sleepiness in teens isn’t because they are lazy. They are sleep deprived. It isn’t always parties or video games; it’s their biological clocks (Chapman). Teens that do not get enough sleep have increased incidences of tardiness. This type of behavior usually leads to lower grade point averages. What can you do if the school system won’t budge? “Say no to all nighters. Staying up late can cause chaos in your sleeping patterns and your ability to be alert the next day.” If a teen doesn’t get enough sleep overnight it can be made up by taking naps. This takes time and an individual will be sleep deprived for several days before they can make-up all of their lost sleep (Orem). If a teen doesn’t have time to take a nap mid-day, he or she must make their overnight sleep very efficient. In order for sleep to be efficient a person’s brain must already be relaxed when they get into bed. In order for ones brain to be fully relaxed when trying to fall asleep they should avoid reading, studying, and computer games within an hour of going to bed (Chapman). Organization is a very important rule for sleep; an organized sleeping pattern helps ones attentiveness. Teens should go to bed and wake up at the same time each day. This rule is very hard for teens to follow; they wake up at different times each day and usually sleep later on weekends. Teens that don’t not benefit from naps or a well organized sleeping pattern may need to change their diet to support their lifestyle. Swapping the traditional high carbohydrate toast and cereal breakfast for a breakfast that is high in protein, such as fish and eggs, can enhance memory and concentration exponentially. As a student begins the morning and prepares to go to school it is important for the teen to get plenty of light, “Light helps signal the brain to wake up”, says Chapman. The only true remedy for sleep deprivation is sleep, although there are several things people can do to cover up symptoms. Some of the symptoms of someone who may be deprived of sleep include and are not limited to impatience, inattentiveness, forgetfulness, clumsiness, and indecisiveness. It is time for high schools to synchronize their clocks with their students’ body clocks so that the teens are in school during their most alert hours and can achieve their full academic potential. Several school officials and experts suggest starting school later in the day; they think this would cut down on the number of students falling asleep or day dreaming in class (Nadelson). The National Sleep Foundation recommends that schools create a sleep-education curriculum to assist students in learning about the consequences of sleep deprivation and the importance of sleep to their overall health. For decades, experts thought children needed more sleep than adults. It's easy to see why this belief persisted. Teens sleep less than they did as children, declining from an average of ten hours a night during middle childhood to fewer than seven and a half hours by age sixteen. What really surprises researchers is the fact that, in the past two decades, studies have shown that teen-agers require considerably more sleep to perform optimally than do younger children or adults: This cycle starts at the beginning of puberty and continues into their early twenties. In addition to needing more sleep, teens experience a "phase shift" during puberty, falling asleep later at night than do younger children. Researchers assumed that this shift was caused by psychosocial factors such as social activities, academic pressures, evening jobs, television and internet use. In the past several years, however, sleep experts have learned that biology plays a role in an adolescents' changing sleep patterns, says Carskadon. Changes in adolescents' circadian timing system, combined with external pressures such as the need to awaken early in the morning for school, produce a potentially destructive pattern of early-morning sleepiness in teenagers. In a laboratory study of forty high-school students, Wolfson examined the effect of changing school starting times from 8:25 a.m. to 7:20 a.m. Their results were troubling, almost fifty percent of the students who began ...