It’s a fact: by starting classes before 8:30 a.m., high school students very rarely get the recommended sleep duration of eight hours. An American study tends to prove that starting classes later would allow young people to have better health.
The idea is launched! Start classes later in the morning to sleep longer and have iron health, this is explained by a study published recently in the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine. The research was conducted by four medical institutions: the American Academy of Dental Sleep Medicine, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Sleep Research Society, and the American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
According to the researchers, delaying the start of lessons by an hour would have positive effects on the health of students, but also on their learning abilities. To reach this conclusion, the study relied on 18 other studies conducted later.
If classes are delayed by one hour, each high school student could gain 19 minutes of sleep each night of the week, a time saving that would rise to more than 50 minutes in the event of a delay in the start of classes by more than one hour. time.
« Poor quality sleep implies a risk for mental health, greater difficulty in learning, a greater risk of obesity, road accidents and even drug use », explains the main author of this meta-study, Timothy Morgenthaler.
According to one of the organizations responsible for the research, the American Academy of Sleep Medicine, teenagers between the ages of 13 and 18 should ideally sleep between 8 and 10 hours. In reality, the latter sleep less than 8 hours each night preceding a school day and the proportion of adolescents in this case is 85% in the United States.
According to the researchers, if such a measure is applied, the health and learning of teenagers would be improved and they also believe that the risks associated with road accidents on the way to school would also be reduced.
Sources: ConsoGlobe – 24matins