A sleep trial which originally focused on the effect of starting the school day later to see whether pupils would perform better has indicated that young people may need to be educated about having a healthy bedroom.The trial which involves tracking nearly 32,000 GCSE pupils will monitor the effects of changing the start time of the school day on GCSE results. The study will compare the achievement of sets of pupils who start their day at the usual time with sets who start their school day at 10:00.The hypothesis is that because the circadian rhythm, which influences sleep-wake patterns functions differently in teenagers than in adults, having a lie in might actually improve their academic results.It is said that teenagers’ circadian rhythms are delayed by about two hours compared with adults and that therefore trying to get adolescents to start their day at 07:00 is the equivalent of asking adults to start every day at 05:00.If the study show the hypothesis to be true, then it would seem that parents and teachers suggesting that young people ‘go to bed earlier to make sure that they are wide awake in the morning’ are wasting their time as it would seem that young people are simply programmed to stay awake later and wake up later.There has previously been a lot of talk about Chronobiology (the study of circadian rhythms) and it is said that these rhythms respond to light and darkness. ‘Blue’ light, which is emitted by devices such as computers, is said to disrupt the body’s natural rhythm.The negative effects of a smelly bedroom though are a new one on most of us. The study claims that because many teenagers do not open windows to allow fresh air to circulate their bedrooms become unhealthy, with low oxygen rates and high nitrogen rates. This leads to insomnia apparently – so I guess it’s time to turn off your devices that are emitting blue light and open your windows guys, if you want to get a good night’s sleep, look better and have better concentration levels.
