What is the best time to sleep and wake up for students?
At 7:00 am, your alarm suddenly starts yelling at you, demanding you drag yourself out of bed and start the school day. Your head knows what to do, but the rest of your body refuses to obey your brain’s orders. You’re just too tired.
If only school started a few hours later.
School start times have been an important topic of discussion, especially their relation to the health and performance of high school students. In order to analyze whether it’s truly beneficial for school start times to be delayed, it’s necessary to understand how certain processes are changing in a growing adolescent’s body.
Several processes in humans and other living organisms are regulated by the circadian rhythm, including the sleep-wake cycle. The circadian rhythm can be considered an internal clock that is largely controlled by light and repeats every 24 hours.
The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) is located in the hypothalamus, which is a major control centre in the brain. More importantly, the SCN is the central component and regulator of the circadian rhythm as it demonstrates a high sensitivity to light. Signals received by the SCN, that give information about light, initiate a series of reactions that ultimately account for the differences in physiology during the day, compared to at night.
The circadian rhythm affects sleep by releasing specific hormones during different times of the day. In the morning, after being stimulated by light, the body secretes a large amount of cortisol. Cortisol aids in waking up by breaking down polymers of carbohydrates, fats, and proteins, into their monomers. Eventually, this increases the glucose concentration in the blood, which means that the body has more energy to wake up.
At night, another process occurs.
When there is no more light to inhibit the release of melatonin, it is secreted by the stimulation from the darkness. Melatonin communicates with the rest of the body to make you feel more relaxed and ready for sleep. Examples of certain responses include reducing nerve activity in the brain and decreasing levels of hormones that make you feel excited. This explains why many individuals who suffer from insomnia try melatonin supplements.
In addition, sleep-wake homeostasis is another contributor to the sleepy sensation felt at night. During the day, neurotransmitters including epinephrine, histamine, and serotonin act on different parts of the brain and keep it awake. On the other hand, other substances like adenosine promote sleep. The longer a person is awake, the more adenosine builds up and the more tired they feel.
However, the action of adenosine within the brain can be inhibited by caffeine, which may be why many people consume caffeinated beverages to increase their alertness during the day.
This entire process repeats in the human body every day, except there is a shift in the cycle once a child reaches adolescence.
Before reaching puberty, children begin to feel sleepy at an average of 8-9 pm and go to bed at this time. However, during puberty, their entire cycle shifts 2 hours later so that they now begin to feel tired between 10-11 pm.
Even though teens are sleeping 2 hours later than they used to, they still require the same amount of 8-10 hours of sleep each night, which is challenging to maintain as they need to wake up early for school the next day. This becomes a problem because sleep is of greater importance during puberty as it supplies energy for growth and development.
It has been argued that delaying school start times is a way to increase the amount of sleep students get, which can help with their academic performance.
Next, let’s discuss REM sleep and memory.
Acetylcholine is a neurotransmitter that remains active during REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. It plays a crucial role in helping people remember and organize information while they sleep.
If sleep-deprived students can’t take advantage of the positive effects of acetylcholine, that can lead to lower academic performance.
In one study, researchers recorded the sleep quantity and quality of 100 college chemistry students using activity trackers. This data was then organized and examined for patterns that related each student’s academic performance to their sleep.
What they found was that students who received a better quality and longer duration of sleep generally scored higher on in-class assessments. Another important thing to keep in mind is that high-quality sleep must be consistent, which is another characteristic of high-performing students. Short-term changes in sleep (such as staying up later the night before the test) did not affect academic performance.
Moreover, lacking sleep can also make individuals more irritable and lose energy, which may lead to mental health disorders including depression and anxiety.
While there seem to be many advantages to delaying school start times, would this really guarantee that students get more sleep?
During adolescence, individuals already have a series of obligations that keep them from sleeping on time, including homework, part-time jobs, and other social obligations. Another important factor that causes students to go to bed so late is peer pressure.
Peers have a significant influence on teens, which may not always be positive. Some individuals could be staying up late doing things – such as drinking alcohol or doing drugs – that have negative impacts on their health.
Because of many factors like this, a large population of teens have disregarded the importance of sleep, and see it as a barrier to their liberty. Therefore, while delaying school start times could allow for more sleep for some students, there are others who will choose to stay up even later. So are later start times truly more beneficial to students?
Written by: Emma Yuan (Article Researcher and Writer, Campus Ambassador).
Edited by: Francesca Cadhit (Top Class Edge Learning).
References
Kirby, Matthew, et al. “School Start Times and the Sleep–Wake Cycle of Adolescents.” Educational Researcher, vol. 40, no. 2, 2011, pp. 56–61., https://doi.org/10.3102/0013189×11402323.
“Sleep and Teens.” Sleep and Teens – UCLA Sleep Disorders Center – Los Angeles, CA, https://www.uclahealth.org/sleepcenter/sleep-and-teens#:~:text=When%20puberty%20begins%2C%20this%20rhythm,to%20be%20suffering%20from%20insomnia.
“Sleep/Wake Cycles.” Johns Hopkins Medicine, 19 Nov. 2019, https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/conditions-and-diseases/sleepwake-cycles.
Walle, Gavin Van De, et al. “What You Should Know about Melatonin for Sleep.” Edited by Femi Aremu, Healthline, Healthline Media, 13 Jan. 2022, https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/melatonin-and-sleep.