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School Should Start Later So Teens Can Sleep, Urge Doctors.
In a statement published in the journal Pediatrics, the Academy’s Adolescent Sleep Working Group reviewed the studies to date involving how inadequate sleep among teens—which means anything less than 8.5 hours to nine hours a night on school days—can contribute to health issues such as obesity, diabetes, mood changes and behavior problems. They even analyzed studies linking poor sleep to increased reliance of substances like caffeine, tobacco and alcohol and the effect of sleep deprivation on academic performance. The evidence, they concluded, supports giving teens more time in bed by pushing back the time they have to be at school to at least 8:30am. Even a half-hour delay, some studies showed, can have dramatic effects on improving children’s health and academic performance.