Sleep Deprivation - School

School

A National Sleep Foundation survey found that college/university-aged students get an average of 6.7 hours of sleep each night. Sleep deprivation is common in first year college students as they adjust to the stress and social activities of college life. A study performed by the Department of Psychology at the National Chung Cheng University in Taiwan concluded that freshmen received the shortest amount of sleep during the week. In 1997 the University of Minnesota did research that compared students who went to school at 7:15 am and those who went to school at 8:40 am. They found that students who went to school at 8:40 got higher grades and more sleep on weekday nights. One in four U.S. high school students admits to falling asleep in class at least once a week. It is known that during human adolescence, circadian rhythms and therefore sleep patterns typically undergo marked changes. Electroencephalogram (EEG) studies indicate a 50% reduction of deep (stage 4) sleep and a 75% reduction in the peak amplitude of delta waves during NREM sleep in adolescence. School schedules are often incompatible with a corresponding delay in sleep offset, leading to a less than optimal amount of sleep for the majority of adolescents.

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Famous quotes containing the word school:

    School days, school days; dear old golden rule days.
    Readin’ and ‘ritin’ and ‘rithmetic; taught to the tune of a hick’ry stick.
    Will D. Cobb (1876–1930)

    I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning.
    Zelda Fitzgerald (1900–1948)

    At school boys become gluttons and slovens, and, instead of cultivating domestic affections, very early rush into the libertinism which destroys the constitution before it is formed; hardening the heart as it weakens the understanding.
    Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797)