Educators are starting to hear the ticking of sleepy teens' body clocks

Educators are starting to hear the ticking of sleepy teens' body
clocks
By Christopher Caskey -- Bee Staff Writer
Published 2:15 am PDT Friday, September 9, 2005
Story appeared in Scene section, Page J1

Jennifer Stayner rolls out of bed every weekday morning at 6, downing
a bowl of cereal and rushing to make the bus by 6:50 a.m. for a
half-hour commute, all to be at Pleasant Grove High with time to spare
before her 8 a.m. class.

Like many teens, Jennifer might not get to sleep before 11 p.m. And
like most of her peers, she isn't getting the sleep that experts say
she needs.

"I go to sleep kind of late," she said, "because then I'll actually be
ready to sleep."

Teens and parents know the drill: Once children reach adolescence, it
can become more difficult to get them to bed early and sometimes even
more difficult to drag them out of bed in time for school.

Is it laziness? Pushing the limits?

Research indicates that it's actually biological, something teens
can't control: With the onset of puberty, teenagers go to bed later
and need to sleep later than children and adults.

Sleep research has led high schools in Minnesota to start classes
later, and if a Bay Area mother has her way, Palo Alto schools will
consider a similar move. Nearby, the Lodi Unified School District
thought hard about it, too, but decided that changing start times
would cost millions of dollars.

All point to research that's found teens are chronically tired -
putting them at risk for depression, poor school performance and even
car accidents. One sleep expert urges schools to start no earlier than
8 a.m., and ideally, as close to 9 a.m. as possible.

"The average American adolescent is sleep-deprived," said psychologist
David Walsh, who explores the effects of teens' sleeplessness in his
book "WHY Do They Act That Way?: A Survival Guide to the Adolescent
Brain for You and Your Teen" (Free Press, $23, 288 pages.)

"Many kids are literally dragging themselves to school half-asleep.
They are very sleepy during first, second, maybe even into the third
period of the day."

Sleepiness is closely tied to the brain's release of a hormone called
melatonin. Numerous sleep studies have found that during puberty, the
brain naturally begins to release melatonin later than it does during
childhood or adulthood.

The "central circadian pacemaker" is science's term for your body's
biological clock. It is responsible for setting your daily rhythms,
which include when you go to sleep and wake up. For normal adults,
melatonin begins to be released around 9 p.m.

Through a number of studies in the 1990s, sleep expert Mary Carskadon
found that when young people reach puberty, they experience a "phase
delay" in their circadian timing. It is as if their inner clocks have
been set back; their brain can release melatonin as late as 11 p.m.

But late to bed also means late to rise, and the teenage brain will
continue to release melatonin until 8 a.m. or later. With schools
starting sometimes as early as 7:20 a.m., teens are often waking up
when their bodies are supposed to be sleeping, Walsh said.

Even though experts say that teenagers still need 8 1/2 to 9 1/2 hours
of sleep, the average teen in the United States gets little more than
seven hours, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

Mandy Carrillo gets even less sleep than average. The 17-year-old
senior at Sacramento New Technology High School wakes up at 6:30 a.m.
to be on time for her 7:45 class. Between activities such as student
government and serving as a student board member for the Sacramento
City Unified School District, along with homework and family time,
Carillo is usually in bed by midnight.

She says she is alert during her morning classes but often will "just
crash" if she has any down time in the afternoon.

"My internal clock is totally fouled up," Carillo said. "My sleep
schedule is so out there that I don't even know if it's daytime or
nighttime."

Sleep deprivation can cause difficulty concentrating, depression,
irritability, and learning and memory difficulties, according to the
National Sleep Foundation. Because of the physical and emotional
changes during adolescence, its effects can be magnified with
teenagers and lead to poor school performance, negative moods,
impaired social interaction and an increased likelihood of using
alcohol and other substances.

"It's a more vulnerable period of time because of the intensity of the
cognitive and emotional changes that occur in adolescents," said Amy
Wolfson, sleep researcher and associate psychology professor at
College of the Holy Cross in Massachusetts. "If you have adolescents
that are sleep-deprived, it may affect the way they feel about
themselves."

And the effects of sleeplessness in adolescents can go beyond feelings
and grades, becoming life-threatening when teens get behind the wheel.
According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration,
people ages 16 to 29 are more likely to be involved in fall-asleep
crashes than older drivers.

Many in the sleep-research community find early school start times,
when paired with the natural sleep delay, to be a major factor in this
chronic teenage sleep deprivation. In a 1999 study called "Sleep
Schedules and Daytime Functioning in Adolescents," Wolfson made a
direct link between school start times and sleeplessness in teens.

"Teenagers who start school at 7:30 a.m. or earlier obtain less total
sleep due to their early rise time," the study said.

Wolfson encourages schools to start between 8 and 9 a.m., although she
said that any shift toward later start times is a good step.

Similar sleep studies, many of which were conducted in the early
1990s, have been making the same connection between school start times
and teenage sleepiness. And because of this, school districts across
the nation have looked at the possibility of starting their high
schools and middle schools up to an hour later. A handful of districts
have even done it.

The Minneapolis Public School District changed its high school start
times from 7:15 to 8:30 a.m. in 1997.

"We've seen an improvement," said Associate Superintendent Craig Vana,
who was principal at Edison High School in Minneapolis at the time of
the change. "We don't have kids coming to school so early that they
can't function."

And statistics support Vana's observations. The Center for Applied
Research and Educational Improvement (CAREI) at the University of
Minnesota conducted a study of the effects of the new start times in
Minneapolis. The study found that the extra hour of sleep resulted in
higher attendance rates, fewer students dropping out and a significant
decrease in the amount of reported depression.

"We had counselors and school nurses seeking us out to say that they
had less students self-referring themselves for counseling and peer
relationship problems," said Kyla L. Wahlstrom of CAREI, who worked on
the study. "(Students) felt like they were awake and part of life
instead of sleeplessly wandering through the day."

But a complete shift in high school and middle school start times is a
major undertaking for a district, and some local schools have opted to
continue with current start times after evaluating the cost.

High school start times vary throughout the Sacramento area, from
early first periods at Foothill High at 7:30 a.m., to Rosemont High
School's first bell at 8 a.m.

Earlier this year, the Lodi Unified School District examined moving
back start times for its high schools. Starting Lodi's seven high
schools a half-hour later would require 29 more buses, costing up to
$3.7 million initially, and an extra $840,000 annually, the district
found.

School board President Richard Dean said that simply wasn't a
possibility. Dean drives his daughter to Lodi High School every day at
7 a.m., and initially supported the idea of later high school start
times for Lodi.

"On the surface it seems like a great idea," Dean said. "But you can't
throw money that you don't have at a problem."

Another option was to re-arrange the district's entire bus schedule,
changing start times of all of the schools in the district by 30
minutes so older students could start later.

The district's director of transportation, Terry Fuglsang, said
different bus schedules could create a number of issues, including
traffic, day-care and safety problems for younger elementary students.
The school board opted to keep the start times for Lodi high schools
at between 7 and 7:30 a.m.

Money aside, parents and students commonly are in favor of later start
times, although some worry about extracurricular activities, including
sports and after-school jobs.

Even though Linda Kirkland's teenage daughters are involved in sports
at Kennedy High School in Sacramento, she would not mind seeing the
school start a little later than its current 8:15 a.m. When Kirkland
was in high school, her school hours went from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.,
which worked well for her.

"During the year, even if they start practice at 4 p.m., they'll be
done before dark," Kirkland said. "And I think they're better off
practicing later, with the weather here."

Craig Vana noted that similar objections were voiced by coaches and
parents when the changes were brought up in the Minneapolis schools,
but the attitudes changed when they saw the positive effects.

"You've got to start saying to yourself, 'What's the right thing to do
for kids and learning?' " Vana said. "Not what's right for adults or
what's right for the business community or what's right for sports."

Melinda McGee of Palo Alto agrees, and is looking to push back start
times at Palo Alto High, where her son Spencer Davis is a freshman.
Spencer had always been an early riser, but now prefers a sleeping
later.

McGee is working to inform other parents, administrators and board
members of the benefits to starting school later.

"They're asking (high school students) to get to school earlier than
middle school and elementary school students, when science is saying
these kids need 9 1/2 hours of sleep," McGee said. "As parents, we
need to do what's best for our kids."

Facts for the drowsy
• Teenagers need more sleep than most adults, up to 9 1/2 hours per
night.

• 26 percent of surveyed students report sleeping 6 1/2 hours or less
each school night.

• 91 percent of high school students report going to sleep after 11
p.m. when they do not have to wake up for school the next day.

• 40 percent of high school students report going to bed after 11 p.m.
on school nights.

• 92 percent of parents surveyed by the Minneapolis public school
system said their children were easier to live with once school
started later.

• Drivers ages 25 and under cause more than half of fall-asleep
crashes.

• Young drivers are four times as likely to have a sleepiness-related
crash than are drivers over 30.

Sources: National Sleep Foundation, National Highway Traffic Safety
Administration, Center for Applied Research and Educational
Improvement

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"People who are unable to motivate themselves must be content with mediocrity, no matter how impressive their other talents."
-- Andrew Carnegie, 19th-century robber baron