"Students are going to sleep later and may be underperforming in class because they're not getting enough bright light in the morning, researchers say. Better school lighting may help."
Riding in school buses in the early morning, then sitting in poorly lighted classrooms are the main reasons students have trouble getting to sleep at night, according to new research.
Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature's cycles of day and night.
If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of sync with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported Tuesday in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.
The finding was made by fitting a group of students with goggles that blocked blue light and discovering that their circadian rhythms were significantly affected.
"These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly underperforming on standardized tests," said lead author Mariana G. Figueiro, a sleep researcher at the institute's Lighting Research Center. "We are starting to call this the 'teenage night owl syndrome.' "
"This is a nice little preliminary study" that definitely needs to be replicated, said sleep researcher Mary A. Carskadon of Brown University, who was not involved in the research. "I think the big take-
Riding in school buses in the early morning, then sitting in poorly lighted classrooms are the main reasons students have trouble getting to sleep at night, according to new research.
Teenagers, like everyone else, need bright lights in the morning, particularly in the blue wavelengths, to synchronize their inner, circadian rhythms with nature's cycles of day and night.
If they are deprived of blue light during the morning, they go to sleep an average of six minutes later each night, until their bodies are completely out of sync with the school day, researchers from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute reported Tuesday in the journal Neuroendocrinology Letters.
The finding was made by fitting a group of students with goggles that blocked blue light and discovering that their circadian rhythms were significantly affected.
"These morning-light-deprived teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly underperforming on standardized tests," said lead author Mariana G. Figueiro, a sleep researcher at the institute's Lighting Research Center. "We are starting to call this the 'teenage night owl syndrome.' "
"This is a nice little preliminary study" that definitely needs to be replicated, said sleep researcher Mary A. Carskadon of Brown University, who was not involved in the research. "I think the big take-
