New York - Anyone with a teenager at home knows how late they often like to sleep, and parents tend to chalk it up to laziness.
But research reports in the medical journal Pediatrics on Monday delivered scientific evidence that there's a good biological reason for the habit: teenagers' circadian, or sleep, rhythm actually shifts from age 13 and 22.
The change means that performance and achievement first peak in the afternoon, and that they need an average of nine to 10 hours of sleep a night, according to researchers at the Centre for Sleep and Circadian Biology at Northwestern University, outside Chicago.
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They gathered data from students at a local high school who kept journals through the day about their mood and learning capacity.
A second research team, at Brown University in Rhode Island, found that the reason for the lethargy, mood swings and forgetfulness of many teenagers is chronic lack of sleep. Most teenagers can only catch up on the deficit by sleeping until noon on the weekends, the team said.
In the suburbs outside of Washington DC, high schools open as early as 7:15am, before the elementary and middle schools, and across the United States, 8am is not unusual.
While local officials around Washington have discussed the circadian rhythm shift in teenagers and the need for later starting times for high schools, they have met resistance from local employers, who depend on early release of teenage workers to keep their businesses running. - Sapa-dpa
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