Early starts mean late nights for teens

The first field study looking at the impact of light on teenagers has shown that a lack of light in the morning has a negative effect on their sleep pattern.

"As teenagers spend more time indoors, they miss out on essential morning light needed to stimulate the body's 24-hour biological system, which regulates the sleep/wake cycle," reports Mariana Figueiro, the lead researcher on the new study. "These teenagers are going to bed later, getting less sleep and possibly under-performing on standardized tests. We are starting to call this the teenage night owl syndrome."

Dr. Figueiro’s team found that students wearing special glasses to prevent short-wavelength (blue) morning light from reaching their eyes experienced a 30-minute delay in sleep onset by the end of the 5-day study. The lack of blue light causes a delay in melatonin production, the hormone that indicates to the body when it's night-time. Teenagers travelling early to school will miss out on morning daylight and the problem is often compounded by poor lighting once they're in school.

 

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