If you ever accused the teens around you of not even knowing what time it was, you now have science to back you up:
The major problem with teenagers and sleep can be boiled down to two things, researchers say: melatonin and school start times.
Melatonin is a hormone that regulates our sleep cycle. Research shows it floods the brain about 7 or 8 p.m. in children, but with the onset of puberty this hormone doesn't show up until 9 or 10 p.m. This means many teenagers are staying up late but are still expected to wake before dawn.
Even worse, studies show traces of melatonin in the adolescent mind up until 8 a.m., said researcher Mary Carskadon.
"If the brain thinks it should be nighttime at 8 a.m. and the child has been in school since 7 a.m., what do you think the brain wants to do?" asked Carskadon, director of a sleep-research lab at Bradley Hospital and a Brown Medical School professor.
Actually, I feel some sympathy for the kids. I just took a week off from work (except for the blogging, of course) and gave myself a treat by sleeping as late as I wanted to every day. The alarm going off yesterday morning was the rudest sound I've heard in a long time. By the end of the week, I suspect I'll be back to my habit of setting the alarm back about 45 minutes, so I can ease into getting up with five or six hits of the snooze button.
