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Time Stands Still

"The early bird gets the worm", often true in most cases, but not entirely accurate when dealing with adolescents. When children become teenagers they experience a severe alteration in their biological clock and because of early high school starting times teens are attending school during what should be the last one-third of their sleeping period. This lack of sleep, or, sleep deprivation, is negatively affecting their health, grades and overall mood, therefore high school starting times should be pushed back.
Everyone has an internal biological clock; it's what allows us to sleep at night and wakes us up in the morning. Dr. Mary Carskadon, Director of sleep and Chronobiology Research and Professor of Psychiatry and Human behavior at Brown University, says that while we sleep our body secretes the hormone melatonin. This particular hormone's turn off serves as a biological alarm clock. In prepubescent years, the shut off of melatonin is at approximately 7:15 a.m., however as teenagers go through puberty it becomes increasingly later, falling at around 9:00 a.m. This reason accounts for why most teenagers walk around like zombies during school; they don't know what it's like to be fully awake (qtd. in Diconsiglio).
Ronald Dahl, Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center say "Animals without sleep die. Sleep is not just rest, it's essential to life" Although adolescents are not dieing from sleep deprivation directly, many of them are experiencing negative side effects, some of which are potentially life threatening. While sleeping, hormones are secreted, some of these horomones help the body absorb nutrients, heal tissue, fight tumors and viral infections, and stimulate the production of the immune system cells. Sleep loss will break down our youth's immune systems and slowly deteriorate their health (Diconsiglio). According to the National Sleep Foundation, twenty-four percent of young adults admit they...