In a study surely destined to be attached to many a school late excuse, researchers have linked longer sleep cycles to lower body mass index in teenagers.
 
More importantly, at least for the teens themselves, researchers suggest having schools start later in the day as a way to help combat adolescent obesity.
Published online recently in Pediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Pediatrics, the study followed 1,390 sleep participants, ages 14 to 18, from ninth through 12th grade, tracking their BMI throughout.
 
Lead author Jonathan A. Mitchell, a postdoctoral fellow with the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine’s Center for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, said that teens should be taught the value of sleep and encouraged to get more of it.
 
“One possible solution could be for high schools to delay the start to the school day. Previous research has shown that delaying the start of the school day even by 30 minutes results in a 45-minute per day increase in sleep. Since our study shows increasing sleep by an hour or more could lead to a lower BMI, delaying the start of the school day could help to reduce obesity in adolescents,” he said, in a news release prepared about the study.
 
And any reduction in adolescent obesity could ultimately lead to a healthier population, and, as readers of Inside the Joint Commission should be well aware of, possibly fewer hospital readmissions in the future.