Weekend ‘Jet Lag’ Affects School Performance

According to a study presented at the American Professional Sleep Society’s annual meeting, children and teenagers who sleep in on the weekends may be hurting their scholastic performance. An article in the Poughkeepsie Journal discusses the study’s findings, which suggest that by sleeping in on weekends, kids are basically subjecting themselves to the effects of jet lag. When Monday rolls around and it’s time to go back to school, the kids feel tired and groggy and their performance suffers as a result. The whole problem is compounded by the fact that many of these kids are not getting enough sleep during the week, and they are trying tomak up for it by getting extra sleep over the weekend.

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Important:
The Sleep Blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Instead, this website provides general information for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider if you have questions or concerns regarding any medical condition or treatment.

Sleeping too much is also bad for your health…

By now most of us are all too aware that not getting enough sleep is bad for us, but it seems that sleeping too much may also have negative health effects. According to a study discussed in this CNN.com article,

The study showed people who slept nine or 10 hours per night had a risk of dying similar to that associated with moderate obesity. Risk of death increased by 15 percent for those who slept eight hours a night, 20 percent for those who get 9 hours of sleep and 35 to 40 percent for those who sleep 10 hours a night.

The article is quick to point out that the study is not unanimously accepted among sleep specialists,

The data can’t be used to establish a cause and effect relationship because there are flaws in the study,” said Dr. Russell Rosenberg, director of the Northside Hospital Sleep Medicine Institute in Atlanta.


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Important:
The Sleep Blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Instead, this website provides general information for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider if you have questions or concerns regarding any medical condition or treatment.

One more reason to get up and out on time

We’ve blogged quite a bit about different tools and methods people use to help them wake up on time, but we haven’t posted much about the consequences of oversleeping. Aside from the toll it can impose on your general well-being, chronic lateness can and does have significant financial consequences. We recently came across an older, but still very relevant USA Today article that discusses just that. The article focuses primarily on lateness in the corporate world. Some highlights:

  • If Citigroup CEO Sanford Weill arrives 15 minutes late to a meeting with his four best-paid lieutenants, it costs the company $4,250.
  • French executives were late to more meetings than U.S. executives, 65% vs. 60%. Japanese CEOs were the most punctual, late 34% of the time.
  • Some companies have meeting rules that involve late fees of up to $5 a minute, but those are most common at companies where the CEO is punctual.

While this article concentrates the mostly on executives and being late, it is easy to see that, no matter where you are on the corporate “totem pole,” lateness can have a significant finanical cost to organizations.

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Important:
The Sleep Blog does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Instead, this website provides general information for educational purposes only. Always seek the advice of a qualified health care provider if you have questions or concerns regarding any medical condition or treatment.