Since it is back-to-school time I thought I would share some information about all night study sessions – they don’t work! The brain needs sleep and if sleep is sacrificed for study time the brain isn’t going to work like it should.

A study conducted by UCLA and published in the journal Child Development showed that if students sacrificed sleep for longer study time they were more likely to have academic problems the next day. Because students tend to study later and later into the night as they get older this problem only gets worse.

“Sacrificing sleep for extra study time is counterproductive” said Dr. Andrew J. Fuligni of UCLA. He continued “Academic success may depend on finding strategies to avoid having to give up sleep to study, such as maintaining a consistent study schedule across days, using school time as efficiently as possible and sacrificing time spent on other, less essential activities.”

The study looked at students from several Los Angeles area high schools in 9th through 12th grades. The researchers expected that late night studying might create problems with student understanding of what they were taught in class but they were surprised to find the behavior actually led to doing more poorly on tests and quizzes!

The message to students (and parents) is to manage study time wisely – if the student doesn’t know the material by bedtime then they probably won’t know it the next day for the test. Research has already shown us that new information gets placed into memory during sleep so my suggestion is to study, get a good night of sleep (at least 7 hours) and go take the test.

Students who suffer from obstructive sleep apnea will feel sleep deprived and experience problems with school and possibly behavioral issues because of their disorder. Many children and teens suffer from obstructive sleep apnea but have not been diagnosed. If you have a teen that snores loudly and experiences excessive daytime sleepiness (beyond the usual teen penchant for sleeping) you may want to arrange for a sleep study for your child.

Obstructive sleep apnea can be treated by using an oral appliance available from Columbus, OH sleep medicine dentist Dr. Mark Levy. Please contact Dr. Levy at 614-476-6696 today to schedule your sleep apnea consultation.