Most people don’t like Mondays. And Australian scientist Tim Olds has just identified one of the reasons. According to a study that will be presented tomorrow at the Conference of the Austro-Asian Association on Sleep,the night we sleep the least is the one that runs from Sunday to Monday. And that makes us start the week with a considerable lack of sleep.
Their results are based on a massive experiment with 4,000 Australian children and adolescents between the ages of 9 and 18. Analyzing his habits, Olds has come to the conclusion that we are used to staying up late on Fridays and Saturdays, and that “on Sunday we go to bed late because we don’t want to leave the weekend behind.” This causes a deficit of hours of sleep that has negative consequences, such asa weaker immune system, memory difficulties, and attention problems.
Olds has also calculated how sleep patterns change as we grow older. On average, 9-year-old Australian children sleep 10 hours a night. This time is reduced by 9 minutes for each completed year until reaching 18. But also, on the nights that separate two school days, adolescents reduce their rest time even more.
Paradoxically,on weekends we do rest long enough. This difference is especially extreme inKorea, where recent studies show that young Koreans sleep 4 1/2 hours during the school week, compared to an average of 13 hours of nighttime rest on weekends and holidays.
As for Spanish children and adolescents, experts assure that they also suffer from a chronic lack of sleep, since more than 60% sleep an hour or two less than the nine recommended.
