A leading sleep expert has claimed that nine-to-five working days are leaving people ‘exhausted’ and that people should begin the business and school day at 10am instead.
According to Oxford University’s Dr Paul Kelley, early starts affect attention and memory and cause people to become more and more stressed.
He also attributes early mornings to alcohol and drug abuse.
Dr Kelley told the British Science Festival: “We cannot change our 24-hour rhythms. You cannot learn to get up at a certain time. Your body will be attuned to sunlight and you're not conscious of it because it reports to hypothalamus, not sight.
“This applies in the bigger picture to prisons and hospitals. They wake up people and give people food they don't want. You're more biddable because you're totally out of it. Sleep deprivation is a torture.”
He claims that society is in turn sleep deprived, and that it is affecting our health in a major way.
Dr Kelley continued: “This is a huge society issue, Staff should start at 10am. You don't get back to [the 9am] starting point until [aged] 55.
“Staff are usually sleep deprived. We've got a sleep-deprived society. It is hugely damaging on the body's systems because you are affecting physical emotional and performance systems in the body.
“Your liver and your heart have different patterns and you're asking them to shift two or three hours. This is an international issue. Everybody is suffering and they don't have to.”
He then claimed that GCSE results could be improved by starting the school day later.
Whilst conducting research at Monkseaton High School in the north of England, Dr Kelley claims that results went up by 50% when he moved start times from 8.50am to 10.00am.
A spokesman from the Department for Education said: “We have given all schools the freedom to control the length of the school day because they are best placed to know what's best for their communities.
“Allowing more time for supervised study and extra-curricular activities has been shown to benefit disadvantaged pupils in particular by giving them access to purposeful, character-building activities, which is why we are helping schools offer a longer day.”
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