Delayed School Start Times Prevent Unhealthy Sleep Habits, Experts Say

BOSTON (CBS) -- Do you struggle to get your teen out of bed before school?  Should school start times be pushed back?  Some experts say "yes."

There's mounting evidence that modern society is battling our biological clocks, leading to sleep deprivation.

Now leading sleep experts at Oxford University in England say for people between the ages of 10 and 55, getting up early is not natural and 14 and 24 year olds are affected the most.

So they're making some pretty shocking recommendations.  They say that schools shouldn't start before 10 AM and universities before 11 AM.  They think staggered start times could boost exam results by about 10%.

To study this theory, in the next academic year, one hundred schools in the United Kingdom will be randomly assigned to four groups.  One group will start school at 10 AM for 14 to 16 year olds and another will teach students good sleep habits, like avoiding screen time with televisions, cell phones and tablets before bed.

What about employees?  The sleep experts also don't think that employees should start work before 10 AM.  They say that your organs, like your heart and liver, operate on a different schedule and by asking them to conform to artificial start and stop times can lead to performance problems as well as physical and emotional harm.