Read or listen to Dr Phillip Bale’s interview about how sleep deprivation impacts physical and mental health on WKU public radio.

WKU Public Radio: What do we know about how much sleep teens in the U.S. are getting, versus how much sleep they need to function at a high level?

Dr. Bale: “Well, there really is some good data on that. The Kaiser Family Foundation has studied it extensively, and their statistics would indicate that the average American teenager today is getting about six hours and fifteen minutes of sleep. Brain research, on the other hand, is telling us that for optimal learning and daytime performance adolescents require about nine hours and fifteen minutes of sleep.”

“Sleep deprivation is cumulative, and it’s not hard to connect the dots to see how that may be a real factor in the under-performance of many of our educational institutions and our schoolchildren today.”