Kids who sleep well perform better in school

If you want your kids to do well in school, make sure that they get adequate sleep as researchers have found that lack of sleep increases the risk of failure in school.

Adolescents who suffer from sleep disturbance or habitual short sleep duration (less than 7 hours per day) are less likely to succeed academically compared with those who enjoy a good night's sleep, the findings showed.

The study involved more than 20,000 adolescents aged between 12 and 19 in Sweden.

"Another important finding of our study is that around 30 percent of the adolescents reported regular sleep problems," said lead researcher Christian Benedict from the Uppsala University in Sweden.

"Similar observations have been made in other adolescent cohorts, indicating that sleep problems among adolescents have reached an epidemic level in our modern societies", Benedict added.

The study appeared in the journal Sleep Medicine.