Not getting enough sleep may hurt your performance in school (zzz...)

It's tough to do well in school when you're falling asleep in class because you didn't get enough sleep last night--but of course, we're not smart enough to figure this out without a study to tell us so. As reported by Dr. Veronica Hackethal of Reuters, August 16, 2013:

Children who have trouble sleeping tend to do worse in school than their peers who get a good night's sleep, a new study suggests.

Researchers in Brazil looked at children age seven to 10 who attended Sao Paulo public schools. They found kids with symptoms of sleep disorders or sleep breathing disorders earned lower grades than those without problems sleeping, on average...

...Poor sleep among children has been tied to obesity, which over the long term increases the risk of heart disease and diabetes. And poor school performance has been linked to early dropout rates - so the new findings may have implications beyond getting a good night's sleep, researchers said...

...However, the new study can't say definitively that sleep problems were to blame for poor grades, researchers said.

"This study doesn't prove that a sleep disturbance causes decreased academic performance," Bazil said, "but it shows an association. Basically every category of sleep disturbance the authors looked at correlated with decreased academic performance."

The researchers relied on parents' reports of their children's sleep, rather than bringing kids into a sleep lab overnight, for example...

Go here to see an abstract of the original study.