Start work AFTER 10:00 AM

I totally agree!!! My most creative work is done in the evenings – many afternoons are spent at the ocean running or swimming. Working for yourself allows YOU to choose the time to work that that fits YOU best!

Forcing staff to start work before 10 a.m. is tantamount to torture and is making employees ill, exhausted and stressed, an Oxford University researcher has claimed.

Dr. Paul Kelley, of Oxford University, said there was a need for a huge societal change to move work and school starting times to fit with the natural body clock of humans.

Experiments studying circadian rhythms have shown that the average 10-year-old will not fully focus on academic work before 8.30 a.m. Similarly, a 16-year-old should start at 10 a.m. for best results and university students should start at 11 a.m. Dr. Kelley believes simply moving school times could raise grades by 10 per cent. He was formerly a head teacher in Tyneside, where he changed the school start time from 8.30 a.m. to 10 a.m. and saw the number of top grades rise by 19 per cent.

Similarly, companies who force employees to start work earlier are likely to be hurting their output, while storing up health problems.

“This is a huge society issue,” Dr. Kelley told the British Science Festival in Bradford. “Staff should start at 10 a.m.

“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.”

We’ve got a sleep-deprived society

He said that the body was attuned to sunlight and it was not possible to change its 24-hour cycle to learn to get up at a particular time.

“This applies in the bigger picture to prisons and hospitals,” he added. “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.”

Sleep deprivation has been shown to have significant effects on health. A week with less that six hours’ sleep a night led to 711 changes in how genes function, one study discovered.

Lack of sleep has been found to affect performance, attention and long-term memory and to encourage drug and alcohol use. It also leads to anxiety, frustration, anger, impulsive behavior, weight gain, high blood pressure, lower immunity, stress and mental health conditions.

Tens of thousands of children are starting school at 10am in an experiment by Oxford to prove that later classes can improve exam results. GCSE students at more than 100 schools will take part in the four-year project based on evidence that teenagers are out of sync with traditional school hours. The findings are expected in 2018.

Thanks for your Wisdom Sarah Knapton