Health Check Ep 10: Can schools and parents help boost the cognition and well-being of sleep-deprived Singaporean teenagers? 

9:30 mins

Synopsis: In this fortnightly podcast series on Wednesdays, The Straits Times guides you to healthier living and debunks the myths with expert guests.

To discuss why teenagers and students need to sleep more and how insufficient sleep affects them, ST correspondent Joyce Teo and podcasting head Ernest Luis host Prof Michael Chee, the director of the Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience at the Duke-NUS Medical School who is a prominent sleep expert. 

He answers the following questions:

1. What can be done to help teenagers - inundated with homework, curricular activities, enrichment classes and tuition after school - sleep more?
2. Most Singaporean adolescents sleep an average of 6.5 hours a night on the weekdays. What is a good amount of nocturnal sleep for teenagers? Is seven to eight hours a good achievable target for upper secondary school teenagers?
3. Could shorter sleep increase the risk of diabetes among young Singaporeans?
4. How can students manage better sleep strategy during intense examination periods? 

Produced by: Joyce Teo and Ernest Luis

Edited by: Adam Azlee

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