Teenagers with 'smelly bedrooms' could be losing out on sleep, according to experts

Teenagers to receive 'bedroom hygiene' lessons as part of nationwide study

'Young people never open their windows,' professor says (Steve Cox/Flickr creative commons )

Bedrooms that smell bad can cause teenagers to lose sleep, experts have warned.

They say bad odours in the bedroom have been linked to insomnia, which can lead to a decline in academic performance and poor mental wellbeing.

Colin Espie, a Professor of Neuroscience at the University of Oxford and author of “The Oxford Handbook of Sleep and Sleep Disorders”, told the Sun: “Young people never open their windows, their rooms are never ventilated.

“The smelly teenager’s bedroom is a by-product of the fact that it is full of rebreathed air, which is low in oxygen and full in nitrogen.

“If you keep rebreathing the same air in a small bedroom that is hot and not ventilated you will wake up with a headache after a poor night’s sleep.”

Teenagers will be given lessons in bedroom hygiene as part of a nationwide study of 32,000 students from up to 100 schools. Their academic performance and mood will be assessed over the course of a year to see the effects of the lessons and improved hygiene.

The study will also assess if later start times at school have a positive impact on teenagers.