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.
