College students, like Americans overall, are sleeping less, and if you are like most college students, chances are you are not getting enough sleep. On average, most college students get 6 - 6.9 hours of sleep per night, and the college years are notoriously sleep-deprived due to an overload of activities. Recent research on college students and sleep indicates that insufficient sleep impacts our health, our moods, our GPA and our safety. Sleep really matters.
Sleep is important for a number of reasons. It restores our energy, fights off illness and fatigue by strengthening our immune system, helps us think more clearly and creatively, strengthens memory and produces a more positive mood and better performance throughout the day. Sleep isn’t just a passive activity and something to fill the time when we are inactive, but rather it is an active and dynamic process vital for normal motor and cognitive function.
Most adults need somewhere between 6-10 hours of sleep per night. Different people need different amount of sleep to feel rested. If you are frequently tired or irritable during the day and find yourself sleeping more than an extra 2 hours per night on weekends, then you are probably not getting enough sleep during the week. Try for 7-8 hours and see how you feel.
Lack of sleep is associated with both physical and emotional health risks. These include:
Lack of sleep can cause many health issues, including death, and people are often not aware that they are at risk. Since sleep deprivation can impact the immune system function, our ability to fight off infections becomes more difficult and we are more prone to getting upper respiratory infections, such as cold and flu, and often feel “run down.” That’s because we are! Heart and lung function is adversely affected by lack of sleep and is associated with worsening chronic lung and heart disease and high blood pressure.
Lack of sleep has been linked to obesity. With sleep deprivation, there is an increase in the hormone, ghrelin, which is associated with hunger for high calorie foods. There is a decrease in the hormone leptin which reduces appetite. This leads to weight gain in many people. Lack of sleep impacts brain function, attention span, mood and reaction times. Excessive sleepiness is a leading cause of car and truck accidents, and research has demonstrated that many industrial accidents and disasters, such as nuclear power accidents, major oil spills and space shuttle disasters have been attributed to sleep deprived workers.
College students are often at risk for having mental health issues such as depression and anxiety, and researchers believe that lack of sleep is a factor. An assessment of your sleep by a mental health professional may be best if you exhibit one or more of the following symptoms.
According to a health survey administered at UGA every two years, 1 in 4 UGA students indicate that lack of sleep has impacted their academic performance in a negative way. They have made lower grades, missed a paper or project deadline, or had to withdraw from class. Some students rely on staying up most of the night to study, but pulling an all-nighter and cramming at the last minute can actually be counterproductive.
The very qualities you need to maximize in order to do well on tests, such as recall, concentration, and alertness, are decreased when you are sleep deprived. Research has shown that students who get 6 or fewer hours of sleep have a lower GPA than those who get 8 or more.
During sleep, the brain organizes, sorts, and stores what we have learned and experienced that day, making it easier to recall at a later time.
Sleep also helps you weed out irrelevant information and helps you make connections between your memory and information you learned that day, even if you have not made those connections while awake.
If you study a little every day, you can use this natural process of sleep to gain a better understanding of the material and to retain the information more efficiently.
If you don’t understand something you have read or you can’t solve a problem, look it over and then sleep on it.
To sum up, to study better, more efficiently, and to increase the likelihood of learning and retaining information, get at least 6-8 hours of sleep before your exam. Go for 8!
Individuals regularly getting high quality sleep often have a sleep ritual. A sleep ritual is a routine that helps the mind and body wind down at the end of the day in preparation for a good night’s sleep. In evaluating your sleep, does your sleep ritual include the following?
A sleep diary can help you evaluate your sleep over time. Typical things kept in a sleep diary include levels of sleepiness at different times during the day, times you sleep well, times you have difficulty staying awake, and recording the amount of sleep you get each night.
Click here for an example of a Sleep Diary (Adobe pdf)
Alcohol can make you feel tired because it is a depressant and has sedative qualities, but drinking alcohol can interrupt sleep and interfere with the quality of your sleep. It can also magnify the effects of sleep deprivation.
Approximately 30-50% of college students nap, but the effect is that nappers sleep less than non-nappers. If you do nap, nap early in the day and keep it to about 20-30 minutes.
18- 24 year old drivers have a significantly higher rate of risk of late night crashes and fatigue and drowsiness are often to blame.
Alcohol use is also a risk factor.
What can I do?
Most of us have difficulty falling asleep or staying asleep at some point in our lives. Sometimes these problems are temporary and can be due to stress. In other cases, the problem persists for weeks or even months. If you are unable to fall asleep for more than 30 minutes after going to bed, 3 or more nights per week for 4 weeks, then you may have what is known as primary insomnia. This may be due to psychological and/or physiological causes, and if it persists for more than a month, you should see your clinician.
Other sleep disorders:
Narcolepsy is an inherited condition of excessive sleepiness that causes temporary loss of muscle control and/or uncontrollable sleep attacks”. There is no cure for narcolepsy, although it can be controlled through drug treatment.
Obstructive sleep apnea is a condition in which the soft tissue of the upper airway repeatedly collapses during sleep and cuts off breathing for a short time, and then the airway opens abruptly and noisily. The constant interruptions of sleep cause excessive sleepiness during the day, but sleep apnea may go unnoticed unless someone sleeps in the same room and hears interruptions. Obesity increases the risk of this disorder.
Restless legs is a condition in which the legs jerk uncontrollably during sleep, disturbing sleep and causing daytime sleepiness.
Consider seeing your clinician if you:
Sleep Education—Health Promotion, 706-542-8690
National Sleep Foundation, www.sleepfoundation.org
The Better Sleep Council, www.bettersleep.org
UHC Stress Website, www.uhs.uga.edu/stress
