By: Samuel Merrill
Staying up long hours into the night seems like it is the norm in college. We are sometimes faced with rigorous assignments, and daunting tests and exams. Sometimes students in college will spend hours into the night trying to complete these tasks. We may think that staying up for extra hours might be a good way to get great grades and retain information, but is losing sleep to study and work on assignments worth it? How many students are affected by the loss of sleep and why? What are the health risks and how can we prevent them?
Students and sleep
There is no doubt that many college students face irregular sleeping patterns. In the article “Sleep? maybe later…” A cross-campus survey of university students and sleep practices provided an anonymous electronic survey in 2016, students who attended the University of Alberta in the Western region of Canada. 1,294 students partook in this survey (78.0% undergraduates; 87.5% living off-campus, 77.5% female) where It showed that 30.5% of participants got 6.5 hours of sleep and 66.5% of students stated they had insufficient sleep. Additional comments were made from students who mentioned the effect of stress and mental health issues. Some of the comments regarded the loss of sleep due to stress. Other comments regarded their mind as being too active to sleep due to the stresses of life and work resulting in sleep deprivation and sleep insomnia. Brown, C., Qin, P., & Esmail, S. (2017)
Factors
It has been estimated that 40% to 77% of students suffer from poor and insufficient sleep. Factors and behaviors that contribute to the loss of one's sleep are known as someone's sleep hygiene. Sleep hygiene could range from improper sleep scheduling (napping or sleeping late), consumption of sleep-disrupting products (cafeen), behavioral arousal before bed (stressing for an exam), and failure to maintain a comfortable sleeping environment. All these factors and behaviors help lead to sleep deprivation and sleep insomnia. Gellis, L. A., Park, A., Stotsky, M. T., & Taylor, D. J. (2014)
Dangers...
Sleep impairment is highly associated with serious negative consequences in college students. Poor sleep quality has been correlated with many problems such as fighting, suicidal ideation, motor vehicle accidents, and a drop in grades. Persistent poor sleep quality could also lead to sleep insomnia which can lead to a compromised immune system, depression, and even early mortality. Gellis, L. A., Park, A., Stotsky, M. T., & Taylor, D. J. (2014)
Prevention...
Some ways that someone can prevent sleep deprivation is changing the sleep environment (turning the heat up/down before you go to bed to get comfortable), avoiding sleep impairing consumables (cafeen), reading books, watching TV, taking a warm bath/showers, working on sleeping habits and listen to music/using white noise filters before bed. Brown, C., Qin, P., & Esmail, S. (2017)
Citations
Brown, C., Qin, P., & Esmail, S. (2017). “Sleep? maybe later…” A cross-campus survey of university students and sleep practices. Education Sciences, 7(3), 66. doi:10.3390/educsci7030066
Gellis, L. A., Park, A., Stotsky, M. T., & Taylor, D. J. (2014). Associations between sleep hygiene and insomnia severity in college students: Cross-sectional and prospective analyses. Behavior Therapy, 45(6), 806-816. doi:10.1016/j.beth.2014.05.002
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJK-dMlATmM