Like food and water, sleep is one of the basic requirements for health, studies show, but college students are notorious for sacrificing it for studying and socializing.
Not getting enough sleep has been directly linked to poor academic performance, decreased problem-solving skills, increased impulsiveness and emotionality, said Dr. H. Brooks Morse, a psychologist at the University Health Center. She said lack of sleep also exacerbates depression, stress and anxiety.
Morse has seen an increase in students visiting the Counseling and Testing Center because of anxiety and stress related to relationship concerns, Morse said. The college lifestyle particularly lends itself to sleep problems because of the difficulty in balancing an ever-fluctuating workload, relationships, class schedules and socializing, she said.
Students are two times more likely than the general population to experience sleep problems, according to a 2003 study in the Journal of College Counseling.
Academic pressure and increased competition for jobs have long been associated with college, according to the study. Students reporting dissatisfaction with their nightly amounts of sleep increased from 24 percent in 1978 to 71 percent in 2000, according to the study.
Several students interviewed by the Emerald said they sleep five to seven hours a night on average, but they often go to bed at different times and don’t have a regular sleep schedule.
“Even students who sleep eight hours nightly but shift their sleep-wake cycle by two hours experience increased feelings of depression, reduced affability and difficulty concentrating,” according to a 2001 study on sleep in the Journal of American College Health.
University student Vern McCalla sleeps about six hours a night on average, which isn’t enough, he said. Hanging out with friends and his new puppy keep him up at night, and even after he falls asleep, McCalla wakes up a couple of times a night from dreams or his puppy squirming, he said.
Quality of sleep is just as important as quantity of sleep, and getting enough quality sleep requires being aware of its impact on overall health and making sleep a priority, Morse said.
There are different stages of sleep necessary for healthy cognitive functioning during the day, and one of those stages is the rapid-eye-movement period when most dreaming occurs, according to the 2001 study.
REM sleep occurs in the latter stages of sleep and is necessary to help turn learned information into memory, according to a Case Western Reserve University Web site on sleep.
Students who sleep later on the weekends to try to make up for the sleep they missed during the week aren’t actually catching up on their sleep debt, according to the 2001 study. Instead, they experience an increased difficulty concentrating, irritability and depression, according to the study.
Napping is also a common substitute used by students to make up for a lack of sleep, but napping can actually negatively affect a student’s ability to sleep at night, Morse said.
Some students use alcohol or drugs to help them fall asleep, Morse said, but alcohol and drugs interfere with a person’s ability to reach deep stages of sleep and can leave a person feeling tired and groggy the next day even if they sleep for eight hours, Morse said.
University student Noam Scott often falls asleep after drinking but doesn’t feel fully rested, he said.
“I’m more rested than if I didn’t sleep at all,” Scott said. “At the same time, it’s also because it’s alcohol-induced and so I just got knocked out.”
Morse said students can establish a healthy sleep schedule by creating a regular bedtime routine that includes relaxation exercises and excludes anything that causes anxiety or stimulation, such as thought-provoking books or movies.
“A lot of young people feel invulnerable … and so even realizing that, lack of sleep impacts their ability to think, their grades, their relationships,” Morse said. “It’s important because they’re not invulnerable to that, no matter how much energy they have.”