iv. Sleep

A great night’s sleep begins the minute you wake up. The choices you make throughout the day impact how quickly you fall asleep, whether you sleep soundly, and whether your body can complete the cycle of critical functions that only happen while you sleep. With sufficient sleep, it is easier to learn, remember what you learned, and have the necessary energy to make the most of your college experience. Without sufficient sleep, it is harder to learn, remember what you learned, and have the energy to make the most of your college experience. It’s that simple.

Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash

What Happens When We Sleep?

Sleep is a time when our bodies are quite busy repairing and detoxifying. While we sleep, we fix damaged tissue, toxins are processed and eliminated, hormones essential for growth and appetite control are released and restocked, and energy is restored. Sleep is essential for a healthy immune system. How many colds do you catch a year? How often do you get the flu? If you are often sick, you do not have a healthy immune system, and sleep deprivation may be a key culprit.

A review of hundreds of sleep studies concluded that most adults need around eight hours of sleep to maintain good health. Some people may be able to function quite well on seven, and others may need closer to nine, but as a general rule, most people need a solid eight hours of sleep each night. And when it comes to sleep, both quantity and quality are important. A healthy amount of sleep has the following benefits:

• Improves your mood during the day
• Improves your memory and learning abilities
• Gives you more energy
• Strengthens your immune system
• Promotes wellness of body, mind, and spirit

Sleep helps you think more clearly, have quicker reflexes, and focus better. “The fact is, when we look at well-rested people, they’re operating at a different level than people trying to get by on one or two hours less nightly sleep,” says Dr. Merrill Mitler, a sleep expert and neuroscientist at NIH.

In contrast, not getting enough sleep over time can lead to a wide range of health issues and student problems. Sleep deprivation can have the following consequences:

• Affects mental health and contributes to stress and feelings of anxiety, depression, and general unhappiness
• Causes sleepiness, difficulty paying attention in class, and ineffective studying
• Weakens the immune system, making it more likely to catch colds and other infections
• Increases risk of heart attack and stroke
• Impairs cognitive function. Even one night of sleeping less than six hours can impact your ability to think clearly the next day.
• Increases risk of accidents. Sleep deprivation slows your reaction time, which increases your risk of accidents. You are three times more likely to be in a car crash if you are tired. According to the American Sleep Foundation,
• Increases risk for weight gain and obesity. Sleep helps balance your appetite by regulating hormones that play a role in helping you feel full after a meal.
• Increases risk of cancer.
• Increases emotional intensity. The part of the brain responsible for emotional reactions, your amygdala, can be 60 percent more reactive when you’ve slept poorly, resulting in increased emotional intensity.

“Loss of sleep impairs your higher levels of reasoning, problem-solving, and attention to detail,” Mitler explains. Tired people tend to be less productive at work and school. They’re at a much higher risk for traffic accidents. Lack of sleep also influences your mood, which can affect how you interact with others. A sleep deficit over time can even put you at greater risk of developing depression.

Figure: The Effects of Sleep Deprivation. This visual depicts many of the ways we are affected by insufficient sleep. (Häggström, 2014). Provided by: OpenStax. Located at: https://openstax.org/books/college-success/pages/11-2-sleep

Tips to Improve the Quality of Your Sleep

• Set a schedule: Go to bed at a set time each night and get up at the same time each morning. Disrupting this schedule may lead to insomnia. “Sleeping in” on weekends also makes it harder to wake up early on Monday morning because it resets your sleep cycles for a later awakening. If possible, wake up with the sun, or use very bright lights in the morning. Sunlight helps the body’s internal biological clock reset itself each day. Sleep experts recommend exposure to an hour of morning sunlight for people having problems falling asleep.
• Sleep in a cool, quiet, dark room: Create a sleeping environment that is comfortable and conducive to sleep. If you can control the temperature in your room, keep it cool in the evening. Exposure to bright light suppresses our body’s ability to make melatonin, so keep the room as dark as possible. Even the tiniest bit of light in the room (like from a clock radio LCD screen) can disrupt your internal clock and your production of melatonin, which will interfere with your sleep. A sleep mask may help eliminate light, and earplugs can help reduce noise.
• Avoid blue light at night, such as from cell phones and computer screens and bluish LED bulbs: There is growing evidence that short-wavelength (blue spectrum) light affects hormonal secretion, thermoregulation, sleep, and alertness. A recent study found that short-wavelength light before bedtime affects circadian rhythm and evening sleepiness, and has further effects on sleep physiology and alertness in the morning. Using a blue light filter on your electronic devices in the evening partially reduces these negative effects (Hohn et al, 2021).
• Avoid eating late, using nicotine, and drinking alcohol or caffeine close to bedtime: It is best to finish eating at least two hours before bedtime and avoid caffeine after lunch. It’s important to finish eating hours before bedtime so your body can heal and detoxify and it is not spending the first few hours of sleep digesting a heavy meal. While not everyone is affected in the same way, caffeine hangs around for a long time in most bodies. Although alcohol will make you drowsy, the effect is short-lived and you will often wake up several hours later, unable to fall back to sleep. Alcohol can also keep you from entering the deeper stages of sleep, where your body does most of the repair and healing. Smokers tend to sleep very lightly and often wake up in the early morning due to nicotine withdrawal.
• Start to wind down an hour before bed: There are great apps to help with relaxation, stress release, and falling asleep (Consider the Insight Timer app or any number of other free apps designed to assist users with this). Or you can simply practice the 2-4-6-8 breathing pattern explained in the first part of the chapter.
• Don’t lie in bed awake: If you can’t get to sleep, don’t just lie in bed. Do something else, like reading or listening to music, until you feel tired. Avoid screens, though: watching TV, and being on the computer or a smartphone are too stimulating and will make you more wakeful.
• Exercise: One of the biggest benefits of exercise is its effect on sleep. A study from Stanford University found that 16 weeks in a moderate-intensity exercise program allowed people to fall asleep about 15 minutes faster and sleep about 45 minutes longer. Walking, yoga, swimming, strength training, jumping rope—whatever it is, find an exercise you like and make sure to move your body every day.
• Improve your diet: Low fiber and high saturated fat and sugar intake are associated with lighter, less restorative sleep with more wake time during the night. Processed food full of chemicals will make your body work extra hard during the night to remove the toxins and leave less time for healing and repair.