Written by Cheyenne Zhou
“Happiness is waking up, looking at the clock and finding that you still have two hours left to sleep.” — Charles M. Schulz, American Cartoonist.
Sleep - the irresistible tempter that we all inevitably succumb to. However, despite this natural temptation, the Institutes of Medicine has declared sleep as a public health problem (Institute of Medicine, 2006). According to the study, an estimated 50% of Americans are sleep deprived with 30% having less than 6 hours per night!
However, in terms of college students, we represent one of the most-sleep deprived segments of our population. With so many things to attend to as a student, we may choose to sacrifice our sleep to complete everything. In a 2001 survey, the study found that only 11% of college students slept well consistently while 73% experienced frequent sleep issues (Buboltz UC, et al, 2001).
So what is sleep?
Defined, sleep is a periodic, natural, reversible loss of consciousness - distinct from the unconsciousness from general anesthesia, hibernation, or a coma - and the perceptual disengagement from and unresponsiveness to our surroundings. (Dement, 1999; Carskadon, M.A., & Dement, W.C., 2011). As sleepy slowly overtakes us, different parts of the cortex stop communicating and our consciousness fades. However, during the time that we are resting, we pass through a cycle of five different sleep stages - Stage 1 Sleep, Stage 2 Sleep, Stage 3 Sleep, Stage 4 Sleep, and finally REM sleep.
During Stage 1 sleep, you may experience sensory experiences that happen without a sensory stimulus. Common sensory experiences include sensations of falling or floating.
After about 20 minutes, we slowly begin Stage 2 sleep, which is characterized by bursts of rapid, rhythmic brain-wave activity. For the next few minutes, you will then transition to Stage 3 where your brain will begin to emit large, slow delta waves. These waves will increasingly be emitted until you've reached Stage 4 - which marks the start of deep sleep.
After about an hour after you fall asleep, you begin to ascend, returning back to stage 3, then stage 2, and then REM sleep. During REM sleep, your breathing becomes irregular and rapid, your heart rate rises, and about every thirty seconds, your eyes will move around behind closed eyelids. Though your brain's motor cortex is active during REM sleep, your brainstem blocks any neuronal messages, leaving your body muscles generally relaxed beside the occasional twitch from a finger or facial muscle. It is here where your body is internally roused, but externally calm.
This sleep cycle repeats itself about every 90 minutes. As the night progresses, Stage 4 sleep will become briefer until it disappears. In contrast, the REM sleep period gets longer.
Sleep is important for:
1. Memory consolidation (i.e., learning) (website)
2. Information processing speed
3. Emotional well-being
4. Attention regulation/focus
5. Weight loss
6. Immune system functioning
7. Problem-solving
8. Staying alive!
The Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Since sleep is deeply involved with how our body functions, not getting enough sleep or having poor quality of sleep has been associated with several adverse health outcomes. One of the more noticeable effects of lessened sleep is feeling sleepy and drowsy with the potential feeling of discomfort, illness, or uneasiness depending on the severity. (Mikuliner & others, 1989). However, research has found how sleep loss can affect our health in more subtle ways.
Mortality
Data from the American Cancer Society's found that there was a risk for increased mortality depending on how long an individual slept. For the study's purposes, there were two classifications for an individual's sleep duration: short, which was classified as 6 hours or less, and long, which was classified as 9 hours or more (Grandner, Michael A et al., 2010). Even after several replications, findings revealed that those with short sleep durations faced an increase of 10 - 12% risk while those with long sleep durations faced an increase 30 - 38% risk mortality (Gallicchio, Lisa, and Bindu Kalesan, 2009; Cappuccio, Francesco P et al., 2010).
Neurocognitive Functioning
The association between sleep loss and neurocognitive functioning has been a topic that many researchers look at with vigilant attention. By utilizing psychomotor vigilance tasks, studies have found that as an individual's sleep time declines, attentional lapses increases. These sleep deprivation experiments revealed that participants had slowed reaction times and increased errors on visual tasks (Beardsley,1996). However, other studies have found that reduced sleep duration can cause impairments in executive function, cognitive throughput, processing speed and working memory (Killgore, William D S et al., 2012; Banks, Siobhan et al., 2010; Jackson, M L et al., 2013; Verweij, Ilse M et al., 2014). These impairments can become cumulative and some impairments, such as executive functioning, may take longer to recover.
Mental Health
Many studies have shown that not getting enough sleep can lead to the deterioration of our mental health. In fact, sleep disruptions or the inability to fall or stay asleep, is a common diagnostic criteria of many mental health disorders, such as depression (American Psychiatric Association, 2013). There are various other factors, such as external or social factors, that can influence our mental health, but it's important to remember that sleep is a modifiable factor - one that we can change and manage independently.
But what is keeping people awake?
Sleep disturbances can be a little difficult to measure at the population level. Generally, researchers have found that the four major sleep complaints include excessive daytime sleepiness, insomnia, abnormal movements or behavior during sleep, and inability to sleep at the desired time (Chokroverty, 2010). While each complaint has its own factors, here are a few ways to may help you get better sleep and promote good sleep hygiene.
1. Schedule going to bed and getting up to get your 8 hours of sleep.
2. Don't go to bed unless you are sleepy.
3. If you are not asleep after 20 minutes, then get out of bed and do something low-key (not involving screens).
4. Begin rituals that help you relax before bed and follow these rituals each night (e.g. warm bath, brushing teeth, putting on pajamas, reading a book).
5. Reduce the amount of visual, auditory, and tactile stimulation.
6. Get up at the same time every morning.
7. Avoid taking long naps after about 3 pm.
8. Don't have any caffeine, nicotine, or alcohol after a certain time in the afternoon (alcohol helps you fall asleep, but disrupts the quality of sleep).
9. Exercise during the day and avoid doing so 2 hours before bedtime.
Takeaway
Balancing the completion of our assignments and sleep is not an easy task. While we may still be young, choosing to neglect our sleep has its own health risks, some that we know and some that we may not be aware of. I hope that this post has helped to clarify some of health impacts that sleep can have. However, please note that this is not an exhaustive overview. Instead, please take this blog post as a peek into what sleep can do for us.
We hope you enjoyed this blog post! Take care and remember to stay amazing!
References
American Psychiatric Association. Diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorders (DSM-5®). American Psychiatric Pub, 2013.
Banks, Siobhan et al. “Neurobehavioral dynamics following chronic sleep restriction: dose-response effects of one night for recovery.” Sleep vol. 33,8 (2010): 1013-26. doi:10.1093/sleep/33.8.1013
Beardsley, T. (1996, July). Waking up. Scientific American, pp. 14, 18. (p. 281)
Buboltz WC, et al. Sleep Habits and Patterns of College Students. Journal of American College Health. 2001. 50: 131–135.
Cappuccio, Francesco P et al. “Sleep duration and all-cause mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis of prospective studies.” Sleep vol. 33,5 (2010): 585-92. doi:10.1093/sleep/33.5.585
Carskadon, M.A., & Dement, W.C. (2011). Monitoring and staging human sleep. In M.H. Kryger, T. Roth, & W.C. Dement (Eds.), Principles and practice of sleep medicine, 5th edition, (pp 16-26). St. Louis: Elsevier Saunders.
Chokroverty, Sudhansu. "Overview of sleep & sleep disorders." Indian J Med Res 131.2 (2010): 126-140.
Dement, W. C., (1999). The promise of sleep. New York: Delacorte Pres. (pp. 276, 277, 280-281, 284).
Gallicchio, Lisa, and Bindu Kalesan. “Sleep duration and mortality: a systematic review and meta-analysis.” Journal of sleep research vol. 18,2 (2009): 148-58. doi:10.1111/j.1365-2869.2008.00732.x
Grandner, Michael A et al. “Mortality associated with short sleep duration: The evidence, the possible mechanisms, and the future.” Sleep medicine reviews vol. 14,3 (2010): 191-203. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2009.07.006
Institute of Medicine (US) Committee on Sleep Medicine and Research. Sleep Disorders and Sleep Deprivation: An Unmet Public Health Problem. Edited by Harvey R Colten et. al., National Academies Press (US), 2006. doi:10.17226/11617
Jackson, M L et al. “Cognitive components of simulated driving performance: Sleep loss effects and predictors.” Accident; analysis and prevention vol. 50 (2013): 438-44. doi:10.1016/j.aap.2012.05.020
Killgore, William D S et al. “Gambling when sleep deprived: don't bet on stimulants.” Chronobiology international vol. 29,1 (2012): 43-54. doi:10.3109/07420528.2011.635230
Mikulincer, M., Babkoff, H., Caspy, T., & Sing, H. (1989). The effects of 72 hours of sleep loss on psychological variables. British Journal of Psychology, 80, 145 - 162. (p. 280)
Verweij, Ilse M et al. “Sleep deprivation leads to a loss of functional connectivity in frontal brain regions.” BMC neuroscience vol. 15 88. 19 Jul. 2014, doi:10.1186/1471-2202-15-88
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