Sleepless in Santa Clara: Nightmarish midterms create various sleep problems
By Jeff Renfro
Midterm season has officially begun at Santa Clara. The sudden increase in the level of studiousness that accompanies this time of the quarter brings with it a lax attitude towards sleep management. As it turns out, students who sacrifice sleep in order to squeeze in extra studying time may be doing more harm than good.
The amount of nightly sleep that a person should get varies with age, but the generally accepted number is eight hours per night, according to the American Sleep Association. Students getting less than eight hours of sleep on a given night are opening themselves up to a variety of problems. Loss of concentration, short-term memory impairment, a feeling of vulnerability, and possible depression are effects of not getting enough sleep, according to Nancy Turek, a physician assistant at the Cowell Student Health Center. Ultimately, the costs of sacrificing sleep for extra studying time are greater than the benefit. A long-term effect of extended sleep loss is a decrease in the efficiency of the immune system, placing a person at greater risk for infectious diseases, such as colds and flus.
Psychology professor Tracey Kahan is preparing to begin a new study on Sleep and Neuro-Cognition with students. She says, "You can't do everything. Ultimately, people steal from their sleep." She continues, "You cannot perform at your peak if you are chronically sleep-debted." Students who engage in this activity end up in a "perpetual twilight zone" between being awake and asleep.
Students who ignore the advice of the medical profession and choose to sacrifice sleep are sometimes drawn to drugs, such as caffeine and attention deficit treatment, Ritalin, which promise to keep them awake. Turek states that there is no scientific evidence to suggest that taking these drugs will do any long-term harm, other than depriving the taker of much-needed sleep. The body's biological rhythms are set by a person's sleep patterns; when the patterns are disrupted, the systems of the body are out of sync. The only way to synchronize these patterns is to get regular, natural sleep.
Turek states that drugs and alcohol may seem to allow a person to fall asleep faster, but they actually impair the quality of the sleep. Substances like alcohol and marijuana disrupt the body's biological rhythms, negatively affecting the quality of sleep. She also says that naps, while not as good as night-time sleep, can be used to catch up on sleep, if they are not negatively affecting the social life of an individual.
Kahan stresses the importance of making lifestyle choices that lead to regular sleep patterns. She states, "It is a choice. There is a natural social inclination to not take our sleep seriously." Studies have shown that people have trouble objectively judging whether or not they are tired. "By the time you feel sleepy," says Kahan, "you are way past being sleepy." She cites a quote by Bill Dements, who said "sleepiness is red-alert."
A feeling of sleepiness is a signal from the body that sleep is needed. Students need only to listen to their bodies and utilize time management skills in order to ensure that they are consistently getting the correct amount of healthy sleep.