College Student’s Lack of Sleep Effects Health
Sleep deprivation has become a social norm in the crowd of young adults. There are too many cases where college students compete about the amount of hours they’ve slept the night prior; the one who slept the least wins. Throughout my college career, my peers and I would groan about how we only slept six hours or less the night before. The lack of sleep found in students has become such a norm that we fail to realize how much of a toll it takes on our bodies. Sleep deprivation among students led to many cases of stress, depression, lowered immune system, and increased feelings of fatigue. A combination of symptoms will result to the categories of sleep and depression; sleep and stress/anxiety; and sleep and relationships. With a continuous advancement of technology and online communication, I believe that the internet is the ideal medium for addressing this problem because college students are staying up surfing the internet for many reasons anyways! Students are aware of feeling fatigue and sleeping from the lack of sleep, but I doubt they understand how importance sleep is and how severe the consequences are. I doubt they understand the severity of choosing to stay up for just one more Netflix episode.		Statistical Facts: o According to Dr. Chervin and Dr. Hershner’s research study, “Causes and consequences of sleepiness among college students,” the neurologists claims, “Daytime sleepiness, sleep deprivation, and irregular sleep schedules are highly prevalent among college students, as 50% report daytime sleepiness and 70% attain insufficient sleep.” o Based on the Sleep Organization’s sleep disorder statistics, 37% of 20–39-year-olds report short sleep duration within a 24-hour period.
		How much sleep do we really need? o The amount of sleep varies per person, but on average, most adults need about six-ten hours of sleep per night. The goal is feel well rested.
10 Resolutions to Prevent Sleep Disturbances and Attain a Better Night’s Sleep 1. Stay off electronic devices an hour before your selected bedtime. The light coming off your screens triggers the brain to stay up, so it’s best to not stare at your devices around your bedtime. 2. Develop and maintain a regular and consistent wake and sleep schedule. By doing so, it’ll create a healthy wake and sleep routine for your body to grow accustomed to. Practice this schedule even on the weekends even if you want to sleep in. Sleeping in on the weekends can through off a possibly well put together routine. 3. Avoid nicotine, caffeine, and alcohol a few hours before bed. These are pretty self-explanatory; these drugs all contain ingredients that can keep the brain and body awake. 4. Keep your bedroom as a place to only relax. Only use your bed for sleep. Using your bed and bedroom for other purposes like work, classes, and studying could take away the feeling of comfort. 5. Take short naps earlier in the day if you’re feeling extra tired. Power naps of less than an hour can help you feel fresh if you’re tired, however, taking power naps later in the day can also cause you to stay late at night. Therefore, only nap early in the day if it’s really needed. 6. Make sure your bedroom’s environment is sleep-conductive. Keeping your bedrooms dark, quiet, and cool can help alert your body that it is close to bedtime. Everyone has an internal clock that awakes and sleeps by the amount light it’s exposed to. 7. Use a sleep journal. Recording down the details of when you struggle to sleep, when you slept well, and the amount of sleep you get a night can help you analyze your sleep over time. With the analysis, you can make better sleeping choices. 8. Avoid eating big meals or fatty food a few hours before bed. Eating too close to bedtime can cause your body to stay awake as it breaks down your food. 9. Learn to say “no” to your peers when they invite you out late at night or when you’re close to an assignment deadline. Learn to say “no” to procrastination. 10. Exercising can help wake your body up early in the morning and also use up enough of your energy to tire you out to sleep better at night.
Objective Practices to Help Yourself Avoid Sleep Deprivation and Irregular Sleep Schedules Some simple practices to incorporate into your daily environment and habits can easily be created from a few combinations of a few resolutions listed above. First, try to maintain a consistent bedroom aura. If college students stopped using their bedroom for means other than sleep, then the chances of them falling asleep faster would be on the higher end. The benefits of solely sleeping in your bedroom would create combinations of a sleep-conductive environment. The next simple practice would be to stay off electronic devices an hour before bed. Instead of touching your phone or studying on your laptop, spend about two hours before your bedtime reading a book. This purpose is to let the brain relax from any interactions or critical thinking. In addition, our devices reflect a blue light that triggers the chemicals in our brain to stay awake. On a more difficult level, try improving your resiliency to rejecting friends when invited to go out for drinks on a Friday night will be extremely beneficial because I will be able to maintain my sleep schedule. In addition, avoiding the occasion of coming home intoxicate will not affect my sleep schedule. Lastly, on a more long term commitment, practice maintain a consistent sleep schedule. A personal habit that I’m trying to incorporate into my living style to feel less fatigue every day is to create and maintain a better sleep schedule by sleeping earlier. First, I would adjust my sleep routine in small increments of 15 minutes for a few days then increase the increments to 30 minutes the following days. I will keep doing this until my body has been able to adjust to sleeping at 10PM every night and waking up at 6AM the following day. Adjusting to this kind of consistent sleep schedule can help me get at least eight hours of sleep every night, wake up when the sun rises, and give me the chance to get more things done when my internal clock should be awake. There is no exact timeline of when I’ll be able to determine when I perfect my sleep schedule, but after maintaining this sleep schedule for at least a month, I’ll start to feel less fatigue.

Lisa Her takes full responsibility for the information posted.

The information on this page represents that of Lisa Her and not that of California State University, Sacramento.