In today’s world, sleep bows down and is sacrificed to most college students’ seemingly more important duties. What many students may not realize, though, is that sleep is just as important as a healthy diet and regular exercise. Sleep can also affect one’s health more than most students know.
While some may have recognized that lack of sleep negatively affects performance in daily activities, many are unaware of an “increased risk for cardiovascular disease,” said Lora Larkin, BC professor of behavioral sciences.
David White, professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School, took 70,000 nurses and studied their sleep habits in co-existence with heart attacks for ten years. The result he attained showed that the nurses who slept less than six hours a night were 40 percent more at risk for a heart attack than those who got eight to nine hours of sleep.
“With sleep deprivation, the sympathetic nervous system becomes activated. As a result, your blood vessels constrict and your blood pressure rises.which can play a role in heart disease,” White said.
In addition, better sleep can boost one’s immune system. “With more sleep, your body is more able to fight off bacteria,” Larkin stated.
A lack of sleep also affects a student’s ability to retain information. According to Larkin, sleep deprivation is a “vicious cycle.” Sleep helps people build supplies of energy that allow one to function. When one is sleep deficient, “glucocorticoid levels increase, which break down the stored energy in the brain, and we lose information we learned previously. The material we learn becomes less accessible to us over the course of the day,” Larkin said.
Sophomore Mike Evans is involved in photography, web design and also runs a small ID business.
Therefore, sleep is very important to the execution of his tasks. Evans gets an average of seven hours of sleep a night. However, when he is stressed, he sleeps poorly, which disrupts his day.
“When I’m stressed, and I have trouble sleeping, I can’t pay attention. My mind wanders; I lose all focus and cannot think of what I have to do,” said Evans.
A common misconception among college students is that if they sleep frequently, they will be okay.
However, “quality of sleep is just as important, if not more important, than quantity,” Larkin said. One can sleep eight hours a night but still feel tired.
Suppressants and depressants such as caffeine and alcohol can reduce the quality of sleep and ruin the REM (Rapid Eye Movement) sleep cycle. “During this important phase of sleep, the brain turns learned information into memory. We are in a state of dreaming and the body’s brainwave activity is the same as if we were awake,” Larkin stated.
For those worried about their weight, “the association between inadequate sleep and obesity is undeniable,” said Lawrence J. Cheskin, director of the John Hopkins Weight Management Center.
According to johnshopkinshealthalerts.com, a study of 924 people showed that those who weighed the least slept the most and visa versa. “Compared with people who got seven to nine hours of rest each night, people who regularly slept less than four hours nightly were 73 percent more likely to suffer from obesity,” Cheskin stated.
In the future, instead of staying up, weigh the pros and cons of sleep deprivation, give the brain a chance to build up energy, and “sleep on it.”