Sleep is vital to every type of life on earth, especially college students. As college
students, we scream with joy at the thought of a full night's rest because on average we get about
six to seven hours of sleep a night. The average adult requires about seven to nine hours of sleep.
Due to the stressful nature of college life, students are getting much less sleep than they need.
Considering the amount of concentration and intelligence required during college is it healthy to
be losing out on this much sleep?
During the question and answer portion of Dr. Cavanaugh’s talk about his sleep research with Drosophila and the circadian clock gates, the topic of sleep debt was brought up. Dr. Cavanaugh stated that if we are losing sleep during the week, then we are able to make up for the lost hours of sleep by catching up over the weekend by sleeping in for a few hours. However, if we do not catch up on our sleep over a long period of time our neurons begin to degenerate. Dr. Cavanaugh spoke of a study done that tested the attention/concentration level of a subject that received six hours of sleep for a week. The test required the subject to stare at a grey fuzzy screen and press a button when a dot appeared on the screen. This task seems fairly simple, if not boring, however the subject who received six hours of sleep during the week did poorly on this test. Dr. Cavanaugh said that the subject would keep nodding off and was not able to perform the task. The subject performed at the same cognitive level as a subject that was kept up for a day and a half.
This thought shocked me because over the past four years I have been getting about six hours of sleep if not less almost every night. Over time this has affected my health, and there is no doubt. I have noticed I have very low energy, my eating habits are unhealthy, and my concentration ability has severely decreased. I began to think I should be able to catch up on my missing hours of sleep over the weekend, but then I did the calculations and realized it was almost impossible for anyone to catch up on their sleep.
During the question and answer portion of Dr. Cavanaugh’s talk about his sleep research with Drosophila and the circadian clock gates, the topic of sleep debt was brought up. Dr. Cavanaugh stated that if we are losing sleep during the week, then we are able to make up for the lost hours of sleep by catching up over the weekend by sleeping in for a few hours. However, if we do not catch up on our sleep over a long period of time our neurons begin to degenerate. Dr. Cavanaugh spoke of a study done that tested the attention/concentration level of a subject that received six hours of sleep for a week. The test required the subject to stare at a grey fuzzy screen and press a button when a dot appeared on the screen. This task seems fairly simple, if not boring, however the subject who received six hours of sleep during the week did poorly on this test. Dr. Cavanaugh said that the subject would keep nodding off and was not able to perform the task. The subject performed at the same cognitive level as a subject that was kept up for a day and a half.
This thought shocked me because over the past four years I have been getting about six hours of sleep if not less almost every night. Over time this has affected my health, and there is no doubt. I have noticed I have very low energy, my eating habits are unhealthy, and my concentration ability has severely decreased. I began to think I should be able to catch up on my missing hours of sleep over the weekend, but then I did the calculations and realized it was almost impossible for anyone to catch up on their sleep.
If I was able to get six hours of sleep a night and the average amount of sleep an adult should get every night is eight hours, then that would mean I am missing two hours of sleep every night. Over five weekdays that amounts to sleeping an extra ten hours over the weekend. In theory that does not sound like much sleep, but then you add in the normal eight hours of sleep during the weekend and that amounts to a total of twenty six hours of sleep. Realistically, it is not possible to get ten hours of extra sleep over the weekend for a number of reasons, such as weekend plans, going to church early Sunday morning, and staying up late on Saturday night. So, in reality is it possible to catch up on sleep?
Thinking outside of my personal lack of sleep, almost every college experiences this lack of sleep. This must have an effect on us once we move on from college, such as a decreased ability to concentrate on one task, insomnia, and several others. What about the college lifestyle is making students stay up into the late hours partying or doing homework? Do we understand the repercussions of pulling all nighters for an exam?
Over time college students are losing more and more sleep and are not able to repay their sleep debt. Several studies have shown that there are many serious health problems associated with long term sleep deprivation. Future studies might investigate the specific effects college students lack of sleep have on their health in the future. These studies might lead to students taking care of their health and sticking to a healthy sleep schedule.
References:
Cavanaugh, Daniel J., Abigail S. Vigderman, Terry Dean, David S. Garbe, and Amita Sehgal. "The Drosophila Circadian Clock Gates Sleep through Time-of Day Dependent Modulation of Sleep- Promoting Neurons." Sleep 39.2 (2016): 345-56. Web. 25 Feb. 2017.
https://www.google.com/search?q=how+many+hours+of+sleep+do+college+students+get+on+average&oq=how+many+hours+of+sleep+do+college+&aqs=chrome.3.0j69i57j0l4.7307j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/sleep/how-much-sleep-do-you-need.htm
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