DO YOU REALLY NEED SLEEP?!

Actually, yes you do.

Want to hear a joke? College students get enough sleep every night! Okay, that wasn’t funny, but we can surely all relate.

Sleep is the human body’s greatest natural healer, mood boosters and performance enhancers. In other words, sleep is lit.

Let’s be real, majority of us are grumpy when we don’t get enough sleep. Idealistically, we should be reaching 8 hours of sleep every night.

This benefits the body by creating chemicals that aids energy production, boosts moods, and prevents chronic diseases.

Nigerian University conducted a study on sleep quality and psychological distress among undergraduates (Seun-Fadipe, 2017). They found that there was a direct relationship between poor sleep quality, psychological distress and symptoms of depression and anxiety.

Also many studies have been conducted concluding sleep deprivation negatively affects cognitive ability and mental acuity. The “. . . shorter variants of the PVT (psychomotor vigilance test) have been used successfully to show performance decrements during sleep loss” (Kerkhof, Dongen, 2010).

Basically, lack of sleep can ruin your performance quality. So find out how to decrease the chances of being grumpy and having poor performance with the tips provided!

REM Sleep

You’ve learned the quantity of sleep is important, but the quality counts too!

There’s 5 stages to sleep, but the most important part is the last one called REM. Every time you’ve had a dream you’ve hit the REM stage! If there is a lot of noise while you sleep then you may be woken while in REM sleep, or even not be able to transition into REM sleep (D. 2007, December 18th).

So make sure to steer clear from all distractions. Turn off that Netflix and get some shut eye!

Tips to Improve Behaviour

There are a few different things that you can do to help get rid of the bad behaviours you have and exchange them for a good night’s sleep!

The first thing you can do is stop charging your phone in your room at night.

The reason you should do this is simple, the light and notification sound your phone gives makes will throw your internal system off while you sleep leading you to have a poor rest.

Fun fact, cell phone and laptop screens emit a blue light that resets your internal clock.

This means when you’re looking at your phone at night you’re making your body believe it’s daytime causing to fall asleep more difficult.

The next tip sticks on the topic of your phone. Download and app the gets rid of that blue light as day turns to night.

An app like “Twilight” will slowly make the light emitted from the phone turn red as the sun goes down, red light is much easier on the eyes at night. The final tip would be to limit your intake of caffeine in the day.

Caffeine may be your best friend during the day but at night it turns into your worst enemy. “[Caffeine] has half-life of 3 to 5 hours” (Heffron, 2013). This means the effects of caffeine last for that time frame.

The less caffeine you take in and/or time consumption properly, the more relaxed your body will be as you head to sleep.

Keep in mind, the next time you’re in class and you just couldn’t get to sleep so your eyelids feel heavy, you can’t stop bobbing your heading and are just fighting to keep an eye open; try these tips out! Sleep on and live on!

REFERENCES:

Fadipe, S., Mosaku, C. T., & Samuel, K. (2017). Sleep quality and psychological distress among undergraduate students of a Nigerian university [Abstract]. doi:10.1016/j.sleh.2017.02.004

Kerkhof, G. A., & Van Dongen, H. P. (2010). Human Sleep and Cognition. Retrieved October 13, 2017, from https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OamEBnnNnfgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=human%2Bsleep%2Band%2Bcognition%2Bkerkhof%2C%2Bdongen&ots=GMrmrhZlTP&sig=lf0Y4_e34C-OhJB3GrECsd6FGLc#v=onepage&q=human%20sleep%20and%20cognition%20kerkhof%2C%20dongen&f=false

Kerkhof, G. A., & Van Dongen, H. P. (2010). Human Sleep and Cognition. Retrieved October 13, 2017, from https://books.google.ca/books?hl=en&lr=&id=OamEBnnNnfgC&oi=fnd&pg=PA105&dq=human%2Bsleep%2Band%2Bcognition%2Bkerkhof%2C%2Bdongen&ots=GMrmrhZlTP&sig=lf0Y4_e34C-OhJB3GrECsd6FGLc#v=onepage&q=human%20sleep%20and%20cognition%20kerkhof%2C%20dongen&f=false

Occupied this source from a book(Human Sleep and Cognition, Volume 185: Basic Research) (Progress in Brain Research) on google books.