Remember nap time in kindergarten? Being forced to slow down and remain still for 20 minutes seemed like cruel and unusual punishment to a 5-year-old, but how many college students would jump at the chance to have an official nap time?
Sleep is an essential bodily function that rejuvenates us from a day’s work. It mentally and physically rejuvenates our bodies so that we are fresh and ready to take on a new day.
Based on a study in 2010, ‘Sleep Patterns and Predictors of Disturbed Sleep in a Large Population of College Students,’ published by the ‘Journal of Adolescent Health,’ students are one of the highest risk groups for lack of sleep — as a college student, I’m saying amen.
During psychology class last week, my professor asked her students to answer some true or false questions on the board and to keep track of how many answers were true out of 20. The class was then asked if three or more were true — all 150 students raised their hands. Unsurprised, the professor gave a sigh and stated, “It looks like all of you might suffer from sleep deprivation.”
According to the National Sleep Foundation, an organization created to improve sleep research and public access to information, a person may need as much as 7 to 10 hours a night of uninterrupted sleep. When this standard is not met, there are short and long-term consequences to an individual’s overall health, including physical, emotional, mental and ultimately monetary costs.
WebMD explains a couple of these unwholesome results as the loss of memory and ability to focus, decreased immunity, increased incidence of injury and reduced performance overall. Along with these symptoms, increased risks of hypertension, depression, stress, anxiety, heart attack and stroke are some of the long-term effects of not sleeping.
To get better sleep, the Mayo Clinic suggests measurable steps to reduce sleep deprivation, including making (and sticking to) a sleep schedule, transforming your room into a successful sleep environment (cool and dark), and exercising during the day. Another step suggested by the Mayo Clinic is to decrease the length of daytime naps, as they could affect your regular sleep schedule.
The next major event Pepperdine should plan is a nap-fest, where power napping pods are set up all around campus, timed for 30 minutes, to reduce the day-to-day exhaustion of being a student. Or perhaps we should all try to go to bed by 10 p.m., every night for a week and see how much of a difference it makes.
As difficult as it may seem to balance being a student, being socially active and getting enough sleep, it is vital to our overall health to get enough sleep to sustain our active lifestyles. To keep sleep in perspective: as humans, we can die when we go three days without water, three weeks without food and eleven days without sleep.
Take-home message: sleep is as vital as eating well. Students should take health seriously and add more Zzz’s in your daily diet.
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Follow Connor Shewmake on Twitter: @connorshewmake
