Exiles from the land of nod
Feeling tired? You aren't alone. Fully 80% of university students aren't getting enough sleep, according to a report by Stanford University sleep expert William Dement.
Using Stanford students as a study group, Dement and his team discovered that the chief complaint of university students is lack of sleep. A former Stanford student, golfer Tiger Woods, says that one reason he left university for professional golfing was "to get more sleep."
Why is this of any concern? After all, university only comes once; we have the rest of our lives to catch up on missed sleep. As PPEist Joe Perkins, protested, "I get eight hours a day, because sleeping at night is for wimps."
The effects of sleep deprivation are familiar: daytime drowsiness, mood swings, impaired memory function, a suppressed immune system, and a loss of creative capacity. Student James Mackintosh said, "I'll get ten hours a night two nights a week, but the other five days I'll only get five hours or so. It's really not enough. I definitely notice that I lack concentration, and it's more severe on the days after I've only slept for a few hours. And it's bad for my health - I fall ill really easily," he said.
Like Mackintosh, one-third of university students get less than five hours' sleep on at least two nights of the week. A University of Surrey study shows that, comparatively, only 20% of British adults suffer from sleep deprivation. Jessica Alexander, a Sleep Council consultant, said, "Students are young enough to stand the pace and the missed sleep, but it's clear from that fact that many of them admit to dozing off in different places that it's having a detrimental effect on their well-being."
University students need between seven and nine hours of sleep a night in order to function properly. Sleeping less may result in sleep debt, the name that sleep researchers have given to the accumulated effects of too little sleep. Like any debt, sleep debt must be repaid in full, with one hour for every hour missed. Yet, according to the Sleep Council, only 20% of students catch up on lost sleep with early nights once or twice a week. However, research done by the Sleep Foundation suggests that long-term sleep debt might be internalised by the body in the form of lasting health effects.
However, new research also suggests that simply making up one's sleep debt might not be enough. Professor James Maas, a sleep researcher and author, claims that losing one hour of sleep each night creates an equal amount of sleep debt as staying up all night once a week. Additionally, individuals with fluctuating sleep patterns are twice as likely to experience severe daytime fatigue and other effects than are those whose sleep patterns are regular, even where both groups get equal amounts of sleep on average.
Not getting enough sleep isn't the only explanation behind persistent tiredness. Aside from chronic-fatigue illnesses such as glandular fever or Epstein-Barr virus, a range of factors including seasonal-affective disorder and stress can stop the body from reaping the benefits of rest. Mira Gratier gets more than eight hours of sleep nightly, "except when I have an essay crisis," she said. However, she also admits to daytime drowsiness, "I think it's got to do with the light. As soon as it gets dark, my brain just tells my body to shut down."
Charlie Goldsmith, JCR welfare office at Balliol, said, "Most people know that sleep is important, which means that they know their failure to sleep is not unimportant. But that only makes things even more difficult." Goldsmith is something of an expert on this point, having spent the better part of his year living out sleeping in his college law library to avoid having to go back to his house. Put on the spot, he responded, "I was really busy, and it would have been a waste of time to go back out to my house every night."
Finalist Imran Fazal, a reformed sleeper who was once infamous for missing any lectures and tutorials that took place earlier than noon, said, "My attitude to work changed, so now I go to bed earlier and get seven hours of sleep a night. It might have something to do with getting older, but going to sleep earlier really is an important thing."
Students may be well aware that they need more sleep, but sleep turns out to be more than healthful: it's slimming. Up to a half-pint of moisture is lost during the course of a night's sleep, suggesting one possible solution to student sleeplessness: the Sleep Diet.
14th Oct 1999