It is often said that in college you need to find a way to balance academics, social life, and sleep. However academics and social life typically trump sleep in priority. When sleep is ignored it makes people less efficient socially and academically. So the question is: what is the most efficient way to sleep?
There are so many ways we can enhance our sleep and therefor our daily cognition. Circadian rhythm is the key to efficient sleep and production when were awake. Circadian Rhythm dictates when we are tired and when we have our most energy based on our bodies biological 24 hour cycle. Night and day play great roles in circadian rhythm. This is because light inhibits sleep. So at night, when it is dark, the melatonin, a biological hormone, in your body is released more freely, inducing sleep. The optic nerve, the sensory nerves around the eyes, detects light. Melatonin is optimally produced when the optic nerve does not detect any light. Whenever we sleep with the lights on or the blinds open light suppresses the melatonin causing us to not reach a deep sleep. This shows making your room as dark as possible before sleeping will improve the quality and efficiency of our sleep.
Seven to nine hours of sleep per night is typically recommended by sleep experts. However, recent studies show that seven hours of sleep may be more effective then getting eight or nine hours sleep. One study was a observational cancer study. It followed 1.1 million people over the course of six years, watching how much each person slept per night. Surprisingly, the study found that people who slept 6.5 to 7.4 hours a night lived longer on average then those who slept outside of that range. The vast number of people in the study makes the results more impressive, but there is still room for confounding variables. Everyone in the study has different ages, types of cancer, and is in different stages of cancer. These could all heavily effect a study participants mortality regardless of the sleep they get. Another study tracked peoples scores on Lumosity, a website that tests mental cognition, in relation to the hours of sleep each participant reported. The study showed that as hours of sleep rose so did the participants Lumosity average scores until the average of scores peaked at seven hours of sleep. The flaw in both of these studies is that self reporting data is not always accurate. Although there have been many other recent studies also supporting seven hours of sleep is the most efficient amount of time. As college student who have a hard time finding time to sleep, knowing the most efficient amount of hours to sleep can help one build a schedule to work around.
If you are looking to get the best and most efficient sleep possible seven hours of sleep in complete darkness is incredibly effective. In order to balance academics, social life, and sleep you must sleep efficiently so you can perform at the highest cognition academically and socially.
I found this post interesting because as i am writing this i wish i was sleeping instead. I never knew that sleeping in the 6 to 7 hour range is actually better for you than 8 to 9. I’m glad hearing this news beacause i usually never get to sleep for a full 8 hours so being that 6 to 7 is better makes me happy.