Since I have been here at Penn State, I have waken up several mornings completely exhausted. Sometimes I can barely wake up in the morning, and my eyes feel droopy. Everyone loves sleep, and frankly, we could all use more. So many hours should college students really get?
Americans overall are getting less and less sleep. If you are a college student, it is likely you are not getting enough sleep. According to the University Health Center, college students receive 6 to 6.9 hours of sleep each night. This is often due to an intense schedule of classes, work, extracurricular activities, and social activities. Research from various health and sleep studies have shown that college students who do not receive the proper amount of sleep per night negatively affects our mood, health, and how we perform on schoolwork and exams. So why do people in general, but especially college students need sleep?
Having a sufficient amount of sleep each night will give our bodies enough energy to get through the next day, helps fight of illnesses by improving our immune system, helps us think more clearly and efficiently, and helps us have a better performance throughout the day. Having the right amount of sleep will greatly improve our cognitive development, helping our brains remember stuff easier. The University Health Center declares that college students should aim to get 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night.
College students seem to be at more risk for not receiving the right amount of sleep compared to other individuals. Even though 8 hours is the recommended amount of sleep for college students to get, that is probably not going to happen. Reported by Geneseo at The State University of New York, even not getting 10 hours of sleep a night can make a college student feel unrested. We think we can “catch up” on sleep on the weekends, but we cannot catch up on sleep once it is lost. Constantly not getting enough sleep will interfere with our sleep cycle, and can easily lead to insomnia.
Here are some helpful tips from The State University of New York to help college students get the proper amount of sleep, or at least improve our sleep schedule. The first tip they give is to adjust the amount of alcohol we consume and easily messes up our sleep cycle. Second, if any of us participate in smoking, we should decrease this as much as possible because it worsens our concentration levels. Exercising daily and eating a well-balanced diet will help us fall and stay asleep longer at night, and can even prevent waking up during the middle of the night. Now, I know this can be hard, but reducing the amount of caffeine we ingest will help us in the long run. As college students, many of us love coffee and often drink severe cups a day to stay awake in class and late at night while doing homework. However, caffeine will only increase the likelihood of insomnia to occur and disrupts the sleep cycle. The study says college students should not take in caffeine within 4 hours of going to bed, which most of us do not to. Many of college students drink caffeine throughout the night while studying, and continue to drink caffeine the next day.
Below is a link on how college students and people in general can get a healthier night of sleep. The link includes strategies we can all perform to get a better night’s sleep such as maintaining a sleep schedule, performing deep breathing exercises to reduce physical and emotional stress, and to get out of bed if you cannot fall asleep:
http://www.geneseo.edu/webfm_send/5596
Sources:
https://www.uhs.uga.edu/sleep/
http://www.geneseo.edu/health/sleep