It’s no secret that being tired can make you cranky, but as a I lay in bed in my stifling hot dorm, I began to wonder what the effects of sleeplessness are on human beings. To begin this journey down the twisted path of wakefullness, I started with two of the worst case scenarios.
Severe Sleep Deprivation
Some of you may have heard of radio DJ Peter Tripp who stayed awake for over 8 full days without sleeping. Clearly this is an extreme case and should not be extrapolated without supporting evidence to all human beings. That caveat aside, Tripp’s case is very interesting with regard to the reaction he experienced. After only two days Tripp began to experience hallucinations as well as a severe deterioration of cognitive ability. Simple tests began to cause a laborious effort by Tripp.
Despite this 8 day long marathon of sleep deprivation, Tripp doesn’t even hold the world record for longest time without sleep. That dubious honor resides with Randy Gardner who stayed awake for 11 days and 24 minutes. Gardner did this when he was only 17 in an experiment for a high school science fair. Once again, the longer he stayed awake, the more psychological deficiencies he experienced. Basic math began to elude him as the deprivation became more and more severe.
Sleep Deprivation in College Students
Sleep deprivation is no laughing matter. After just 17 hours of being awake consistently, a person’s functionality is reduced by the same amount as if they had 2 glasses of wine. It turns out that high school and college students are some of the most at-risk people for poor sleep habits. “Sleep Deprivation: Consequences for Students” discusses the issue of academic performance and grade and the effect that sleep deprivation has on students. The study found a correlation between poor sleep habits and poor academic performance. Now those of you reading this might be saying “Meghan, that’s a correlation and doesn’t necessarily mean that sleep deprivation causes worse grades.” Fortunately, sleep deprivation is something that is easy to perform experiments on. 
This one performed on medical students found that the longer a student was awake, the longer it took them to complete simple tests and tasks. Even more concerning, their performance wasn’t nearly as good when they had been awake for a long period of time. It seems like how much sleep you get can directly impact how well you do in school.
The Most Interesting Part
As I was conducting my research for this post, I happened across plenty of interesting facts and pieces of information. The most interesting for me was…. Are you ready? Okay. Here’s the kicker. As illustrated above, sleep is key to maintain a normal, healthy, non-psychotic daily routine, but scientists still don’t know why it is important for humans. There are many theories that have been discussed, but no one really knows for sure why we need it. This is something we spend almost 1/3 of our lives doing and yet the mechanism is still unknown. We know skipping it is bad for you and can cause serious damage, but no one really understands why we need it in the first place.
Why does it matter?
As college students we will experience our fair share of sleepless nights as we finish up tests, essays, and for some of you, blogs, but the real takeaway message here is that sleeplessness can interfere with mental function. You many think that you can handle two all-nighters in a row, but that is really not healthy for you or your body. Sleep is essential to doing well in school so stop procrastinating, get off Yik Yak, and get to bed.
That’s all for now.
Meghan
Being new to the college life, I find myself staying up much later each night than I would have in high school. I am up late doing homework each night. This is causing me to be extremely tired during the day. As said above, if students are suffering from sleep deprivation from doing homework, than why do professors pile on so much work? If there was a little less work each night, than students would get more sleep and be able to function throughout the school day.
Cali,
Thank you for your kind words! While it is definitely true that reverse causation could be a factor here, I am inclined to think that if it is, it is in conjunction with the sleep deprivation harming grades. I say this on the basis of the medical student experiment mentioned in the blog above. Those students weren’t concerned with studying for the experimental tests given, but did show a decrease in academic performance with lack of sleep. Therefore, I believe that while reverse causation could be an issue, it is more of a tangential issue that doesn’t fully explain the problem, especially because sleep deprivation also occurs in adults.
Thank you for your comment!
I just want to start with , I love your writing style! It’s great! And hate to say it but I think even with the experiments, inverse correlation could still be involved between grades and sleep. If a student sleeps less they get worse grades; or if a student gets worse grades they sleep less because of studying. It could go either way. But no matter what this was such a great topic! Nice job!
This was a great read! Personally I have begun to sleep less and less now that I am a full blown college student. I notice the effect it has on me and my academic process. I wonder if there is a difference between staying up very late to do work and then falling asleep or going to sleep and then waking up early to do work? I have struggled with how to handle this situation and your article scared me into figuring it out! So, thanks! My theory on why we need sleep is because our body needs to fully shut down. It too needs a break. Our bodies need to rest up so it can conquer the next day!
Seeing the harmful effects sleeplessness can have, it makes me wonder why the education system does not try to prevent this, possibly by giving less homework and making tests less difficult so students will not be up all night trying to study for it and such. Ever since I was a freshman in high school I wondered why the teaching staff burdened us with so much work every night after explaining to us that getting eight hours of sleep was so important to us being good students. It was a bit contradictory because they were effectively preventing us from sleeping when they were telling us to sleep more. A bit counterintuitive if you ask me.
Personally, I have experienced my fair share of “all-nighters” and exhaustion, especially as a student. Honestly, I am even so tired right now writing this post, squinting my eyes just to see the computer screen! So if this comment is poorly written, lets blame it on my exhaustion. I wish scientists did know why it’s important for humans because I am struggling! I am not sure how it was possible for Randy Gardner to stay awake for those 11 days and 24 minutes, I hope he slept for at least 24 hours after that, I personally could not last that long!
Personally, I have experienced my fair share of “all-nighters” and exhaustion, especially as a student. Honestly, I am even so tired right now writing this post, squinting my eyes just to see the computer screen! So if this comment is poorly written, lets blame it on my exhaustion. I wish scientists did know why it’s important for humans because I am struggling! I am not sure how it was possible for Randy Gardner to stay awake for those 11 days and 24 minutes, I hope he slept for at least 24 hours after that, I personally could not last that long!
It is crazy isn’t it? This again might be a case where the mechanism isn’t as important as the result, but I would certainly like to know!
This was really cool to read! It kind of scares me that they still do not know why we need sleep so much.. I thought a basic way to put it was that our bodies need to re-charge and regain energy. I googled, to see if i could find anything new that you had not talked about, but just found the “theories” you spoke of. This is crazy and I find it kind of irritating that scientists still do not know why we need sleep. This link provided a little settling with the possibilities of why we MIGHT be so dependent on sleep: http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/benefits-of-sleep/why-do-we-sleep