How To Sleep When You Go to College
Poor sleep habits and sleep deprivation are serious problems for most high school and college students. One reason is because of a misunderstanding or lack of understanding of sleep hygiene. Sleep is particularly important during these crucial years.
For this reason, we offer sleep insights.
Balancing the demands on your time, a full course load, extracurricular activities, socializing and making new friends, can be challenging. And, it is not as though your work and family commitments disappear entirely, either, when you go away to school. It can feel that there aren’t enough hours in the day. With so many competing priorities, many times sleep takes a backseat to getting everything done.
Despite sleepiness you might feel the next day, a night or two of inadequate sleep probably won’t have a major impact on a student’s health. However, regularly short-changing yourself on sleep quality can have serious health implications that affect school, work, and both mental and physical health. For that reason, it is important to prioritize sleep. It will help make the school years healthier, less stressful, and offer more long-term success.
How much sleep do you need? How much do you get?
According to the National Sleep Foundation, high school students aged 14-17 need about eight to ten hours of sleep each night. For young adults, those in the college age range, they require between seven and nine hours. The question is: How much sleep do you need? According to Dr. Edward Pace-Schott, Harvard Summer School and Harvard Medical School faculty member and sleep expert, you can answer that question simply by observing how much you sleep when you don’t need to get up.
“When you’ve been on vacation for two weeks, how are you sleeping during that second week? How long are you sleeping? If you’re sleeping eight or nine hours when you don’t have any reason to get up, then chances are you need that amount or close to that amount of sleep,” says Pace-Schott.
How much sleep do students need?
Most students, though, get far less sleep than the recommended amount. Seventy to 96 percent of college students get less than eight hours of sleep each weeknight. Over half of college students sleep less than seven hours per night. The same is true of high school students. It is estimated that 73 percent of high school students gets between seven and seven and a half hours of sleep per night.
As I did in college, many students try to catch up on lost sleep by sleeping longer on the weekend. Unfortunately, this pattern is not a healthy one. It is also not a long-term solution for sleep deprivation. Some students, on the other hand, say that they can function on just a few hours of sleep. “There are very few individuals who are so-called short sleepers, people who really don’t need more than six hours of sleep. But there are a lot more people who claim to be short sleepers than there are real short sleepers,” says Pace-Schott.
What are the consequences of sleep deprivation?
The consequences of sleep deprivation are well established. Still, some may be surprising. For example, sleep deprivation can create the same level of cognitive impairment as drinking alcohol. Did you know that? It’s true. According to the CDC, staying awake for eighteen hours can have the same effect as a blood alcohol content of 0.05 percent. Staying awake for 24 hours can equate to a blood alcohol content of 0.10 percent, which is higher than the legal limit of 0.08 percent.
According to research by AAA, drowsy driving causes an average of just under 350,000 motor vehicle accidents each year in the United States. Drivers who sleep less than five hours a night are more than five times as likely to have a crash as drivers who sleep for seven hours or more.
What are the other signs of chronic sleep deprivation?
The other signs include daytime sleepiness and fatigue, irritability and a short temper, mood changes, trouble coping with stress, difficulty focusing, concentrating, and remembering things, and brain fog. Long-term chronic sleep deprivation can have a serious impact on your mental and physical health, which is crucial to avoid while in high school and college. Poor sleep is also linked to weight gain and obesity, cardiovascular disease, and Type 2 diabetes.
For these reasons, it’s important to be conscious of the quality and quantity of sleep you get during your years at college. Pay attention to how you feel. Know that there are many reasons to plan your days to account for adequate sleep. To learn more about going away to college, and how to be successful, please see our Dorm Deck on our sister site, www.hackdecks.com.