You’ve heard it from your mom, your professors, your doctor, and even your friends. “Get your 8 hours”.
There’s no disputing that the one-on-one time with your pillow is the best part of anyone’s day. The problem is that the average college student can’t seem to squeeze in their 8 hours. Between a challenging academic schedule, meetings, extracurriculars, and trying to have some remnant of a social life, it’s a challenge for us collegiettes to make it to bed on time. But that’s college, right? All-nighters in the library or staying up too late with your roommates may seem like no big deal when you can make up for your lost hours over weekend, but scientists are suggesting otherwise.
The concept of sleep debt was introduced to me last year when people around me were using apps on their phones to track their sleeping cycles and measure the amount of sleep lost, also known as your sleep debt. The term sleep debt refers to the common idea that sleep is like a bank account that you can short from time to time as long as your repay it at some point.
As much as we would like to think that repaying what we lost on the weekends makes up for how little we slept all week, it’s not so simple. New studies have started to discredit the idea that sleep debt is something that can be repaid. It’s more useful to think of sleep in the same way we do exercise. We all know that if we overindulged all week, one long gym session would not cure all the damage we did.
Researchers estimate that four to five nights of partial sleep deprivation (running on four hours or so) reduces cognitive abilities as much as one night of total sleep deprivation (not sleeping at all) would. Though you may feel better after eight hours or so of “recovery sleep”, studies show that it takes a few days of normal full sleep cycles for the brain to fully recover and your attention levels to return to normal.
So what can you do? Some scientists have proposed that you can ease the sting of sleep deprivation in short two-hour increments, whether it be taking naps, or going to bed two hours earlier than normal. Though you may not be able to replace everything you lost all at once, catching up a little bit every night does keep you from experiencing the nasty effects of extreme sleep deprivation like craving junk food, lowering your immunity to sickness, raising your chance of being in a car accident, depression, and impaired memory.
According to Harvard’s Sleep Health Center, the real key to addressing our sleep issues is to stop regarding sleep as a luxury and realize it’s vital to our physical and mental well-being. Our days are filled with obligations to others and often times we forget that our needs are important too. Determine how much sleep you need and build yourself a schedule. Some people can get by with seven hours, when others need a good nine or ten to even function. Adopting a realistic sleep schedule will help you wake up easier and better rested.
Do it for yourselves, ladies. You deserve it.
SOURCES
http://www.forbes.com/sites/daviddisalvo/2014/02/23/the-good-and-bad-new…
http://www.health.harvard.edu/fhg/updates/Repaying-your-sleep-debt.shtml
http://www.sleepdex.org/debt.htm
http://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/myths-and-facts-about-sleep/p…
http://www.lifeevolver.com/pay-sleep-debt-smart/
http://health.usnews.com/health-news/family-health/articles/2012/03/05/1…