Sleep Deprivation Among College Students example essay topic

Sleep Deprivation Sleeping is something that is an essential part of human nature and is a must in order for one to be a functional human being. Sleep is an idea that is accompanied by many wives' tales, including the ideas that one needs seven to eight hours of sleep each night and alcohol helps one fall asleep and sleep more soundly. One myth about sleep is that during sleeping, one is in a state of nothingness. In truth, however, it has been discovered that during sleep the brain is active, variations in heartbeat and breathing occur, and the eyes and ears are active throughout the time of sleep. These activities during a person's sleep are important because they help that person be more aware, awake, and alert during consciousness. If all of these important activities occur during sleep, why is it that people are so willing to short themselves of this vital activity?

Although much about sleep still remains a mystery, research and experiments continue to show how important sleep is to each and every person. Throughout this paper, I will discuss sleep and the effects that it has on performance and health, especially in college students. A college student's sleeping pattern is a reliable indicator to their level of performance in the classroom and other school-affiliated activities, as a lack of sleep leads to decreased performance. Sleep is directly related the level of performance and health in an individual; the more rested a person is, the better that person will perform and feel (Dryer, 1986). One question that people seem to be unsure about is exactly how much sleep is enough sleep? In Inside Insomnia: How to Sleep Better Tonight, Dryer tells that the ideal amount of sleep may vary from person to person.

She states that while seven to eight hours may seem to be the accepted average, there are no fixed norms. Some people sleep two hours nightly, while others sleep nine to twelve hours nightly without complaint. She goes on to say that as long as the hours of sleep that one has gotten leaves them feeling energetic and alert the next morning, then that person has met their sleep needs. Sleeping in excess does not always allow the person to feel more awake the next morning. Dryer believes that trying to sleep longer than needed will lead to hours of tossing and turning, and not necessarily feeling more awake the next morning. Basically, the ideal amount of sleep is whatever the amount is that leaves the person feeling awake and alert the following day.

Regardless of the amount of time spent sleeping, if one wakes up feeling tired and experiences this tiredness throughout the day, that person is not providing him or herself with enough sleep and is experiencing sleep deprivation. No fixed guidelines exist as to how much sleep a person needs. This varies in the individual and will also vary throughout that individual's lifetime. Although there is no clear cut definition, sleep deprivation is referred to as a condition of not having as much restful sleep as on needs (Dryer 1986).

It is strongly believed that being rested and awake are vital in order for a person to be able to perform at their maximum potential throughout their day to day activities. When examining sleep and college students, many unusual sleeping patterns are observed. It is not unusual for a student to go to bed at 2 or 3 a.m. and sleep until 12 p.m. This sleeping pattern can be disturbed when a student is overloaded with work and either stays up later than usual, or gets up earlier than usual. Here, the student's normal sleeping pattern is disturbed and the student may experience extreme tiredness throughout the day. With the demanding schedule that many college students have, their sleep patterns may vary greatly from night to night, greatly affecting the way that they feel from one day to the next.

College students are at a high-risk for sleep deprivation. Many factors of a college student's life can lead to sleep deprivation, including living with roommates, excessive homework, a busy schedule, and partying at night. Many college students drive themselves to succeed, with little regard for the amount of sleep that their body needs. They put their academic and social obligations in front of their body's sleeping needs and oftentimes, are affected negatively from this. There are many precursors that can lead to sleep deprivation. These include caffeine, noise, irregular hours, job and work stress, money worries, pain, depression, alcohol, and medications.

Almost all of these are active in a college student's life. College student's often have lots of work to do and feel that they do not have enough time to do it. This leads to stress, irregular hours and often a diet that consists of caffeine. Furthermore, many college students do not have the time to work as much as they would like and often face financial difficulties. Also, the use of alcohol is greatly increased during an individual's time in college, which can also lead to a lack of sleep (Dryer 1986). All of these causes can lead to a person being deprived of the necessary amount that they need to perform throughout the day.

Inadequate sleep is endemic in societies that prized irregular hours and view sleep as a time that an individual could be using to work. This attitude leads to a lack of sleep and a decreased performance level. In society today, people often feel as though there is not enough time in the day to accomplish what they want to. "Time is money". People in our society do everything that they can to save time, whether it be driving fast, eating breakfast or lunch on the run, or spending more time working and less time sleeping. This can also be seen in college students, as they often feel that they do not have enough time in their day to balance all of their priorities.

Many college students find themselves juggling academics, athletics, and social lives. This can leave little time for sleep and students often look as sleep as a waste of time. They want to get as much work or socializing done in one day as possible, and feel that many times sleep takes away from what they want to do. When students put other activities over adequate sleep, they may see a decline in performance and / or health. Sleep is a necessity and should not be sacrificed. Rather than not sleeping, an alternative that students can pursue is better time management.

Students need to sleep enough for their bodies to feel rested in order for them to perform to their potential mentally, physically, and emotionally. Timothy H. Monk, author of Sleep, Sleepiness, and Performance, elaborated on this correlation in his writings. During almost all of the tests he administered or studied, he said that five elements existed. He said that all subjects that were tested experienced some sort of uncontrollable nap, even during some of the tasks that they were tested in. These sleeps were accompanied by "semi-waking dreams" (Monk 100).

After enough sleep deprivation, subjects could not complete memory tasks because some sort of mental lapse prevented them from doing so. Keeping a daily rhythm increased one's performance within 24 hours and recovery sleep was much deeper than normal sleep in terms of "arousal threshold to a painful stimulus (Monk 100). Monk said that these elements were evident in basically every sleep deprivation experiment that has been conducted. An experiment done on cyclists can be used to illustrate the effects that sleep can have on one's performance. The cyclists were given only three hours of sleep, and at first seemed to suffer no side effects during their performance.

However, when looked at, it was found that the cyclist's bodies were working much harder internally, as their heart-rates increased and oxygen consumption decreased. Also, lactic acid was at higher concentrations in the cyclists that were sleep-deprived. Lactic acid is a substance that builds up in exhausted and tired muscles. This excess of lactic acid showed that sleep-deprivation has a direct effect on muscle performance (Coren 1996). When trying to perform for an extended period of time, endurance will be greatly affected and muscles will tire much faster if an individual is sleep deprived. College athletes, who must balance busy academic and athletic schedules, often unknowingly experience this type of effect.

Many spend more hours a week with academics and athletics than their body's sleeping patterns can provide for. Furthering the correlation between sleep and one's performance and health is the new era of scientific research that shows the effect of sleep deprivation on the immune system. While the link to sleep and the immune system still has controversies because it is a new discovery, many scientists agree that some aspects of the immune system are greatly affected by sleep. Mice were tested to examine whether sleep had and effect on the influenza virus.

The study showed that sleep-deprived mice immunized with the influenza vaccine were just as vulnerable to the virus as mice that were not immunized. Critics of this relationship believe that sleep deprivation leads to a susceptibility of colds and the flu through an increase in stress, not weakening of the immune system. However, research has shown that sleep deprivation decreased the number of killer cells within the body by twenty-eight percent. When normal sleep was reintroduced, the number of killer cells returned to the normal level. Gary Zammit stated his reaction to the findings as, "These findings suggest that sleep is vital to regulation of immunity and that even a modest disturbance of sleep reduces the body's immune responses". Personally, I also believe that for whatever reason, sleep does have a direct impact on one's health.

I notice that I sleep much less at college than I do at home. Furthermore, I notice that I often deal with sicknesses at college more than I had in the past at home. Another example of the susceptibility to sickness is the presence of meningitis outbreaks in college. Although part of the reason is because of the close living quarters that college students experience, the disease usually strikes individuals who are run down and tired. Meningitis is much more present in college than most settings and I believe a major reason is because of the lack of sleep that many college students get (Zammit 1997). Memory, an important function to every college student, is another element that is affected by a lack of sleep.

Short term memory, as well as long term memory, is said to decrease during a time that sleep is lacking. This is caused in part by attention deficit that is present during sleeplessness. The attention deficit results in "rehearsal failure during memorization" (Monk 107). This rehearsal failure can have a tremendous effect on a student who is studying while experiencing sleeplessness. "Reductions in immediate recall have been shown to occur during sleeplessness, even when it is verified that the to-be-remembered was perceived by the subject" (Monk 107). A short term memory loss greatly affects college students when they are studying or taking a test.

If a student has multiple tests in a given week, that student may be counterproductive if trying to study for too many hours. The student may actually be better off studying less, and sleeping more. "It is very difficult for sleepy participants... to keep their attention fixed. They often miss important information.

It is as though their consciousness is flickering on and off (Coren 74). This statement can be used to show that many college students may not perform to their highest potential on tests if they are not getting enough rest. Staying up late and "cramming" the night before a test may result in a decrease in performance. Cramming is especially common in college students during weeks of final examinations or mid-terms.

Studies would imply that students performance would increase with the more well-rested the individuals were. As sleep deprivation is prolonged, the effects become more severe. Paranoia and aggressive behavior have been linked with the continuation of sleep deprivation when present for more than five continuous days. In the most extreme cases, sleep deprivation can be accompanied by misperceptions, illusions, and even hallucinations due to the lack of needed sleep (Zammit).

Although rare and extreme, cases such as these have been documented. Sleep deprivation can also be detrimental when associated with emotional trauma. When deprived of sleep during a time of emotional distress, people are at a greater risk of becoming psychotic and needing electroshock therapy. While many of these effects are rare, they all have been known to exist. Research shows that sleep is a necessity in order for someone to be able to perform at their maximum potential. College students are no exception to the rule and are often at a greater risk to suffer from conditions that accompany sleep deprivation.

Regardless of the time period, a college student must be well rested in order to perform at his or her best in terms of physical performance, memorization capabilities, and test-taking abilities. Also, without adequate sleep, the person will be more susceptible to illnesses, both mental and physical. In conclusion, I believe that sleep deprivation among college students is extremely common and has a direct effect on how well that student will perform or feel.