Students and insomnia. Two words that go together like peanut butter and jelly. Either you can’t sleep at night because you took a nap after school, had too much coffee in the afternoon, pulled an all-nighter, or just have too much stuff on your mind. Insomnia or sleep depravation is a very common thing among college students. A recent Stanford University research showed that the average sleep requirement for college students is well over eight hours. If this amount is not obtained, a sleep debt is created, and all lost sleep accumulates progressively. But come on, does any college student actually get a good eight hours of sleep?
With school work, homework, projects, exams and even work, we are always busy and don’t seem to find the time to get our eight hours of sleep. However, organizing your week and not waiting until the last minute to do stuff will allow you to have some more hours of sleep. Pulling all-nighters is definitely not good for our health, especially if you use “study drugs” like Adderall.
Going to bed past midnight will alter your biological clock, and believe me, fixing it is not easy. If you go to bed late, you’ll either wake up very late the next morning, or you will want to take a nap in the afternoon. Because of that nap, you’ll go to bed late once more, and then be very tired again the next day. It’s a never-ending circle, and fixing your sleeping schedule may take several days.
A lot of people can’t function properly without a cup of coffee in the morning. And yes, it really gets you going. However, drinking coffee in the afternoon might keep you awake late at night. The same thing applies for sugary food, or eating super late. If you want to go to bed early, try having dinner at least two hours before your bedtime, and avoid eating fruits or other sugary foods.
Some other nights you just can’t go to sleep because you have too much stuff on your mind. You toss and turn, and tell your brain to stop thinking, but it just keeps going on and on and on about the most random things. What I do is have some “bedtime tea” before going to sleep (shout out to my roommate for this advice), or you can try meditation.
Sometimes it’s going to be hard to get eight hours of sleep, especially during midterms or finals week. It may seem like all we want to do during the day is sleep, and then at night we suddenly become super productive. Sleeping for just a couple of hours at night is not good for our health, so let's not make it a habit.
