The Chanticleer

Issue date: 9/27/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Matt McRae Between classes, jobs and extracurricular activities, a good night's sleep is nothing more than a dream for most students.

Midterms are quickly approaching, and finals not long after that. It means long hours studying, completing papers and reviewing material. For many students, it also means getting by on intermittent sleep, energy drinks and caffeine.

Researchers say that, while those practices may work for a day or two, even in the short run they can have a deleterious effect on test scores and even one's health.

It's not just exam weeks that wreak havoc on students' sleep habits. Often, college students as a group have poor sleeping patterns, leading to decreased academic proficiency, degraded athletic performance and even health problems.

"College students often experience poor sleep quality and increased daytime sleepiness," Jeff Bryson, a sleep researcher at JSU, said.

Personal choices that influence the quality and quantity of sleep are often to blame, according to Bryson. Those choices include inconsistent sleep routines, high caffeine and alcohol consumption, and high stress levels.

On a person-to-person basis, sleep is a highly variable thing. Some wake up at the drop of a feather. Others sleep through a fire alarm. But there's one thing all humans have in common: they all need sleep to survive and function normally.

It's so vital, in fact, that lack of sleep among college students has been identified as one of the top three health-related roadblocks to academic performance, according to a 2006 survey from the American College Health Association.

The tried-and-true college rite of passage, the all-nighter, is a prime example. More often than not, the caffeine-fueled study sessions make a student more stressed, less alert and more prone to making mistakes. A recent study, completed by the Loyola University at New Orleans' Department of Psychology, concluded that "caffeine does not appear to help the studying process in the long run."

The effects of insufficient sleep go further than just test-taking acuity. It is also important to realize that both getting too much and too little sleep, period, will result in feeling groggy, having poor concentration, and mood disturbances, Bryson said.

"Students can have irritability, depression, anxiety, fatigue, decreased immunity, weight gain, and heart problems, just to name a few," Nancy Edge, of the JSU Student Health Center, said.

There's no doubt Americans live in a caffeinated world. A cursory look at supermarket and convenience store shelves reveals a panoply of products designed to keep one awake and at the ready, but at what cost? The availability of sodas, energy drinks and other chemical products designed to stimulate the nervous system has college administrators and counselors worried.

"Students do use [stimulants] to regulate their rhythms, but it is not stable," Bryson said. "When these products are used, sleep is impaired and more use of the product is needed to compensate. This cycles over the course of time until the person no longer recognizes how it is affecting them."

Reliance on caffeine and other supplements to artificially reset one's body clock is getting worse, according to Rickey Naugher, director of JSU's Counseling and Career Services department.

"Some people will come in and say 'I can't sleep,' and they had 12 cups of coffee and 15 Mountain Dews, and we'll go, 'Okay, we know what the problem is,'" Naugher said.

There are factors other than chemical sources that play into the abundance or lack of sleep. Just as everyone's sleep cycles are unique, the reasons why they don't get quality sleep are varied as well.

Stress from classes, problems at work and personal difficulties can all influence the quality and length of sleep. How much or how little caffeine one ingests over the course of the day, whether one smokes or drinks, exercise, temperatures, lighting conditions and even air circulation can all factor into the equation, making sleep a far more complex activity than one might suspect.

Colleges and universities are beginning to notice these trends, and some are taking action to prevent minor sleep-related problems from becoming much larger issues, according to a report in the Sept. 17 edition of USA Today.

UCLA is offering students a ten-week program this fall to help students with insomnia. The University of Maryland is offering seminars that educate students on common sleep disorders and better time management. Houston's Rice University is in the midst of a campaign encouraging undergraduates to stick to regular sleep/wake cycles.

Jacksonville State University offers no such formalized program for students, but some help is available from the Counseling and Career Services Department. Sleep-related difficulties are not the most common problem among JSU students, according to Naugher, but he says that sleep disorders can be tied to other issues in a student's life.

"We have had students come in for stress issues, and they'll indicate that sleep is one of the symptoms," Naugher said.

After all this gloom and doom, there is good news to report: very rarely are sleep habits unbreakable. Whether it's stress, caffeine or another problem that's causing your sleepless nights, there's often a solution to be found. It could be as easy as changing your routines, or it could require something more substantial.

But rest assured a quality night's sleep is well within reach.

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Getting a good night's sleep doesn't have to be a struggle. Here are some tips on better sleep habits:

-- Try to go to bed and get up at the same time.
-- Have quiet time before bed.
-- Have a quiet, dark room.
-- Don't leave the television on while trying to go to sleep.
-- Decrease the amount of caffeine you drink during the day.
-- Don't drink alcohol within 4 hours of going to bed and limit your alcohol intake.
-- Try to exercise daily but not before going to bed.
-- Don't take naps during the day. Do not eat a heavy meal before going to bed. Sometimes a carbohydrate snack can make you sleepy but do not eat sugar or chocolate before bedtime.
-- Do not have a clock beside your bed. Watching the clock makes it harder to fall asleep.

--source: Nancy Edge, JSU Student Health Center

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It may not just be that you're staying up too late - doctors recognize more than 80 types of sleep disorders, which have a multitude of causes and effects. Here are some signs that could indicate your sleep problems could be a medical issue:

-- Inability to fall asleep or stay asleep

-- Frequently awaking the middle of the night

-- Waking up unusually early, sometimes accompanied by headaches

-- Excessive daytime fatigue or sleepiness

-- WebMD.com

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Brandon Hollingsworth is the News Editor of The Chanticleer. He can be reached at (256) 782-8521 or at chantynews@gmail.com.

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