1. Causes
     Sleep Hygiene    Alcohol    Technology    Caffeine    Biology  

2. Effects
     Academic    Physical  

3. Interventions
     Naps    Sleep Courses    Cognitive Behavioral Therapy    Importance of Circadian Clocks  

4. References

Sleep and getting an adequate amount of sleep is essential to the body and it's daily functions. Sleep deprivation is simply a condition of having an inadequate amount of sleep. Undergraduate and graduate college students have many responsibilities that range from academics, to work, to social life that get in the way of normal sleep schedule. At least 50% of college students exhibit daytime sleepiness, due to sleep deprivation. Compared to 36% of adolescents and adults.^[1] On average, college students get about 6 to 6.9 hours of sleep per night.^[2] According to Stanford University's Department for the Diagnosis. Now 68% of college students aren't getting the sleep they need. Based on the Treatment for Sleep Disorders, the recommended amount of sleep needed for college students is around 8 hours.^[3] Most college students are sleep deprived, as 70.6% of students reported that they get less than 8 hours of sleep.^[4]There are various effects that sleep deprivation can have on college students, including lower academic performance, impaired learning, and decreased physical activity.^[1] One primary cause as to why college students experience a lack of sleep is improper sleep hygiene.^[1] Sleep hygiene are, habits that are conductive to sleeping well on a regular basis. Despite the difficulty, in order for students to be successful in the academic pursuits, they must face the obstacles of lack of sleep and sleep disorders that will negatively affect their performance in academics.^[5]

Causes

Sleep Hygiene

Inadequate sleep hygiene is one primary cause as to why college students experience sleep deprivation. Sleep hygiene is defined as habits or practices that allow for healthy amounts of sleep on a daily basis.^[6] Good sleep hygiene habits include keeping a consistent sleep schedule, having a quiet sleep environment, and avoiding consuming caffeine and alcohol before sleeping.^[7] Many students have inadequate sleep hygiene that leads to sleep deprivation.

Alcohol

According to a study by the US Department of Health and Human Services, approximately 80% of college students have drunk alcohol, with nearly 40% of the students reporting to "binge drinking," or the consumption of an excessive amount of alcohol over a short amount of time.^[8] While alcohol may help with faster sleep, it can affect the quality of the sleep. Alcohol may effect one's REM sleep, the stage of sleep where most dreams and memories occur and are stored. Without REM sleep, one would go straight into deep sleep. This may be why people who have insomnia resort to consuming alcohol in order to fall asleep. However, this can result in alcohol dependence. Relying on alcohol as a sleeping aid can lead to sleepwalk, sleep talk and memory problems.^[9] Drinking alcohol has also been linked to causing obstructive sleep apnea, where it causes breathing to repeatedly stop and start during sleep.^[9] In addition, it has been proven that alcohol can cause insomnia. Researchers from the University of Missouri School of Medicine observed the effects of alcohol on sleep. The results showed that drinking alcohol boosted the adenosine levels. Adenosine levels go up when one is awake and go down when one is asleep. The participants in this study had extended periods of regular drinking and as a result, sleep came quickly to them. However, the participants woke up in a few hours and suffered from insomnia.^[9]

Technology

The blue light that is emitted from the screens of phones, computers and other devices stops the production of melatonin, the hormone that controls the sleep-wake cycle of the circadian rhythm. Reducing the amount of melatonin produced makes it harder to fall and stay asleep.^[10] In a 2011 poll conducted by the National Sleep Foundation, it reported that approximately 90% of Americans used technology in the hour before bed.^[11] The poll noted that young adults and teenagers were more likely to use cell phones, computers, and video game consoles.^[11] Additionally, the authors of the poll found that technology use was connected to sleep patterns. 22% of participants reported going to sleep with cell phone ringers on in their bedroom and 10% reported awakenings in at least a few nights per week due to their cell phones' ringers.^[11] Among those with the cell phone ringers on, being awakened by their cell phone was correlated to difficulty sustaining sleep.^[11]

According to the article, "Interrupted Sleep: College Students Sleeping with Technology" by Elizabeth B. Dowdell and Brianne Q. Clayton, sleep-deprived college students performed significantly worse than peers who had adequate sleep on the cognitive task work and that the sleep-deprived students were not aware of the extent to which sleep deprivation negatively affects their ability to complete cognitive tasks. Insufficient sleep while in college may be linked to academic success because lack of sleep affects the memory ability needed in learning new material, studying for exams, and test taking skills. In fact, research on learning suggests that sleep is critical at almost all stages of memory formation, memory processing, and long-term memory retention, which are key aspects associated with academic success. Without proper sleep, an individual's brain becomes less effective at absorbing new information and the ability to retain recently learned information is impaired. Research has shown that individuals with excessive technology use in the bedroom have later bedtimes and tend to sleep later in the morning. The reliance on technology, specifically in the bedroom, which should be associated with sleep, created the difficulty with separating waking and sleeping activities. When measuring the amount of sleep during the week compared to the weekend, students with four or more technological devices in their bedroom had significantly less sleep compared to those with three or fewer devices. Since many students do not utilize sleep mode or do not disturb or silence their phones at night, each notification and alert from their phones disrupts their sleep in terms of sleep quality and duration of sleep. ^[12]

Caffeine

A study from the University of Kentucky depicted that more than 78% of college freshmen consume above the recommended amount of caffeine each day.^[13] In one group of researchers' study from the Henry Ford Hospital's Sleep and Research Center and Wayne State College of Medicine, they discovered that caffeine consumed at least six hours before bedtime can significantly disrupt sleep.^[14] Participants in this study who consumed caffeine right before bedtime, three hours before bedtime, and six hours before bedtime all experienced a shorter night's sleep, lower sleep quality and spent more time awake at night.^[14]

Biology

Several recent studies have shown that adolescents undergo a swing in their circadian cycle which shifts sleep times later into the night^[15]. This change seems to occur during puberty and extends well into adulthood and have even been seen in other mammals^[16]. With the delay in sleep cycles or sleep onset, but still maintaining a structured early morning schedule such as work or school, actual sleep time is greatly reduced. There has been a push in many educational systems for a later start time to help increase the available time for sleep in adolescents due to these biological changes. Sleep plays a vital role in the development of the human brain to perform daily bodily tasks and functions in order to maintain life.^[17]

Effects

Academic

There is evidence that sleep is correlated with GPA. GPA is associated with the students' overall academic performances in their classes. Students who had longer amounts of sleep had higher GPAs than students who had shorter amounts of sleep.^[18] In another study, researchers from the Sleep Health Institute and Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorder at the Departments of Medicine and Neurology in the Brigham and Women’s Hospital, created a study to discover how irregular sleep patterns are associated with poorer academic performances. The students who participated in this study kept online diaries of their sleep schedules for 30 days. The researchers divided the participants into two groups: regular sleepers, or those who went to bed and woke up around the same time every day and irregular sleepers, or those who have different sleep patterns every day. Using a scoring index from zero to 100 to calculate a student’s sleep schedule, students with irregular sleeping patterns were given lower scores closer to zero while the students with regular sleeping patterns had scores closer to 100. The researchers found that for every score increase of 10 on the scoring index, the student had an average increase of 0.10 of their GPA. The researchers concluded that college students who do not go to bed or wake up at consistent time are likely to have lower GPAs. The study suggests that irregular sleeping schedules do indeed affect student’s GPA and academic performance.^[19] It was proven that those students who were sleep deprived performed worse on tests and received lower scores than those college students who received the adequate amount of sleep per night.^[20]

Physical

Student's physical shape seems to be affected by sleep deprivation as well. Researchers from the Imperial College School of Medicine conducted a randomized controlled study to investigate the effects of a night of sleep deprivation on the physical performance in students. The participants were randomized into two conditions, normal sleep or one night of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation was monitored using an online-time stamped questionnaire at 45 minute intervals, done in the participant’s homes. The results show that reaction time and exercise performance were significantly affected by sleep deprivation. The researchers concluded that sleep deprivation can affect physical performance in university students.^[21]

Interventions

Naps

Daytime naps offer a potential intervention for sleep deprivation in college students. Napping may improve certain memory tasks as students who were excelling in their academics were more likely to nap than those who had low academic success.^[22]

Sleep Courses

In one study, participants took a two-credit, 18-week course that included group discussions, lectures, and self-evaluation of topics that included circadian rhythms, sleep hygiene, muscle relaxation, and public sleep education. Participants reported that they had improved sleep quality and sleep hygiene throughout the course.^[23]

Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

In one study, a revised type of cognitive behavioral for treating insomnia was sent to participating students by email. The email contained an attachment addressing several aspects of sleep, such as techniques for relaxation and methods to stabilize the circadian rhythm. This method was compared to another program called Breathe which was created in order to reduce symptoms of depression and to cope with high stress. Participants in the Breathe program showed improvements in sleep quality and a decrease in depressive symptoms.^[24]While this study only had a small number of participants, the final results showed hope as an effective method that can help with sleep deprivation for college students.

Importance of Circadian Clocks

The Circadian Clock is a biochemical clock that cycles with a stable phase and is synchronized with solar time: the 24 hours in a day.^[25] The clock serves the purpose of observing the sleep and academic schedule of college students and if interfered, it will throw off one's proper sleep schedule and cause detrimental effects.

References

• Horrie Dawson
• Horrie Drane
• Horrie Farmer
• Horrie Farmer (footballer, born 1888)
• Horrie Farmer (footballer, born 1909)
• Horrie Jones
• Horrie Jose
• Horrie Pearce
• Horrie Rice
• Horrie Stanway
• Horrie Watt
• Horrie Weeks
• Horrie White
• Horrilysin
• Horringford (Isle of Wight) railway station
• Horringford Manor
• Horris Records
• Horriyeh
• Horriyeh, Ahvaz
• Horriyeh-ye Bozorg
• Horriyeh-ye Yek
• Horro
• Horro (cattle)
• Horrocks construction
• Horrockses, Crewdson & Co.