How to Sleep Well
Sleep is a general measure of how things are going. If you have sleep problems such as difficulty falling asleep, early morning wakening, waking up during the night, or exceptional trouble getting out of bed in the morning but then sleep just fine when you return home (or on weekends if you're a commuting student), this may be an early signal of emotional upset or even the cause.
Poor sleep quality is known to lead to many mental health problems. These include depression, anxiety, reduced physical health, poor problem solving and attention difficulties, and increased use of drugs and alcohol.
Partial sleep deprivation (less than six hours of sleep per night) can lead to deficits in attention, concentration, memory, and critical thinking, along with increased depression, irritability, and anxiety.
Even students who regularly obtain eight hours of sleep per night, but shift their sleep schedule by more than two hours (by sleeping late on the weekends, for example), may experience attention, concentration, reasoning, and psychomotor difficulties, as well as increased irritability, anxiety, and depression.
There's no doubt that sleep is vital to good mental health and can directly affect your academic GPA. It's a myth that the best students stay up all night studying. It has been scientifically proven that it's the student who gets a good night's sleep, not the student who studies through the night, who does better academically.
One of these studies was done at Harvard. Dr. Robert Stickgold taught a group of undergraduates to look for a particular visual target on a computer screen and then to push a button as soon as they saw it. At first, the students were slow to recognize and react to the image, but after an hour of training, they were quick and accurate.
Then Stickgold divided the group into two. Half of the students were allowed less than six hours of sleep, and the other half got more than six hours of sleep. The results were remarkable. The sleep-deprived students showed no improvement in the task the following day. But the students who got a good night's sleep were far quicker and more accurate than they had been the day before. After several nights of good sleep, they got even better at the task.
The study concluded that sleep allows information that has been gathered during the day to flow from a short-term memory bank into a long-term one. The process preserves information for future reference. In the later stages of sleep, the brain runs through the data it has stored in the previous hours. This reinforces and strengthens connections that make up memory. Without more than at least four hours of sleep, the process can't happen.
Although occasionally you may have to pull an all-nighter to get required work done, when it comes to studying for a big test, you'll do far better if you study and then get to sleep. Here are some tips to help you:
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Poor sleep quality is known to lead to many mental health problems. These include depression, anxiety, reduced physical health, poor problem solving and attention difficulties, and increased use of drugs and alcohol.
Partial sleep deprivation (less than six hours of sleep per night) can lead to deficits in attention, concentration, memory, and critical thinking, along with increased depression, irritability, and anxiety.
Even students who regularly obtain eight hours of sleep per night, but shift their sleep schedule by more than two hours (by sleeping late on the weekends, for example), may experience attention, concentration, reasoning, and psychomotor difficulties, as well as increased irritability, anxiety, and depression.
There's no doubt that sleep is vital to good mental health and can directly affect your academic GPA. It's a myth that the best students stay up all night studying. It has been scientifically proven that it's the student who gets a good night's sleep, not the student who studies through the night, who does better academically.
One of these studies was done at Harvard. Dr. Robert Stickgold taught a group of undergraduates to look for a particular visual target on a computer screen and then to push a button as soon as they saw it. At first, the students were slow to recognize and react to the image, but after an hour of training, they were quick and accurate.
Then Stickgold divided the group into two. Half of the students were allowed less than six hours of sleep, and the other half got more than six hours of sleep. The results were remarkable. The sleep-deprived students showed no improvement in the task the following day. But the students who got a good night's sleep were far quicker and more accurate than they had been the day before. After several nights of good sleep, they got even better at the task.
The study concluded that sleep allows information that has been gathered during the day to flow from a short-term memory bank into a long-term one. The process preserves information for future reference. In the later stages of sleep, the brain runs through the data it has stored in the previous hours. This reinforces and strengthens connections that make up memory. Without more than at least four hours of sleep, the process can't happen.
Although occasionally you may have to pull an all-nighter to get required work done, when it comes to studying for a big test, you'll do far better if you study and then get to sleep. Here are some tips to help you:
- Stay away from caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol in the late afternoon and evening. That cigarette or can of cola will make it difficult to drift off to sleep. And although alcohol may make it easier to fall asleep, it will interrupt your sleep and awaken you later in the night.
- Don't nap during the day if you're having trouble falling asleep at night. A nap can confuse your biological clock.
- Exercise regularly but not right before bedtime. Give yourself at least three hours between a workout and sleep time.
- Give your brain the signal to sleep by establishing a nighttime ritual. Leave time to relax and unwind with the lights turned low. Stay back from the TV and computer screen because their light can confuse the day-night rhythms of the body.
- If you can't fall asleep after thirty minutes, don't toss and turn worrying about not sleeping. This can become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Instead, get up and do some kind of relaxing activity like listening to music or reading. Try to clear your mind and not worry about not sleeping. When you start to feel tired, get back to bed.
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