{"id":12005,"date":"2015-09-16T13:43:28","date_gmt":"2015-09-16T18:43:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/?p=12005"},"modified":"2017-07-25T13:31:32","modified_gmt":"2017-07-25T18:31:32","slug":"youll-do-lousy-if-youre-drowsy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/tartan-news\/2015\/09\/16\/youll-do-lousy-if-youre-drowsy\/","title":{"rendered":"You’ll Do Lousy if You’re Drowsy"},"content":{"rendered":"

Only 11 percent of American college students sleep well, according to\u00a0Harvard University. College students are amongst the most sleep-deprived people in\u00a0the country, which can slowly have an affect on the body and the mind.\u00a0On average, college students get less than six hours of sleep per night, which\u00a0can result in a condition called sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is when a\u00a0person doesn\u2019t get enough sleep.\"DSC05176\"<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cSleep is associated with everything in your body\u2014it\u2019s a metabolic process.\u00a0Everything that happens in your body depends on sleep to happen on a regular\u00a0basis,\u201d Anne Soltysiak, Psychology professor at Sinclair , said.\u00a0She said sleep deprivation is getting less sleep than you need, and eventually\u00a0can affect your health.
\n\u201cYou can have total sleep deprivation, which is not sleeping at all, or you can\u00a0have chronic partial sleep deprivation, which means you don\u2019t sleep enough each\u00a0night. If you do it night after night, that deficit does accumulate to known health\u00a0affects,\u201d Soltysiak said.
\nAlthough, sleep deprivation does not cause mental disorders to those whom\u00a0aren\u2019t predisposed to them, many people can still be triggered briefly, according to\u00a0Soltysiak. \u201cIf you\u2019re talking about extreme cases where people go three, four, or five\u00a0days without any sleep at all there are some cases where people have brief\u00a0psychotic episodes, which is completely related to sleep deprivation. It\u2019s called sleep\u00a0deprivation psychosis,\u201d Soltysiak said.\u00a0Sarah Finch, Biology professor at Sinclair, said stage 3 and 4 of the sleep cycle\u00a0is the restorative stage. This is the stage where the body is fixing the cells, but it\u2019s\u00a0also the brain essentially defragging itself. Similar to Finch, Soltysiak said it\u2019s a\u00a0chemical process that occurs at certain stages of sleep, which is necessary for\u00a0memory formation.
\n\u201cYou\u2019re making new neural connections with the stuff you learn, but you\u2019re\u00a0also taking all the sensory information from the day and getting rid of all the\u00a0unnecessary information you don\u2019t need,\u201d Finch said.\"DSC05191\"<\/a>\"DSC05191\"<\/a>
\nPeople from all walks of life experience different reasons why they are sleep\u00a0deprived, according to Soltysiak. However, women seem to get less sleep than men\u00a0because it is tied to their hormonal system. Although the younger you are the more\u00a0sleep you need in order to have productive brain growth and memory consolidation.
\n\u201cThis is really important for students because you want to remember what\u00a0you learned throughout the day so you can recall it later,\u201d Soltysiak said. \u201cIf you\u00a0don\u2019t sleep, you don\u2019t rehearse those memory circuits, and if those circuits aren\u2019t\u00a0stored, then it\u2019s not there to be retrieved.\u201d
\nCulturally, people seem to view sleep as not being a valuable part of living a\u00a0healthy lifestyle.
\n\u201cDevaluing the need for sleep is out there in the culture\u2014it\u2019s all about the\u00a0fast paced lifestyle now,\u201d she said.\u00a0Soltysiak, who also teaches about drugs and behavior, said caffeinated drinks
\nplay a role in sleep deprivation, but aren\u2019t the main cause in this condition. Caffeine\u00a0inhibits a brain chemical that is associated with drowsiness, but it\u2019s easy to become\u00a0tolerant.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is possible to take in too much caffeine and you get a problem called\u00a0caffeinism, where you are wired,\u201d Soltysiak said. \u201cThe real danger is that the FDA\u00a0doesn\u2019t require truthful labeling when caffeine is added to a beverage.\u201d
\nFinch said we are in a society where we want a \u201cquick fix,\u201d but we don\u2019t know\u00a0the long-term effects of it or the chemicals we are putting in our body.\u00a0One of the infamous habits of a college student is cramming and pulling an\u00a0all-nighter, which Soltysiak and Finsh never recommend.\u00a0\u201cCramming is not only bad for sleeping, but also studying,\u201d Finch said.\u00a0Soltysiak recommends students have good health habits, including study\u00a0habits\u2014put aside time every night to study because that will get you better results\u00a0rather than if you cram, according to Soltysiak.
\n\u201cIf you study right before you go to sleep, and focus on the material and then\u00a0go to sleep, the sleep following the study period will help you actually to consolidate\u00a0and help store that information while you\u2019re asleep,\u201d Soltysiak said.
\nBoth Finch and Soltysiak have similar views about the coordination of the\u00a0mind and body. They both agree that it is clear that when you don\u2019t get enough\u00a0sleep, your brain and body won\u2019t be working to their fullest ability.”If your physiology is not where it should be, you won\u2019t get to those restful\u00a0stages of sleep,\u201d Finch said.
\nThe biggest thing is to have a healthy lifestyle\u2014you have to have sleep, have\u00a0good nutrition, have aerobic exercise, because exercise feeds oxygen and glucose to\u00a0your brain, and if you want to remember things you better feed your brain,\u201d
\nSoltysiak said. \u201cAlso, chronic stress is something you have to cope with because if\u00a0you don\u2019t deal with your stress it will disrupt your sleep. If it disrupts your sleep,\u00a0then you wont be able to remember stuff, which is probably going to stress you\u00a0out\u2014so it\u2019s a cycle.\u201d
\nJust like Soltysiak, Finch said it\u2019s important to focus on health because it\u00a0connects to sleep. She said our priorities aren\u2019t where they need to be because we\u00a0have created bad habits. Both Soltysiak and Finch said having good nutrition,\u00a0hydration, exercise, stress management and sleep will help establish a healthy\u00a0lifestyle.
\n\u201cThe quality of life is better, and you can experience new things if you\u2019re\u00a0getting these five things,\u201d Finch said. \u201cWe need to remember we need to take care of\u00a0our bodies for us to do all of the things we want to do.\u201d<\/p>\n

Gabrielle Sharp<\/strong><\/p>\n

Executive Editor<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Only 11 percent of American college students sleep well, according to\u00a0Harvard University. College students are amongst the most sleep-deprived people in\u00a0the country, which can slowly have an affect on the body and the mind.\u00a0On average, college students get less than six hours of sleep per night, which\u00a0can result in a condition called sleep deprivation. Sleep […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[2030],"class_list":["post-12005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tartan-news","tag-gabrielle-sharp"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5s3vR-37D","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12005"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12030,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12005\/revisions\/12030"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sinclairclarion.com\/home\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}