The
Risks of Non-Sleep
Sleep is an essential
to learning. Students should then make sure to take time and make sure that
their body clock is healthily working for them every day. However, due to the
demands of college life, a balance between staying awake and keeping asleep has
always been a challenge. Most students
are confronted with the question on how they are going to solve their sleep
deprivation problems.
Some of the
consequences of sleep deprivation and which could possibly be a risk to the
student in his daily activities are the following: sleepy mornings,
unproductive and stressful days, mood swings, unhealthy lifestyle and different
health risks.
The above are just
some of the effects of sleep deprivation being experienced by most college
students. It occurs when an individual lacks enough sleep because of too much
class hours and school requirements, personal commitments and health problems;
or maybe plainly just the lack of proper time management. As a result, they do
not meet the average or required hours of sleep which is around seven to nine hours
depending on their age which could lead to more serious physical, mental,
emotional and psychological problems.
The
Struggles of Keeping Awake
How does one keeps himself wide-eyed during rest
hours? What are the struggles of keeping awake when you must already gave to
bed, but decide otherwise because there are more things that needed to be done.
Research
shows that having at least 20-30 minutes of power nap is enough for each day. Long
naps can make you feel drowsy and interfere with your evening sleep
because you will not feel sleepy at night. Also, if you do such, you will lack
self-discipline and might be unproductive as you are tolerating yourself to
take a nap more than the average number of minutes.
Limiting or avoiding your intake or the use of caffeine,
nicotine and alcohol, which are stimulants, could also help you to have restful
nights and seldom awakenings. Vigorous physical activities should also be
lessened or must be avoided before bedtime because it increases a person’s
alertness. Thus, it will make us awake during our supposed sleep at night.
Making a sleep pattern would also help us to have peaceful nights as we already
trained ourselves to sleep and to wake up at a specific time so that we will be
organized with the things we have to do each day.
The Classic Solution
But what is the best solution to this problem? We cannot
avoid the number of class hours we have to take everyday and the assignments,
quizzes, projects and activities that we have to review and finish for the next
day or the following week. We cannot also prevent having personal commitments
to our family, friends and special someone. And lastly, we cannot just escape
this struggle especially when we have medical problems. Therefore, we must plan
our everyday lives and the weeks ahead of us so that we have a control over it
and we can be more productive each day with enough required sleep.
Some of the
possible solutions and strategies to cope up with this situation that can be
found in different websites and books are avoiding long naps, drinking less
caffeine, avoiding or limiting alcohol and nicotine, not doing dynamic physical
activities before going to bed, and having a sleep pattern everyday.
This struggle that most of us are facing is not that hard
to avoid. We are the ones choosing what we like to do. We know the solutions to
our problems yet we still ought to just ignore them and do the opposite. Sleep
deprivation has its solutions. On our part, understanding the solution is not
the permanent answers to this perennial problem.
There is a picture that is very popular to the social
media in which it is said that “Good Grades + Enough Sleep = No Social Life;
Social Life + Enough Sleep = Bad Grades; Good Grades + Social Life = No Sleep.”
This is partially true. But if we really know how to manage our time well and
assign only specific days to do the things we have to do then we will achieve a
life with less or almost no sleep deprivation problem.
The actual solution therefore relies on how we actually
want things to be done in the most efficient manner, without compromising an
equally important aspect of healthy living – proper time management. Time
management might be the best answer even though only few references gave it as
an answer. If only we know how to manage our time well then we will not have
this kind of problem because we know when to sleep and what to do everyday.
Time is of the essence, so we must use it wisely.
