As freshmen, you are learning to get used to the so-called “college life”, a seemingly new way of living for some if not all of first year students. Here at Duke University, a weekly activity plan would normally look like this:

	Monday	Tuesday	Wednesday	Thursday	Friday	Saturday	Sunday
Morning to early evening	Classes	Classes	Classes	Classes	Classes	Sleep	Sleep
Late evenings to night	work	work	work	work	Party	Bits of work + more party	work

 

And although you may find this schedule perfectly appealing, you might not know that this may seriously affect your daily life. Studies show that a late regular sleeping hour decreases one’s daytime performance. And over a long period of time, it may cause sleep disorder, a hard-to-cure problem.

An experiment has been done by a group of scientists led by Blagrove on nine human subjects. The nine subjects spent 30 days and nights in the laboratory, and were made to go to bed at different times. It was found that there is a significant difference in daytime performance due to the different hours that each of the nine subjects was made to go to sleep. Blagrove et al concluded that in a long term situation, the later one’s regular bed hour, the worse his performance during daytime shown by a significant decrease in the level of alertness. (Blagrove, 1998) In addition to the finding of Blagrove et al, an experiment done by a group of scientists, Taillard et al, called “Morningness / Eveningness and the need for sleep”, (with the Morningness meaning those that sleep and get up at regular hours, and Eveningness meaning those that sleep less on weekdays and sleep more on weekends). (Taillard, 1999) They concluded that the Eveningness suffers from a lack of sleep during daytime, but which is often covered by the effect of caffeine, or simply by the fact that most Eveningness may have already been used to the Eveningness schedule. Nevertheless, it is interesting to note that, as concluded by Taillard et al, as little as a delayed sleep of 2 hrs per night in two consecutive nights would result in obvious daytime sleepiness. The results of these two experiments imply that although you may feel you are fine ‘the next day’ after a night of paper writing or heaving reading, the actual effect of not letting your body have sufficient rest decreases your efficiency in learning.

One way that one can determine the seriousness of the lack of sleep is by looking at the intensity of morning sleepiness when waking up. This thus brings about the concern that many college professors have about students’ attendance to early morning classes. Quoting Dr. Talley from CAPS (Counseling and Psychological Services), “it is strange how difficult it is for Duke Students nowadays to attend the 8 and 9am classes.” While this is not the concern of Duke alone, a difficulty in getting up in the morning would likely indicate a lack of sleep in the general student population.

You may argue that you will catch up for sleep during the weekends. However, you might not know that if this late hour sleeping time becomes a habit, it is much harder for you to catch up sleep, especially by cramming the sleep you owed yourself altogether. Over a long period of time, such regular ‘lack of sleep’ or ‘delayed sleeping hours’ habits would become the Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS). It has been found in an experiment that compared 3 DSPS patients to 7 normal volunteers, that apart from their sleeping at irregular hours, the DSPS patients was not able to have a recovery sleep after a 24-hour sleep deprivation. According to the group of researchers Uchiyama et al, this result indicates that DSPS may involve problems related to “an accumulation of sleep pressure during sleep deprivation, and/or a release of sleep pressure after sleep deprivation.” (Uchiyama, 1999) While yet most college students do not reach such serious stage as the DSPS patients, it is yet wise to know and to avoid the worse possible effects of sleeping at late hours.

Again, studying and having fun is the biggest attractions of college. While they must be balanced, so must your sleep. So, sleep at regular early hours, and manage your workload reasonably. Nevertheless, it is crucial for anyone to realize the importance of sleep, and thus to respect it, before experiencing the almost incorrigibly stubborn sleep disorder.

 

Works Cited

 

Blagrove, Mark. “Time of day effects in, and the relationship between, sleep quality and movement”. J. Sleep Res. 1998, 7 233-239.

 

Taillard, Jacques. “Morningness/eveningness and the need for sleep”. J. Sleep Res. 1999, 8, 291-295.

 

Uchiyama, Makoto. “Biological Rhythm: Poor recovery sleep after sleep deprivation in delayed sleep phase syndrome.” Psychiatry and Clinical Neurosciences. 1999, 53, 195-197.