The National Sleep Foundation has declared next week National Sleep Awareness Week, but with midterms always around the corner, it is unlikely that UW-Madison students will be observing the holiday by catching some extra z's.
After relaxing over spring break, many students may be using their night hours for catching up on homework, and a few may pull \all-nighters.""
""I find it easier to study at night,"" senior Tonya Smith said. ""There are less distractions.""
For this reason and many others, students are demanding that College Library be made a 24-hour library. Although convenient, it may end up hurting more than it helps.
""A 24-hour library sounds like a good idea at first examination, but it's not a healthy idea for student lifestyle,"" said Dr. Steven Weber, UW-Madison professor of psychiatry and expert on sleep deprivation.
Although some students will swear on their future diplomas that all-night cram sessions work, scientific studies have proven otherwise. Participants in these studies have been subjected to periods of very little or no sleep and then are tested on their problem-solving ability. These showed ""all-nighters"" can have negative effects on a range of brain functions.
Weber recommended 18- to 22-year-olds get eight to 10 hours of sleep per night to stay at their peak efficiency.
Sleep patterns vary from person to person, but research recently published in the journal ""Sleep"" has shown that people who sleep less than eight hours a night were slower to react and less able to think clearly and perform simple memory tasks--two functions that are essential for taking exams.
Studies done at Harvard Medical School by Dr. Robert Stickgold on undergraduate students found the memory of newly learned material improved only after sleeping at least six hours, preferably eight. This is because the brain uses sleep as its time to sort things out, taking information it received during the day from the short-term memory center, organizing it and filing it in its respective places in the cortex of the brain for long-term memory.
Furthermore, Weber said when a person misses sleep their body keeps track of the hours owed with a ""sleep debt."" Students may assume they can make up for the sleep they missed during the week by sleeping in late on the weekends, but it's not that simple.
""Sleep debt is not paid off one-to-one,"" Weber explains. ""It typically takes more than one night of oversleep to compensate.""
If not paid off, this sleep debt can accumulate and lead to serious health problems such as diabetes, obesity and high blood pressure. Rob Sepich, a stress management counselor at UHS, often has a full schedule helping students deal with chronic stress and insomnia from heavy class loads.
""My rule of thumb for students is that if you awaken feeling refreshed and don't feel the need to take a nap in the afternoon, then you are probably getting enough sleep,"" Sepich said.
