3 Reasons You're Not Sleeping Well (And How to Fix It as a Student)

If you are a student and you are sleeping badly, you are not alone. A 2021 study in Sleep Health found that over 60% of post-secondary students reported poor sleep quality during the academic year (Lund et al., 2021). And yet sleep is probably the single most impactful thing you can do for your academic performance, mental health, and physical fitness. The three most popular causes of students experiencing poor sleep are presented here along with what to do about each problem in reality.

Reason 1 -Varying sleep schedule.

Your body operates on a circadian rhythm , a clock inside your body which controls the time of the day you are awake and the time of the day you are asleep. You have totally messed up that clock when you go to bed at 10 PM on Monday, and at 3 AM on Friday. You start feeling fatigued when you have to be alert, and restless when you are attempting to sleep.

It is an easy fix, not simple, and requires one to select a bedtime and a wake time and follow it up even on a weekend. There is no need to go to bed at 9 PM. And all you need is consistency. Even 12.00 am - 8 am each day is much better than swinging between 10 pm-3 am.

Reason 2 - Before Bed Time Screen Time.

The phones and laptops emit blue light that reduces melatonin, which is the hormone that causes sleepiness. Using TikTok or doing homework at 1 AM is practically telling your brain it's the afternoon.

The remedy: Put on the stopwatch and shut your eyes 30-45 minutes before you are ready to sleep. I am aware that that is inconceivable. Begin with 15 minutes, even that is a difference. Substitute it with something that is not highly stimulating like a podcast, light reading, stretching or even lying in the dark.

Reason 3 - Caffeine Before Going to Bed.

The half-life of caffeine is approximately 5-6 hours, and this is why a cup of coffee on 4 PM will still contain half of the stimulant in 10 PM (Drake et al., 2013). The underestimation of the impact of afternoon coffee on falling asleep is particularly dramatic in most students.

The solution: Stop drinking caffeine after 2 PM. In the afternoon replace tea or water, with herbal tea or water. In a few days, the quality of your sleep will increase.

The Association to Fitness.

Sleep deprivation does not only leave one tired, but it actually compromises fitness. The growth hormone that helps in repairing and recovery of the muscles is released mainly in the deep sleep. When you are not getting sufficient sleep, your exercising performances are ineffective, recovery becomes slow, and you get very low motivation to exercise.

Taking care of your sleep is taking care of your fitness. They are not separate things.

Have a desire to establish a wellness routine, which will fit into your student life? Look at DailyFit11 that offers affordable fitness classes to students at as low as 15 dollars. Click here There's one more thing I want to address because it comes up constantly which is napping. A lot of students try to compensate for bad nighttime sleep with long afternoon naps. The problem is that naps longer than 20-30 minutes reduce your sleep pressure and the biological drive to sleep at night , making it even harder to fall asleep at a consistent time. If you need a nap, keep it to 20 minutes maximum and do it before 3 PM. Any longer or later, and you are making the original problem worse, not better. References

• Lund, H. G., Reider, B. D., Whiting, A. B., & Prichard, J. R. (2021). Sleep patterns and predictors of disturbed sleep in a large population of college students. Sleep Health, 7(2), 125–133. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2020.12.003

  
  

• Drake, C., Roehrs, T., Shambroom, J., & Roth, T. (2013). Caffeine effects on sleep taken 0, 3, or 6 hours before going to bed. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 9(11), 1195–1200. https://doi.org/10.5664/jcsm.3170