Do you love ending a busy day by slipping between a set of crisp, clean sheets, curling up in a ball with your head buried in a pillow and the covers pulled over your head? Sleep can be an opportunity to close out the world and melt into another reality. Or are you a person who thinks you are missing out on life's best and most stimulating activities because your body calls for sleep at the most inopportune times and you have to submit? Maybe you are the hit-or-miss sleeper - a little nap here or there but no particular pattern. You fit all your various activities in between your sleep times.
We would probably agree that we need to sleep a certain amount of time in order to function. Some investigators believe we may have inherited the function of sleep from our ancestors. It serves us in two ways. Sleep may possibly be a restorative process or it may be a behavior that keeps the animal kingdom out of harm's way when there is nothing better to do. Animals with hiding places safe from predators tend to sleep longer than do animals who live out in the open, who sleep very little (Carlson, 1995).
Most people are aware that there are four stages of sleep. In Stage I (Slow Eye Movement) body temperature drops and muscle tone slows. If you wake people during this stage, they will say they weren't sleeping because their time perception is distorted. In Stage II there is a rapid drop in core temperature and breathing is oxygen driven, not carbon dioxide stimulated. During Stage III (Delta Sleep) a growth hormone is released that helps to repair daily cell damage, which alleviates aches and pains. Regular aerobic exercise creates more delta sleep. Rapid Eye Movement (REM) (Stage IV) is the Dream State of sleep that most people remember after they wake up. Two commonly used drugs in college affect our REM sleep; alcohol and caffeine. Alcohol suppresses REM sleep in the first half of the night usually causing wild dreams. Daily use of alcohol causes trouble sleeping because the brain becomes used to the alcohol as a way of going to sleep. Caffeine binds with the blood to affect REM sleep; it makes you stay awake while your body is actually in sleep state. With caffeine use your body is unable to lose heat, which is necessary for sleep.
We all know the basic feelings and physiological symptoms of sleep deprivation: fatigue, bone tiredness, irritability and emotional hypersensitivity. What is the impact of lack of sleep on a college student? Academically, there are cognitive deficits: lack of concentration and focus, memory problems, and difficulty of familiar names and objects. Physiologically, there are more aches and pains, loss of energy, a compromised immune systems, carbohydrate cravings due to lower wakeful body temperature, hyperirritability of the nervous system to sounds and general body irritability.
Like it or not, there seem to be necessary stages of sleep, an inherited proclivity for sleep as a stage of daily living and identifiable effects of not getting any or enough sleep. Since sleep is essential to life and improves the quality of our waking hours, what will help us perfect the art of sleeping is sleep hygiene. There are seven steps to sleep hygiene:
1. Arrange your sleep environment so it is conducive to permit a sufficient number of hours of sleep. (Your roommate cannot be having a party in your room while you are sleeping.)
2. If you cannot sleep, get out of bed and out of your bedroom and do something else. Your bedroom environment can become a conditioned stimulus for insomnia. Bed is for intimate activities and sleep ONLY.
3. Do NOT "try hard to go to sleep"; the harder you "try," the less likely you will be able to sleep.
4. Turn the clock towards the wall. Looking at the clock and seeing time tick by creates stress.
5. Leave time before bedtime to tie up the loose ends of the day. Make this a daily routine at the same time each day and for at least a half hour.
6. Go into the bedroom only when you are sleepy. (Study someplace else.)
7. Do not take sleeping pills unless recommended by a physician; if you use sleeping pills, do NOT keep them by your bed. If you stay up long enough, your brain knows you can take the pills to go to sleep. Remember, sleeping pills depress your delta sleep. You don't sleep any better with pills; you just don't remember.
Carlson, N. (1995) Foundations of physiological psychology (3rd ed.). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon.
Lindsley, G. (1997, Spring). Lecture presented at Lesley college in a biological bases class, Cambridge, MA.