Student Sleep Saga: Tackling Insomnia

As a young kid, I’ve always had issues going to sleep (and staying asleep for that matter) but as a young adult, it’s something that’s more prevalent than ever. Like most students my age I have a horrendous sleep schedule. Between keeping track of classes, and work, and attempting to keep some semblance of a personal life it isn’t easy to stay in the race for healthy sleeping habits.

Undeterred by this life continues to sprint forward for myself as well as 60% percent of all college students according to the study “Sleep problems in university students – an Intervention”

conducted by Angelika Anita Schlarb and published by the National Institute of Health in 2017, this can mean a lot of added stress to our daily lives. To make matters even more frustrating, insomnia and sleep deprivation can be caused by a multitude of things. Things like stress, poor environment, travel, diet, and even a change in schedule can all deter normal sleeping habits.

Before I delve any further it should also be helped here to explain what sleep actually is and what happens to your body during sleep. Sleep is essentially the body’s period of rest in which it has limited sensory data. The purpose of this is to give your body time to repair itself and your brain time to “catalog” all of the information it processed over the previous day. In layman's terms, your brain is a supercomputer that is running slow and sleep is shutting it off and turning it back on to make it run faster.

Due to all of this getting proper rest is still crucial to a person's productivity throughout the day and solid sleep can also give us a lot of other great benefits. There is a plethora of research detailing the exact scientific phenomena of what sleep can help improve but some of the basic benefits are heart health, regulated blood sugar, and increased muscular endurance. Physical health is not the only thing sleep improves, though as adequate slumber is also known to help improve mental function as well as provide stress relief benefits. It has also been recently investigated that missing sleep may actually halt the improvement of cognition function in daily life.

With sleep being so beneficial to everyday life, creating a sleep schedule is a simple solution to help try and combat some of the effects of insomnia. The main benefit of creating a sleep schedule and setting a bedtime is that it creates a repetition that your body will naturally fall into as time goes on. It is recommended that if you intend to create a sleep schedule you stick to the same bedtime all week long (even on weekends ) otherwise the repetition starts to be less high-yielding.

It should also be mentioned that a sleep schedule is definitely not a catch-all solution for everybody. The need for sleep varies from person to person based on a lot of different biological factors such as age range, medical conditions, and medication which are all contributing factors. Regardless of this though the average amount of sleep for anyone over twenty is 7-9 hours a night and that tends to be considered well-rested. If the issue persists and starts to continue to contribute to a decline in your personal well-being, professional assistance is available. Look to your local healthcare provider for more in-depth resources.

Despite professional resources, there are also a lot more “home remedies” to try. Here are just some more tips I've gathered that have helped me sleep better at night.

1. Optimize your environment - Things like using a white noise machine or black curtains can help create a more relaxed abode. Even something like a fluffier pillow can help make a difference. It should also be mentioned that temperature is a huge contributing factor to how easily a person is able to rest.

2. Effect of Diet - Alcohol and large meals before bed are both factors that can actively contribute to you having a harder time falling asleep. Eating earlier in the afternoon if possible and limiting stimulants such as nicotine or caffeine is an amazing way to help your body sleep easier.

3. Exercise - Staying physically active is a good way to help your body regulate all of its chemicals more effectively but be weary that heavy physical activity does make a person more alert. Beneficial exercise is optimal when an hour or more before a person's bedtime so that their heart rate has time to adequately decline.

4. Stress Management - Sleep and stress are not known to go hand and hand so when it’s time for a superb slumber it’s best to practice various stress relief techniques to increase relaxation. Yoga is a personal favorite but there are lots of other mindfulness techniques to help put someone in a more relaxed state.

5. Avoid Looking At Clocks - It’s a classic the more you think of it the more power you give it situation. The more a person looks at clocks the more ultimately they will be more stressed out by it so overall it is best to just focus on rest and relaxation. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t set your alarms. This just means that once you set it leave it alone.

6. Avoid Screens - While seemingly not important this act is not harmless as phones and other electronic devices are known to be very stimulating and disrupt the body’s regulation of melatonin.

7. Limit Naps - Taking fewer naps during the day can help you regulate a sleep cycle that is better suited to staying asleep all night rather than trying to rest in spurts.

Those are just some of the tips and tricks I've picked up. Overall, dealing with insomnia or sleep deprivation in any sense can be really brutal especially when it is an ongoing issue. In any case, no one who struggles with this issue is alone in it and there are plenty of resources available to help someone get some rest during those sleepless nights.