Sleep

Sleep is a topic that as a teenager, is not pretty; I don’t sleep, and many of my contemporaries can relate. However, while we may believe that our five hours of sleep may get us through the day, and that we’re being more productive by not fulfilling the eight hours we should be getting, we’re quite wrong in that belief. So today, there won’t be much inspiration, as this information is sad for most of us, but we’ll discuss what happens when you’re not sleeping enough and how fatigue works.

At the age of 17, I should be getting at least seven hours of sleep a night, but optimally eight. I won’t lie: I hate sleep. It feels like a complete waste of time, and I don’t want to do it. Science says otherwise. Lack of sleep, even if it is just one hour lost every night, has been correlated (getting closer and closer to causal) to prostate, breast, and bowel cancer. Sleeping for four hours a night will drop critical cancer fighting cells by 70%. Yeah, seven-zero. The World Health Organization has classified night shift work as a probable carcinogen. Actually, we can see a lot of effects of widespread sleep loss in an experiment that happens in America two times every year called “daylight savings.” The productivity at work drops, car crashes increase, and statistics of cardiac arrest increase dramatically. As for sleep and productivity, humans evolve, all species evolve, if humans didn’t need eight hours of sleep a night, mother nature would’ve gotten rid of it quite a while ago through evolution. In all honesty, sleep is stupid: you’re not having or nurturing children, you’re not finding food, and you’re extremely vulnerable. There’s a reason we still need to do it. And the brain can’t get back the sleep its lost - it’s not a bank, so there’s no sleep credit system. It doesn’t work like debt. You can’t “stock up” on sleep, or “make up” sleep after three days of two hours of sleep because you had exams.

As for positive sleeping habits, try to sleep at the same time every night and to wake up at the same time every morning. For a fun story, let’s talk about Dmitri Mendeleev. He was trying to make the periodic table. He’s been trying constantly to somehow fit all these elements together. He goes to sleep, and suddenly he wakes up, puts everything together, and boom! We have the periodic table we use today. There were a few adjustments he made, but this does show that sleep can give you some great eureka moments.

Related to sleep are feelings of fatigue, also known as ‘being tired.’ Being tired is a feeling of being drained, often causing irritability, and often making it harder to think as well as find motivation to do things. The reason we can’t find this motivation is due to a metabolite called adenosine. Adenosine blocks off dopamine, so that’s where the lack of motivation comes from, and levels of adenosine naturally rises through the day and naturally falls as we sleep. Some causes of feeling tired can be: not staying hydrated, not eating correctly (affecting your glucose levels (what the brain uses as energy)), not sleeping, and too much reliance on caffeine products: energy drinks, coffee, etc. These products target adenosine receptors and block them, and in the long term they will have a negative impact on sleep and fatigue. So if you often feel fatigued, try to control your physical health and diet. The only cure for mental fatigue will be increasing your willpower, which as been shown to be a finite thing. How do you do that? Well, that’s another days topic.

Anyways, with all of that I conclude. All the information on sleep I credit to Matthew Walker and his book Why Do We Sleep. All I can say is that… make sure you sleep. It’s important, and for the students here, your retention and ability to perform in a calm manner to the best of your ability isn’t through studying the entire night, but sleeping correctly the entire night. Your stress and nerves will be brought down as well. Think about the big picture, and don’t be impulsive and sleep for 3 hours because it seems like the move. Have a jubilant rest of your week. I’ll see you the next, ‘night.