Why post-secondary students should prioritize sleep
By: Alisa Samuel
Published on: April 29th, 2024
The argument that students shouldn’t regularly pull all-nighters to get their work done isn’t new, but it bears repeating in the context of our ever more digitalized post-covid world.
“If my students truly understand why sleep is important and how pathology of sleep reflects in how they feel or perform the next day, they will have the power to change habits that are not serving them,” says Tatyana Mollayeva, creator of the University of Toronto Scarborough’s fourth-year health studies course Sleep: Structure, Function, and Pathology, in an interview with Alexa Battler for the school’s website. “Knowledge is the key for students to reflect.”
According to a study led by Kristiaan B. van der Heijden, professor of clinical neurodevelopmental sciences, lack of sleep weakens students’ ability to remember, limits their attention spans, and slows down processing speed.
Better sleep means better cognitive function. Better cognitive function means better grades.
Harvard Medical School says you should sleep well to avoid the serious impact long-term, chronic sleep deprivation can have on your physical health: “Insufficient sleep has been linked, for example, to weight gain and obesity, cardiovascular disease, and type 2 diabetes.”
Studies led by David Samson, an assistant professor of anthropology at University of Toronto Mississauga and director of the Sleep and Human Evolution Lab, find that an average of seven hours of sleep helps “regulate your immune function, your social function, your ability to process energy and metabolism effectively.” He says insomnia, in particular, causes psychotic experiences and worsens mental health illnesses like depression and anxiety.
This knowledge, as Mollayeva says, is, if anything, a call to improve your time management skills. Skip the late-night parties, hide your phone in a drawer while you study, and do the hard work of prioritizing your activities. Don’t sacrifice a good night’s sleep for work you should try getting done in the day. When there aren’t enough hours in the day—there are never enough hours in the day—still make an effort to go to bed and wake up at regular times.
When it comes to matters regarding individual health and academic performance, post-secondary students need to take accountability for themselves, because university life, with all its time-consuming psychological, emotional, and financial demands, doesn’t facilitate a sleep-based lifestyle.
Here are six tips from the Mayo Clinic, a US health care system deemed to be number one in the country, to help you get a better night’s sleep.