If the stress of exams and personal problems is causing tossing and turning at night, there are ways to help get a good night’s rest.
For freshman and students getting ready for the work life, sleep begins to play a major role in the day-to-day activities.
“It’s easy to see it in a freshman, especially those who live in the dorms, because it is not a quiet atmosphere late at night,” said Dr. Fred Kam, the medical director at the Auburn U. Medical Clinic. “You tend to see it in that group and the students 21 and older who start hitting the bars, and they suffer from sleeping disorders.”
These are normally the times in a person’s life where their sleep pattern is changing drastically, Kam said.
Kam said freshman come in to the medical clinic all the time because they come to college and their sleep routine is far different from when they were in high school.
“A lot of students aren’t nocturnal,” Kam said. “They tend to do stuff later at night. They don’t have a particular pattern for sleeping, and the one they had in high school easily gets thrown off.”
Developing a good sleep pattern can be vital not only to a student’s success, but to their health, said Kelley White, a registered polysomnographer at the Decatur General Sleep Lab.
“It is definitely good to maintain a sleep hygiene, where you go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time,” White said. “It’s hard to do when you are studying for exams, but that’s what we recommend to do.”
A polysomnographer is someone who performs sleep studies to help diagnose and treat sleep disorders.
White also said sleep disorders can affect your blood pressure and cause heart attacks.
Sleeping disorders also becomes apparent in the work place and can be very dangerous for someone who is falling asleep on the job or behind the wheel of a car.
“Being sleepy during the daytime is a big issue,” said Brad Wheeler, registered sleep technician at Brookwood Sleep Disorders Center in Birmingham, Ala., “because it can cause accidents by falling asleep at the wheel or if they work around powerful equipment or stuff like that. Obviously there are some safety issues there.”
There are ways to help prevent sleeping disorders and ensure a good night of sleep.
“Stay away from caffeine after three in the afternoon,” White said. “Don’t exercise too close to bedtime. Some relaxing routines are good. Eight hours of sleep a night at the same time is very important. We were created to get seven to eight hours of sleep every night.”
Kam said it is good for people to have a routine like flossing their teeth and changing clothes to tell the mind it’s time to go to bed.
“Your brain can be affected by what you train it to do,” Kam said.
It’s not just the kids that stay up and party all night who are affected by sleeping disorders. Playing video games or dealing with anything electronic before going to sleep can stimulate the brain and cause you to stay awake, Kam said.
“You have to eliminate all activities or any kind of stimulants,” Kam said. “You don’t want to be playing Halo at 3 a.m. or within two hours of going to bed.”
White said there are approximately 100 types of sleeping disorders, so failure to go to sleep can be very common.
If maintaining good sleep hygiene isn’t the solution, there are medicines recommended to help people fall asleep.
“If you are waking up in the morning and you don’t feel refreshed, you probably need to see a sleep physician so he can run a thorough investigation on why you’re not rested,” White said. “They recommend Lunesta or Ambien, which is a much stronger drug.”
Although students want to get to college and stay up late, sleep is very important for the body and the health of a person in the future.
It can be good to find a routine and try to stick with it through a college career and into the next chapter of life.
“Something that helps you relax, and everybody is different,” White said. “It could be a warm bath or a book. It’s a good thing to shut your mind off and then just go to sleep.”