More sleep leads to better grades and well-being, study shows
rael-science
More sleep leads to better grades and well-being, study shows
by Diane Toroian Keaggy, Washington University in St. Louis
Want good grades?
Get a good semester's sleep.
But good sleep, it turns out, is not just about quantity. It's also about consistency.
Research
from Tim Bono, lecturer in psychological and brain sciences in Arts
& Sciences at Washington University in St. Louis, found that
students who get a good night's sleep night in and night out earn higher
marks and feel a stronger sense of well-being than those with
fluctuating sleep schedules.
"You can't skimp on sleep one night and expect you will 'catch up' the next,'" Bono said.
Bono's study, published recently in Psychology, Health & Medicine,
tracked the sleep habits of 97 Washington University first-year
students during their first semester on campus. The students who
reported the most stable, consistent sleep patterns earned a GPA of
3.66, on average, while the students with the most variable sleep earned
a GPA of 3.21. Students with regular sleep patterns also reported
higher levels of well-being. These effects held even when controlling
for SAT scores and baseline happiness.
"When
asked to identify factors affecting their academic performance, sleep
difficulty was identified more often than homesickness, roommate
difficulties, health problems, even depression," said Bono, who said
seven to eight hours of sleep a night is optimal.
Although
getting four hours of sleep some nights, and 12 on others might average
to eight, that's not the same as getting eight hours on a regular
basis.
"It
all comes back to our circadian rhythm—that comes from the Latin for
circa, meaning around, and diem, meaning day," Bono said. "It doesn't
matter what the clock on your desk says. Your body has its own internal
clock. An erratic sleep cycle is inconsistent with the body's natural
cycles."
In
high school, sleep patterns often are enforced by Mom and Dad. College
brings more freedom as well as more responsibilities and distractions.
"As
homework and activities pile up, sleep is often the first to go. And
that's a problem because when we go to sleep, the brain goes to work,"
Bono said. "During sleep, the brain transfers information you have
learned to storage regions like the hippocampus so you can later retrieve that material."
Specifically,
memory consolidation occurs during periods of rapid-eye movement (REM)
sleep, which grow longer as the night goes on. Hence, less sleep cheats
our brains of some of the most productive periods of sleep. "That's why I
tell my advisees that all-nighters are not only unproductive, they're
counterproductive."
Bono
advises his students to set a sleep schedule. He personally uses a
sleep app to make sure he gets to bed at the same time every night. Bono
also tells students to stop scrolling an hour before sleep as the light
that emanates from devices suppresses the release of melatonin, the
hormone that makes us drowsy.
Most importantly, don't compete in the Suffering Olympics.
"When
a student says they've only slept five hours, the response is often,
'Well, I only slept four,'" Bono said. "The response should be, 'What
are you doing to take care of yourself?'"
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