By Yeji ShimContributing WrIter
Medill sophomore Anne Kleinsasser sipped a hot beverage during lunch in Allison Hall one recent afternoon.
She was up late the previous night and wanted some caffeine to help stay awake for the rest of the day.
But there was only one problem: Her drink had little of the stimulant in it.
“I meant to make a mocha,” she said, “but I was so out of it, I got hot chocolate instead.”
Kleinsasser is one of many Northwestern students who find themselves with irregular sleep schedules, while trying to juggle schoolwork, other activities and getting a good night’s sleep.
But NU neurologists Phyllis Zee and Fred Turek warn that a schedule like Kleinsasser’s might be doing more harm than good. Sleep, they say, is just as important as mental and physical health.
“These three components to a healthy lifestyle interact with each other; they help promote each other,” Zee said.
Zee and Turek recently published “Sleep and Health: Everywhere and in Both Directions,” an editorial in the Archives of Internal Medicine about the correlation between sleep and health. The professors’ editorial reported that while poor health can cause sleep problems, the opposite also can be true.
“For example, if you’re sleep-deprived, it may affect your appetite regulation,” Zee said. “You may eat more or perhaps alter your choice of food to high carbohydrates or fats, and that affects nutrition. Sleep deprivation can affect obesity.”
In their article, Zee and Turek wrote that voluntary sleep reduction is the most common cause of not getting enough sleep.
The solution for college students, Zee said, is giving up exercise and social activities rather than sacrificing sleep.
Maintaining a regular sleeping schedule is the healthiest way to sleep, Zee added, saying college students should get eight hours of sleep per night.
“Most of us sleep better at night,” Zee said. “There’s something about getting that seven or eight hours of sleep in a consolidated manner, rather than break it in two or three bouts during the day.”
Some NU students, such as Josh Urich, manage to keep a regular sleep schedule. The Weinberg junior said he tries to go to sleep at 1:30 a.m. every day.
“I try to wake up at 8:55,” he said. “Unless I hit the snooze button. Then bad things happen, like missing a quiz for Hindi.”
Others, such as McCormick sophomore Zac Lindemann, said a regular sleep schedule would be too inconvenient.
“I fit sleep in where I can, or sleep whenever I want and fit class and homework around that,” he said.
Kleinsasser said the problem of not getting enough sleep is a widespread one that affects students early in their lives.
“It starts in high school, even middle school for some people,” she said. “You push yourself to how much work you’re doing. You do it through college, and later employers aren’t forgiving, either. It’s a larger societal problem and not a niche problem with college students.”
Weinberg sophomore Alex Roth said his solution to getting enough sleep is setting a flexible class schedule.
“If humanly possible, I’d like to sleep four hours and feel like I slept for 10,” he said. “But it’s not. So realistically, I’d like to sleep from 1 to 11, and never ever again take a 9:00 class.”
Reach Yeji Shim at [email protected].
