Are you losing sleep?

You might think a few beers will make you sleep better, but it's actually not the case. A night out on the booze might make you drop off fully dressed on the sofa, but any sleep you get will just be a light slumber¹ and although you might fall asleep faster if you've had a few drinks, it's just down to alcohol's sedative properties kicking in.³

Alcohol actually reduces the amount of REM (dream) sleep you have, and so the more you drink on a regular basis, the less sleep you get as a whole, which can lead to depression, anxiety and all the other things associated with insomnia.³

Another sobering fact is that after five nights of just partial sleep deprivation, three drinks will have the same physical effect on your body as six would normally have when you've been sleeping properly.¹

Back to top

You might joke about not getting enough sleep if you've been working a bit hard on the revision, or just developed a bit of an addiction to late night web surfing. But sleep deprivation can cause real problems.

It's even more of a problem when you're trying to get good grades and revise for some of the most important exams of your life - it's been shown that 18 to 24 year-olds deprived of sleep suffer more from impaired performance than older adults do² - and that's not what you need when your future career depends on you being able to perform.

If you've been awake for more than 18 hours, it can produce an effect that's almost the same as being drunk.² In fact, just 17 hours of staying awake can lead to a decrease in performance that's equivalent to a blood alcohol-level of 0.05%.¹

Researchers from the Institute for Neuroscience at the University of Texas in Austin, US, looked into the effects of sleep deprivation at West Point in the US - an academy that trains college age students to become top ranking military officials. They found that the some of the students who had been deprived of sleep changed the way they interacted with situations that needed quick, automatic thinking.⁴

This made the sleep deprived students change their way of interacting with things around them. They went from reacting automatically, to having to stop and consciously evaluate what was going on first - slowing down their reactions.⁴

Back to top

Everyone's different, but on average a healthy adult needs six to nine hours of sleep a night. Most research shows that it's quality, not quantity that makes most difference.

If you're feeling stressed, depressed or anxious it could stop you from sleeping, make you sleep less and or just disrupt your sleep patterns. People who are depressed often wake up early and can't get back to sleep, but then feel really tired during the day. If this sounds like you, try and find ways to deal with your stress, or speak to your doctor about it.⁵

If you feel tired all the time but you are going to bed early, you might be affected by other people's noise - even if you don't realise it! Sleeping in a noisy environment can suppress your immune function even if it doesn't wake you up, and any unfamiliar noise, or noise during the first and last two hours of sleep, can play havoc with your sleep cycle.¹ If you've got noisy house mates or family members, it's worth having a word when you're trying to get some sleep.

Some ideas for helping short term sleep problems include:

• If you don't fall asleep within 30 minutes of going to bed, get up and do something else until you feel sleepy again. Don't lie awake worrying about not being able to sleep!
• Don't watch TV or sit in bed using your laptop. If you only use the bed for sleeping (and other enjoyable bed related activities if you're lucky) your body will start to associate the bedroom with relaxation and not working.
• Keep your bedroom on the cool side.
• Eat something before bed, but don't eat too much. If you're hungry or still digesting a large pizza you'll find it harder to sleep. Also, try not to smoke or drink/eat anything containing caffeine for four hours before bedtime.

If all this talk of sleep deprivation is making you feel tired, caffeine is a well known short term tiredness relief. If you're a bit of a coffee head, a trip to the local coffee shop for a latte is a pleasant way to wake yourself back up - you could treat yourself to a cake as well and make an afternoon of it. But if your need for alertness is a bit more pressing, try taking an over the counter medicine such as PRO PLUS^®. Caffeine has been proved to make people more alert as well as temporarily relieving tiredness.²

Back to top