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pareekpallav@gmail.com
3. March 2010 06:34
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| Admin: The author of the post is Pallav Pareek working with Deprtment of Psychiatry & BehavioralNeurosciences, Resident(PGY2) Wayne State University/Detroit Medical Center. |
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He would now be regulary advicing on MeraCareerGuide.Com and writing to studentson study schedules, Best Practices for after and before exams preps. The importanceof sleep and sleep hygiene and stresses related queries.
The biggest question students, including myself(when I was a student), always ask is "how much sleep do I need" Thisquestion is very difficult to answer, but most sleep experts agree that after yourlate teens (after 14 years of age) and during your adult life most of us have arequirement of about 8-9 hours of sleep |
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| The individual requirement can’t becalculated by a machine, so be your own judge and you will for sure know which numberis best for you. It should fall between 6-10 hours. As a rule of thumb, if youare using your brain at full capacity, say exam time, we recommend 8 hours of sleepevery 24 hours. This could be 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep, or apower nap of about 45 minutes during day and 7.15 hours during night or 2 hoursduring the day and 6 hours at night. Most people would function at their best ifthis calculation is followed. |
Yet another intriguing question that is alwayson a student’s mind is "I am wasting my time sleeping and everybodyelse in my class, or my group, or my friendsmust be studying at this hour". I would strongly advice not to fall in thistrap of sleeping less and doing more. Problems encountered with less sleep and morework, include
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- Feeling tired, irritated and exhausted the next day (which you might be able to hide well from people outside, but you sure feel that way inside. And we all know probably by this point in our lives, what we feel inside is much more important for us, for how we function).
- Lack of sleep causes jitteriness, and depression, which threatens both our creativity and efficiency.
- Sleeping less interferes with the production of Leptin, the hormone which counteracts hunger, thereby making you need more food and eventually gaining more weight. Most of us don’t want to look that way ;) given a choice. So here we have a choice, SLEEP WELL, and look smart and feel smarter.
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- Less sleep causes weakened immunity. You have less/alteration of the white blood cells circulating in your body [the cells required to fight infection], thus more infections, like cold.
- Periods of uninterrupted sleep are required to have REM periods in our sleep which come every 45 minutes, during normal sleep. These periods are very important to make the short term memories which we have acquired during the day into long term memories (you will need them to write in your exams, or for that matter, if you want to make sense of what you learnt yesterday, or a few days ago).
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| We shall discuss in subsequent articlesin this section few things you always wanted to know: TheDo’s and Don’ts of a good sleep cycle. What is sleep hygiene andwhy is it important? How can I increase or sharpen my memory? |
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