As spring quarter nears its end, UCLA students know they will be getting less and less sleep in the next few weeks.
However, students may rethink their choice of staying up late to study, as new findings suggest a strong correlation between sleep deprivation and shorter life expectancy.
A long-term study was recently conducted in Italy using 1.3 million patients to study the effects of sleep on mortality rates. For individuals who consistently received six hours or less of sleep a night, there was a strong relationship with an earlier death.
Humans are circadian creatures, meant to be awake in the day and asleep at night, and when there is a lack of sleep, the proper release of hormones at particular sleep times is altered, said Dr. Ronald Harper, a distinguished professor of neurobiology at the David Geffen School of Medicine.
“When one is sleep-deprived, they tend to have a larger appetite and will eat more,” Harper said. “If this keeps up, you are at a risk of weight gain, elevated glucose and potentially Type II diabetes, with all of the accompanying risk factors for mortality.”
People who are deprived of sleep produce a greater amount of the hormone ghrelin, which will increase their desire to eat and can lead to these complications.
Although having a reduced amount of sleep can lead to more health complications, it should not be thought of as a direct cause of mortality. There is not a big effect if a person loses sleep once in a while. However, if sleep deprivation becomes a habit, then problems can result.
Danny Durbin, a second-year physiological science student, is currently balancing his academic classes with a job and extracurricular activities. He said he is pushed for time and often has to stay up late to finish his assignments.
“Losing sleep is inevitable,” Durbin said. “But I’d rather get less rest earlier on in the quarter so when finals and papers come around, I’ll have more time to sleep.”
Although many students tend to study this way, Dr. Alon Avidan, an associate professor of neurology at the David Geffen School of Medicine, affirms that sleep is not to be thought of as a bank.
“It is necessary that the hours you sleep occur during the night,” Avidan said. “If you are sleeping irregularly, then all the processes regulated by sleep, such as hormone release, are affected.”
For every hour of sleep a person is deprived of, it takes an entire night of good sleep to recover, Avidan said.
In this case, if a student is losing roughly seven hours of sleep during the week, it will take seven full nights of proper sleep, eight hours per night, for the body to recuperate.
Stressing the importance of sleep, Avidan added that even when preparing for final exams, students should try to get eight hours of sleep the night before. Getting this amount of rest will better a student’s performance, memory and ability to recall information.
“It all comes down to the fact that there is no substitute for a good night’s sleep,” Avidan said. “To perform to your best ability means to put in an adequate amount of proper rest.”