It’s 3 a.m. You’re typing the last few words of your essay without any intention of proof reading the repetitive babble on the page. Before crawling into bed, you send the document off to Coug Prints, ready to swipe your card at the library printers on the way to your 8 a.m. class.

As college students, sleep is last on our list – assignments, studying, social obligations and Netflix tend to command most of our time, cutting into our sleep schedule when we can’t fit everything in.

Christopher Davis, one of the core faculty members at the WSU Sleep and Performance Research Center in Spokane, explained why sleep needs to be our first priority while in college.

“Your thinking becomes more rigid when you’re sleep deprived,” Davis said. “Initially, you might have the attention to deal with a task, but over time you get performance deterioration.”

Davis recommends getting some rest and revisiting assignments in the morning, as your ability to gain insight and make connections is more efficient after sleeping.

“Studies have shown that your ability to recall decreases while you’re sleep deprived,” Davis said. “So if you’re cramming for a multiple choice test, where the answers are there, that might work, but not necessarily if you’re writing an essay, because you have to synthesize information.”

In addition to our ability to perform at school, not getting enough sleep harms our health and can thwart our efforts to lose weight.

“While getting good sleep is essential for our mood, our well-being, and our performance, insufficient sleep is a risk factor for a variety of diseases, including cancer, hypertension, metabolic syndrome, heart disease, and diabetes,” Davis said.

According to the American Heart Association, metabolic syndrome is a cluster of risk factors that can indicate future cardiovascular problems.

Individuals are classified as having metabolic syndrome when they meet three or more criteria, such as having abdominal obesity, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure.

Though risk of metabolic syndrome increases as we age, with adults between 40 and 59 years of age three times as likely to meet the criteria as those between 20 and 39 years of age, according to a National Health Statistics report, habits formed as young adults can leave lasting effects on our health.

The same report determined that 34 percent of adults 20 years old and over in the U.S. have metabolic syndrome, with 20 percent of adults between 20 and 39 years old affected.

There’s no question that we have a problem with obesity in this country, and while diet and exercise are obvious solutions, sleep might be a factor we’re glossing over.

For people who have trouble sleeping or don’t get enough sleep each night, Davis recommends practicing sleep hygiene, a set of habits and practices that help form a consistent bedtime routine.

Here are a few tips for sleeping better on a regular basis:

• Varying your bedtime only by 20 minutes on weeknights and an hour on weekends
• Getting between seven and nine hours of sleep per night
• Avoiding stimulants like caffeine or nicotine
• Limiting alcohol use
• Avoiding naps
• Sleeping at night
• Using room-darkening curtains

As a chronic napper myself, I was disappointed to hear that my daily nap might be why I have trouble sleeping.

“Over the course of the day, you build up a sleep debt just from being awake,” Davis said. “When you take a nap, you’re paying off that sleep debt so you’re not as tired when you’re going to sleep at night.”

Napping can come in handy, however, during long drives to the west side of the state.

“That’s what rest stops are for,” Davis said. “It doesn’t take a very long nap to be able to recover your faculties and ability to drive alert, so in that case, napping helps.”

For many of us, college is the place to find out what kind of lifestyle we want to have, yet the lack of supervision and low funds can lead to poor decisions about diet, exercise and sleeping.

Groceries and gym memberships may not be cheap, but getting enough sleep every night is just a matter of routine.

Alysen Boston is a senior communication major from Baltimore, Maryland. She can be contacted at 335-2290 or by [email protected]. The opinions expressed in this column are not necessarily those of the staff of the Daily Evergreen or those of The Office of Student Media.