Bedtime was the worst thing that ever happened to us
A capsule of melatonin a day keeps the late-night hallucinations away. That’s the old wives tale, right? Or maybe that’s part of the inscription underneath the bronze statue of Douglas Fairbanks, Sr., posing victoriously in the courtyard of the School of Cinematic Arts: “Ye shalt not miss a single night’s worth of sleep lest you forget how to operate your own vehicle.”
College students balance a diverse set of responsibilities: class schedules, employment, washing their roommate’s dishes, etc. As a result, many of them are not getting enough sleep. According to the Sleep Foundation, it’s up to 96% of the college student population in the United States.
The effects of sleep deprivation are likely already understood by most USC students — trouble focusing, an inability to manage stress, irrational irritability. A more visceral description is that missing even one night of sleep is equivalent to a blood alcohol content of .10 — well over the legal driving limit. Try knocking out a term paper or conducting a psychological study after three piña coladas and a shot of Fireball — it’s impossible.
Running on little or no sleep day after day, month after month, significantly increases an individual’s risk of developing a mood disorder. According to Harvard Medical School: “In one major study of 10,000 adults, people with insomnia were five times more likely to develop depression … In the same study, people with insomnia were 20 times more likely to develop panic disorder.”
So trading in Z’s for B’s is ineffective and dangerous. Why, then, is it relatively easy — for young people, especially — to push through the night, work, party, what-have-you and only slouch off to bed when the chickadees start chirping?
An elusive, manipulative culprit could be our childhood bedtimes.
Finals week is demanding, yes, and juggling a job, school and significant relationships is difficult, but our willingness to trade in sleep for study groups or last-minute concert tickets is a willingness that does not exist in other areas of self-sufficiency. Food, water and bathroom breaks are, for the most part, prioritized daily. This speaks to our disillusionment with rest.
For many of us, bedtime was a dreaded part of our evening routine. We’d don our pajamas, turn off the TV and trudge off to bed where we’d lay on lumpy pillows for hours on end. Indefatigable, we’d dream up scenarios we hoped to live out the next day until — finally! — our eyelids would surrender and we’d drift off to reluctant, momentary sleep.
Rest was never meant to be so industrialized, so carefully planned out and coordinated. It is as natural as craving sunshine and comradery. It should just be something that we do, undisputed, without recourse or demand for prior arrangement (within reason, of course).
Our internal clocks are almost as unique as our diets. Here’s Harvard again: “What determines our desire to wake with the sun or, conversely, burn the midnight oil, is influenced by the same system that regulates the cycling of many bodily functions … Although our internal clock is set to approximately 24 hours, the exact timing of circadian rhythms varies from one person to the next.”
As a result of these factors, strict “factory hour” bedtimes only discourage children from listening to their own bodies and acting in accordance to their particular needs. The result can be a long-standing feud with sleep itself, making it all the easier to toss it aside in the name of fun extracurricular activities and midnight-deadline rushing.
This year, in the spirit of resolutions, self-growth and actualization, let us give ourselves the gift of rest.
A good place to start healing our relationship with sleep is figuring out just how much we actually need.
Dr. Edward Pace-Schott, an investigator in the Sleep and Anxiety Disorders Laboratory at Massachusetts General Hospital, posits that we can solve that puzzle by observing how much we sleep when we don’t need to be up by a certain time. According to Pace-Schott, “When you’ve been on vacation for two weeks, how are you sleeping during that second week? How long are you sleeping? … [Chances] are you need that amount or close to that amount of sleep.”
Once that number has been sorted out, we can select a new bedtime — one that’s hand-selected and customized to accommodate our current schedule, body and mind. Stick to it. Don’t compromise. And, perhaps most importantly, buy a decent pillow for Pete’s sake; our necks deserve better than the bottom of the Target bargain barrel.