Effects of Poor Sleep Hygiene

Sleep is one of the essential tasks of the body; we need to sleep to function properly as living creatures. In fact, we spend around 25 years of our lives asleep. While practicing good sleep hygiene is important for everyone, this is especially important in the youth, who are still developing both physically and mentally and in people that work in the public service industry such as soldiers and bus drivers. It is very important to practice good sleep hygiene, as, without sleep, many adverse effects can occur such as impairment to memory, cognitive functioning, and reaction time.

Ideal Time Frame

Sleep is not just closing your eyes and going to bed. The process of falling asleep and gaining all the benefits of deep sleep is much more nuanced than that, and it occurs in five different phases for, ideally, an average of 6-8 hours. However, many studies show that newborn children to toddlers require much more sleep compared to adolescents and adults. While no consensus was reached in a study conducted by Emily Sawyer, an attempt was made to define what exactly ‘long’ and short’ sleep is in the context of sleep for children aged 1-16. According to her cross-sectional (n=31) and longitudinal (n=7) studies, the definition for short sleep ranges between 5-11 hours, and the definition for long sleep ranges between 8-14 hours. 

Stages of Sleep

First Stage

The first stage lasts around 1 to 7 minutes and starts when you close your eyes and lie down on the pillow. During this phase, both brain activity and eye movement are still very active. Additionally, it is easy to wake back up due to disturbance or stimulation from the outside world. This stage, along with the second and third stage, is part of Non-Rapid Eye Movement phase, or NREM phase, according to “What Happens to Your Body When You Sleep.”

Second Stage

As you continue to drift further into sleep, around 10 to 25 minutes after the first phase ends, brain activity begins to slow, and eyes have no movement. Also, the brain’s electrical activity slows even further, as monitored on an electroencephalogram, or EEG. This test is utilized by neuroscientists as a way to monitor and possibly research brain activity, even during sleep.

Third Stage

The third stage of sleep consists of falling even deeper into slumber, 20 to 30 minutes after the second phase. During this stage, activity on the EEG slows down even further, producing some delta waves. This is the final stage of the NREM phase in sleep, which means your eyes do not move. At this point, the sleeper has had around 60-90 minutes of sleep, which is the general duration for one full NREM phase.

Fourth Stage

The final stage is the deepest stage of sleep. This stage lasts 40 to 90 minutes. While this is the deepest stage of one’s slumber, it is also the stage where the Rapid Eye Movement phase of sleep, or REM sleep, occurs. In this phase, the brain’s activity on an EEG shows a likeness to that of a waking brain. It is also when most dreams occur. During this stage, the muscles relax and are eventually paralyzed to avoid acting on the dreams. However, there are some cases wherein the muscles do not experience paralysis. People whose muscles do not relax during this stage are prone to sleepwalking.

Poor Sleep Hygiene and its Consequences

Causes

While sleeping for 6 to 8 hours is the ideal time frame to reap all the benefits of good sleep hygiene, many factors cause people to sleep under that duration and be considered “sleep-deprived.” Some of these factors include stress, sleeping late or “eveningness”, sleep disorders such as insomnia, and depression. Furthermore, having poor sleep hygiene has a large number of consequences and effects on the mind and body. 

Effects

Memory

Lack of sleep leads to difficulty in both storage and retrieval of memory. This is especially important for children, who do not yet have fully developed brains. One article stated that “sufficient sleep increases memory function and learning in children. Sleep-deprived toddlers may not be able to remember their routines and, therefore, not internalize them.” This means that enough sleep for toddlers is just as important in instilling routines and manners, as being able to remember these routines relies a lot on whether or not they have had sufficient sleep.

Cognitive Performance & Behavior

Poor sleep hygiene can impair cognitive performance, affecting the ability to learn and process information. This almost directly affects adolescents, who need good cognitive performance to do well in school. Unfortunately, however, up to 40% of adolescents have the eveningness chronotype, which is also known as “the tendency to increase activity later in the day and going to bed and getting up later.” Additionally, eveningness is associated with a vast array of adverse mental effects such as “depression, anxiety, and emotional instability.” It is also associated with adverse behavioral effects such as “impulsivity, attention problems, and cognition performance” to name a few. An increased risk for psychopathology due to eveningness was also another effect that was documented, based on a few longitudinal studies. This tendency, paired with the demands of an adolescents’ academic and social lives can leave little to no time for them to develop healthy sleeping habits, further damaging their overall health in a vicious cycle.

Conclusion

To conclude, there are many consequences to having poor sleep hygiene. One can have a lowered ability to remember things, process and learn new material, and even react accurately to stimuli around us. Not only can this be troublesome as a student, but it can also be dangerous depending on what profession you have. I would not trust a doctor or a bus driver who lacks sleep to perform their job properly, as they could potentially forget a procedure or run a red light and cause an accident. Practicing good sleeping habits is very important, no matter who you are and what you do.