The first round of tests is coming up very soon or has already passed for many SMU students. This means for many students, staying up all night with a fridge full of energy drinks.
Sometimes, all-nighters are unavoidable. Killer weeks with multiple tests or essays are just bad luck. However, there are the students, like me, who pull all-nighters because of our love for procrastination.
It seems like all-nighters have already become a trademark of college culture. A study from UT says that students pull all-nighters, on average, more than two times a month. They also get less sleep than they actually need one every three nights. So, if you’re constantly pulling all-nighters for homework or studying for tests, you’re definitely not alone.
Grades aren’t the only things that suffer from constant all-nighters. The side effects that come from giving your body less sleep than it needs to function properly can have long lasting consequences.
The most prevalent effect on pulling constant all-nighters is weight gain. When your body is deprived for sleep, two hormones are altered by your body’s reactions. The first is ghrelin, a hormone that urges us to eat, and leptin, a hormone that urges us to stop eating.
Ghrelin and leptin are two critical hormones in maintaining healthy eating habits. During long periods of staying awake, your body produces an excess of ghrelin and less of leptin. This leads to the urge in midnight snacking. Since ghrelin is being produced, it also makes us crave filling junk foods rather than healthy snacks like an apple.
In addition, long periods without sleep can lead to problems with your digestive system. All-nighters change the way the body filter out glucose, a simple sugar present in a wide variety of foods.
Sleep allows the body to repair itself. When you combine the lack of sleep with a large amount of glucose from midnight snacking, the body suffers. It cannot filter out the glucose it normally would because it isn’t getting the sleep it needs. This can lead to serious kidney problems or, if bad enough, even diabetes.
Also, many students use energy drinks such as Redbull or Monster to power through the night. While the energy drinks aren’t as bad as many people claim they are, they do contain a large amount of sugar, which can lead to the digestive problems, and a large amount of caffeine that can cause other issues.
The sudden and constant consumption of a large amount of caffeine can give people anxiety, panic, stomach problems and even lead to irregular heart rhythms.
An increased risk of stroke can be another side effect of a lack of sleep. Constantly sleeping under the recommended seven or eight hours a day increases the risk of stroke. The Associated Professional Sleep Societies states that adults who get less than six hours of sleep a day are four times more at risk for stroke than ones who get a full eight hours every day.
College is a stressful and work filled four years– pulling all-nighters sparingly won’t have any damage on your long term health. Grades, however, suffer from just one night of no sleep.
A study was conducted on comparing the test taking abilities of students who had a BAC of .1% and students who didn’t sleep. After 19 consecutive hours of no sleep test, performance on tests was equal to having a BAC of .1%.
In addition, studying habits for those who don’t pull all-nighters are shown to be more effective. According to St. Lawrence University, students who don’t rely on all-nighters have an average GPA of 3.1. Those who rely on pulling all-nighters had an average GPA of 2.9. This difference is due to the deterioration of test taking abilities after a lack of sleep.
Memory also suffers from constant all-nighters. The body refreshes itself in ways more than just filtering out glucose. It also allows the brain to refresh itself and reconcile what it’s learned and memorized the day before.
A study on REM cycles shows that the brain needs at the very least an hour and a half, or one REM cycle, to process and retain some information. Ideally, however, at least seven and a half hours are encouraged.
A lack of sleep causes the mind’s effectiveness to decrease. Things that are critical to test taking, such as recalling information and cognitive reasoning, are hit hard after a night of little to no sleep. However, many students also say that a night of no sleep and studying is more helpful than rest without studying. It’s hard to stay ahead of classes for any student, but, in the long run, it’ll pay off in your health and grades.
