The Importance of Sleeping Well

It was 4 AM during final exam week. My math test was in 8 hours, followed by a debate presentation in my Speech and Debate class.

I had two options: to drink a new cup of coffee and spend the next hours cramming and practicing. Or, I could close the books and go to sleep.

I chose to do the former for every test and experienced the negative effects of doing so soon into the ensuing days. I started to feel moody and uncoordinated, struggled to concentrate, had trouble with short-term memory, became paranoid, and started hallucinating.

Especially in ultra-competitive urban high schools, there is an epidemic of sleep deprivation in teens who consider this a badge of honor, proving just how intensely hardworking they are. When, in reality, this is really inducing the opposite effect. When we don´t sleep, we lose our efficiency and creativity. This leads to a vicious cycle: the next day, we then fall asleep later and get further deprived.

What we need to understand is that sleep isn´t a luxury or a way to ¨reward¨ ourselves after our work is finished. Instead, it is a necessity. Sleeping is a routine that is just as important as brushing your teeth every morning or eating healthy every day.

Sleep plays a critical role in retaining the information that we learn.

According to Herman Ebbinghaus, a 19th-century psychologist, we forget 40% of the information presented to us during the first 20 minutes of our learning.

For us to truly retain a piece of information, our knowledge must be transferred from our short-term memory to our more durable long-term memory.

This transfer occurs with the help of the hippocampus. After sensory data is recorded in the neurons as short-term memory, it travels to the hippocampus, which strengthens the neurons in the cortical area. This creates a neural network where the information will be returned as long-term memory.

It is during our non-REM slow-wave sleep that short-term memory is redistribution to long-term storage in the cortex.

Moreover, it is during this time that our glymphatic system, a cleanup mechanism that removes the waste products that build up in our brain throughout the day, is activated.

When we don´t sleep, our brain gets overburdened with waste that contributes to the aforementioned negative effects of sleep deprivation.

With the significant scientific effects of sleep deprivation in mind, we need to stop utilizing lack of sleep as a parameter of dedication and instead treat it as a critical tool for a balanced life.