In 2009, Carnegie Mellon University’s Sheldon Cohen found for the first time that insufficient sleep is associated with a greater likelihood of catching a cold. To do this, Cohen, who has spent years exploring psychological factors contributing to illness, assessed participants self-reported sleep duration and efficiency levels and then exposed them to a common cold virus.
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Well this explains a lot… I feel that during my freshman year of college I was sicker than I had ever been in my entire life save maybe three occasions. That was also the year that I could not sleep for three days in a row before I physically couldn’t stay awake anymore. That was not a fun experience, and I highly recommend against anyone trying it.
I sometimes wonder if people who create colleges as rigorous as this one realize the consequences and physical harm that they are causing the students. When I visited my hometown after one year of college, everyone was shocked because I appeared to have aged three years in just one. There is a visible toll which takes place with the lack of sleep required to actually finish assignments at school.
I’m not saying that I never slept; on the contrary, I often got between 6-8 hours of sleep a night, but I have always needed 10-12 hours of sleep a night. So no matter what, I will always be groggy due to my extreme sleep needs, but it still becomes excessive at this school.
This study should be called 'Life of a Theatre Person' because it most definitely applies to our life here in the School of Drama. I've functioned on an average of 5 hours of sleep a night for the last four years, and it has taken its toll. I always found that during tech of a show, my health declined. I was constantly sick during shows, and I had always figured it was a combination of stress and lack of nutrition. But clearly the 2-3 hours of sleep I was getting was also a factor. I find it funny that this fact was something assumed by most people, yet was only proven recently. Its like a grandmother's cure all is proven to be medically accurate. Hopefully, I can use this new found knowledge to help keep myself healthy in the coming year. If one or two more hours of sleep makes me 4 times less likely to get sick, it is definitely worth it. Although 164 is a small sample size, my trust in CMU and its staff leads me to find this study completely valid. I'm going to try my hardest to get more sleep this semester.
I think the best part about this article was that Carnegie Mellon University posted it on their own website. The school is aware of the stress culture that exists on campus. And this article continues to support that! I think that this “new research” is not exactly a grand discovery because some of it is rooted in common sense. The mere idea of resting is what is “prescribed” by parents across the world when the child is sick. It just makes sense. I think that that it is interesting that we work and study in an industry that is known for a lack of sleep. We all complain about being sick so often yet we all know that we do not get enough sleep and this study goes to further prove that. As theater people we don’t prioritize and I think that is something that we need to change that attitude.
The information in this article is something everyone should be exposed to. I always advocate for taking care of yourself, and sleep is something I have always needed a lot of so I have always advocated primarily for sleep. I think an important point in this study is that it takes all other variables out of the question, leaving sleep to be the one determining factor in the health of the patients. I also agree with Ben in that the fact that CMU posted this on its own website when we are a school known mainly for sleep deprivation and rigorous coursework. While stress technically wasn’t factored into the results of this study, I know that stress is a great way to reduce quality and quantity of sleep in most cases, and CMU’s high stress culture is definitely a factor that affects most students on campus. With this information, I hope more student will learn to take care of themselves and get plenty of sleep.
I feel like it was a pretty obvious correlation between not having a lot of sleep and getting sick. But maybe that’s just because I’ve heard of studies like this before and stored that information away so when I read this I wasn’t that surprised. But as much as they can show students the research behind how getting sick is directly related to not getting sleep, the students are still not going to get enough sleep because school demands so much of them. As the decades have passed, employers have begun to demand higher education out of their job applicants, as well as the best higher education. This has made colleges have harder and harder work loads to prove how good they are. And with increased workloads comes less time to sleep. I think this article is good to get people to get more sleep because I think we as a society need to reevaluate what is really important in life; our health or getting things done.
Really, it took them, ten years to decide off of a preliminary study that sleep deprivation caused illness? This has been a fact since the dawn of time and they’ve just now decided to actually start thinking about it? Just take a look at literal generations of politicians, doctors, really anyone who went through college and they can tell you that they slept little, got sick then stayed sick because they got even less sleep staying up all night being sick. It pretty infuriating that schools and programs have this, “it’ll be easier” “if you can make it through you can make it through anything” mentality. It’s so stupid that they want top tier adolescent students who get less sleep in a week then most barely proficient adults even thought their brains are still developing. It’s simply insane. Instead of trying to build impractical cramming habits that serve no use but to frustrate students and raise dropout rate, how about university systems take some time to focus on the health need of its students?
Like the others commenting here, I’m not that surprised by the results of this study. Maybe it is because of my own experience with sleep deprivation, but I think it’s pretty common knowledge that getting only a little sleep induces feelings of illness regardless of actual contact with a virus, not to mention definitely makes it easier to get sick and harder to get better. I’m a pretty healthy person, and I haven’t been really sick in a long time. But when I was sick, and my cold just wouldn’t go away, no amount of orange juice and cough medicine was going to make me get any better: I needed lots of sleep. Though I don’t really have any ideas as to how to get more sleep (except better time management, maybe? Less work?) I hope we can all sleep plenty and stay healthy…and more sleep would be nice. Please.
we have known for a long time that sleep is important to things like our energy and our ability to function but this study does a great job on explaining exactly how important it is. Its fascinating that traits like age, stress-level, cigarette or alcohol use don’t affect us as much as sleep does and that sleep can strengthen our immunity to sickness. It is also interesting that even though there is more and more evidence proving that sleep is just as important as diet and exercise, that our society still undervalues it. Shilo Rea points out that our society is very proud of the fact that we trade sleep for long work hours but really, we would be more efficient and effective if we got a adequate amount of sleep.
The least surprising headline I have read. This is one of those things where we know its true but never did the science to back it up. But I think its a good thing they did the study. It may not end up getting passed around that much but it has the power to do some good. I feel like I know as well as anyone else how crazy CMU life can be. I have a crazy course load even without crew hours and I workout every morning. Between all this I still manage to get my 8 hours of sleep. As a freshman it was certainly hard to adjust to the new schedule but a lot of people seem to support the theory that its impossible. I know CMU has stress management courses and the administration kind of tries to convince people to sleep but most of the students (and professors) still joke about noone getting any sleep so things do not really change. Maybe if people start touting this study loud enough and often enough it will convince a few more people to work sleep into their busy schedule.
I found this article quite obvious. Everyone knows that without enough sleep one will begin to deteriorate not only mentally but physically as well. As I begin my freshman year I am fearful of becoming sick. Between the course load, projects, crew, social life, and working out, not to mention showering and eating, it seems like a lot. On my third day I am already feeling the stress, and apparently nothing has kicked into high gear. What i found most fascinating about the science behind this seemingly apparent information is that sleep has more of an affect of your health and wellbeing than alcohol, age, and smoking. Getting sleep and health must always take priority over work. Without our health we are not able to work to our full potential and eventually will burn out. I am thankful that a place like CMU is willing to provide help for students that are unable to effectively use their time. Pushing students to work their hardest, and load them with work while simultaneously telling them to be healthy and sleep does get a bit confusing, however, we must realize that sleeping a full 8 hours at night will directly affect the rest of our jam packed days.
As a CMU student, the idea of sleep deprivation can be a very big problem for many. Although the workload can sometimes be daunting, if you manage your time wisely you will find yourself spending less time working and more time sleeping. I have only been on campus for one week and I have lost count on the number of times professors have mentioned the phrase “time management”. I knew exactly what I was getting into when I signed up to be a student at CMU, and after hearing what upper classmen have to say, I have come to terms with the fact that I will be having many late nights. And while late nights, although not appealing because I love sleep, won’t kill me. I will take some airborne at night and load up on the vitamin C, and I'll be "right as rain"! Don’t get me wrong, I'm sure there will be times during the day when I'll I dream about sleeping, but the human body we know can be trained to work though late nights and still function at 95% the next morning. I can't promise I will get the recommended seven hours of sleep, but I can guarantee you this… if I’m not working, you know where I'll be.. ZZZZZ.
It's no secret that not getting sleep is unhealthy, but one line of this article in particular really connected to me. “In our busy culture, there’s still a fair amount of pride about not having to sleep and getting a lot of work done”. This really reflects on how I've been feeling over the past week here at Carnegie Mellon. There already seems to be this competition of sorts to stay up the latest or work the hardest on projects. The first night of class people were already putting in extra hours in the studio. Outside of the School of Drama, I see the girls on my floor always trying to outdo each other with the amount of homework they have. This kind of attitude is toxic, and is especially scary considering it's only week one. I'm not trying to say that people shouldn't work hard, but just that they should try and find some sort of a balance. There's nothing wrong with staying in the studio late into the night as long as you know you can get some sleep. Health should always come first, and a part of maintaining your health is sleeping when you have to. A project can wait until the next morning, but your body can't. Proper time management should allow you to both have some sleep and get your work done on time. It can be hard to find this balance, but it's an essential thing to do.
From a very young age we are taught the importance of sleep. It’s the time where our subconscious works out the complexities and the information given to us throughout the day and makes sense of it all in what we call our dreams. It is also the time where we giving our bodies the chance to recharge and refresh to be able to handle the next day ahead of us, but so often we think we need more time in the day to get tasks accomplished and so we tend to borrow from our sleep time. Unfortunately the world commands balance so while one thing gains another suffers. So this article makes sense that the body needs a specific amount time overnight to replenish its defenses against everything that is trying to weaken the body. By not sleeping a full eight hours, it like you’re asking your body to complete the assignment of keeping you healthy with less time than available. The end result will always be rushed poor quality work and you will suffer.
I do wish that the article could have touched on how the other factors they used to establish a baseline affect the quality of sleep. Because someone could easily get eight very terrible hours of sleep and get just as sick just as fast as someone who got six great hours of sleep.
I can't even count the number of times that I've gotten a little bit sick during weeks of stress in school or theater, and the sickness lingers for days or even weeks. What always happens is that I take care of myself during the day by drinking water and eating a proper amount of food so that at night I feel better and I think I've finally gotten rid of it. And then I get one night of bad sleep or not enough sleep, and BOOM I wake up the next morning right back where I started, now feeling worse than ever. I know that I personally have always been rather lax about my physical health because I do want to push myself and make sure that I have everything done that needs to be done, but getting through the intense program at CMU is going to force me to start taking better care of myself in order to make it through. One point that the article only briefly touches on is that the effects on your physical health from lack of sleep can definitely cause you to burn out physically and mentally if you do not manage it correctly, and I think that's something very important to keep in mind in this fast-paced academic environment.
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