How to Form Good Sleep Habits Living a Student Lifestyle

It’s not easy to be a student. Whether you’re used to pulling all-nighters to finish a project or lying in bed browsing social media on your phone for hours during the night, you’re likely overlooking a key aspect of your health: sleep.

Sleep is essential to maintain overall health and well-being. Think of sleep as the body’s power button for physical and mental processes: it calibrates everything from brain function to immune response. With demanding academic schedules, part-time jobs, and navigating relationships, prioritizing restful sleep seems like a small sacrifice in the grand scheme of things, right? Let’s first explore how sleep—or lack thereof—affects the human body.

How Sleep Deprivation Affects Health and Academic Performance

While some of the body’s functions ‘power down’ during sleep, your brain remains active in the background. It’s working to process, organize, and store the new memories you’ve made throughout the day so you can recall them later. This process is called memory consolidation.

If you regularly skip a few hours of sleep, or you don’t get enough quality sleep, the memory consolidation process gets disrupted and this could have adverse effects on your health, mood, and academic performance. Let’s take a closer look at some symptoms you might be experiencing from sleep deprivation, along with some examples:

• Fatigue - You might catch yourself yawning excessively in the middle of your class.

• Trouble focusing - You zone in and out during lectures and can’t recall what the professor discussed the next day.

• Difficulty absorbing or recalling new information - You find yourself re-reading the same page from your textbook to try to understand and recall the information you read.

• Delayed decision-making - You are physically or mentally reacting to situations slower than you normally would, like deciding whether you want to go to your favorite hangout spot on Friday night.

• Mood imbalance - You feel like you have little or no control over your emotions and are generally more anxious, irritable, or overreact when things don’t go your way.

• Increasing appetite - You crave caffeinated or sugary foods more frequently just to get through the day.

Harness the Power of Sleep

Getting your 7-9 hours of sleep isn’t a recommendation that should be easily dismissed since it can take several days for the body to recuperate from sleep loss. Restful sleep reduces stress while improving mood and cognitive function. Tasks that require problem-solving, concentration or attention, as well as tasks that involve remembering things are better executed when the body gets adequate sleep, so make sure you don’t skimp on your snoozes!

How to Create an Effective Bedtime Routine

Preparing yourself and your environment for bedtime can affect how well you sleep. Following a calming, relaxing routine can help your mind unwind and signal to your body that it's time to ‘power down’ for the night. Here are a few recommendations you can begin to use today to get a good night’s rest.

Turn Your Environment Into a Sleep Oasis

Make It Dark
Your body’s circadian rhythm naturally responds to daylight and darkness. Using blackout curtains or wearing an eye mask can help block out additional unwanted light.

Make It Cool
If you love flipping your pillow to the cool side, you’ll like this tip: research has shown that keeping your bedroom on the cooler side, generally between 60°F and 67°F, can assist in achieving better sleep.

Make It Quiet
Put your phone on silent and turn off notifications to avoid distractions. Choose what works for you: a completely quiet environment, white noise to mask disruptive sounds, or calming music to ease you into sleep. If you’re unable to block outside noises, earplugs are a great option. They're budget-friendly and can significantly reduce noise, creating a quieter environment for sleep.

Form a Bedtime Ritual

Unplug to Unwind
Make a conscious effort to unwind before bed by avoiding screens like TVs, phones, and tablets in the hour before sleep. Checking for texts, emails, news, or social media can trigger alertness and make it harder for your mind to relax. These devices also emit a bright blue light that disrupts your body's natural sleep cycle, making it difficult to fall asleep.

⭐ PRO TIP
Power Up Away From Bed

Charge your phone overnight away from your bed or bedside table. This will keep your phone out of sight and reduce any temptations to use it.

Take a Warm Bath
A warm bath or shower can have a calming effect on your body and help you sleep better. As you bathe in warm water, heat is drawn away from your core and moves towards the skin’s surface. Once you step out of the shower, your core temperature is lowered, signaling to your body that it’s time to sleep. 

Scent Your Way to Sweet Dreams
Your nose might be able to help you catch some ZZZs. Try diffusing calming scents like vanilla, lavender, and camomile before bed to help create a spa-like atmosphere and promote calmness.

Do a Relaxing Activity
Reading, journaling, and meditation are some great ways to prime your body for sleep. All of these activities create a sense of inner peace that can quiet down an anxious, racing mind.

Juggling between school, work, and social commitments is difficult, but when you’re sleep-deprived, it can take a toll on your health and academic performance. By incorporating some simple practices into your nighttime routine, you can transform your bedroom into a deep sleep oasis and wake up feeling energized and focused.