8 Features!
SOUTHWORDS • FEBRUARY 8, 2002
Not getting enough zzz's?. by Emily Haak It's finally the new semester, and many students are filled with hopes of budgeting their time better, staying on top of school work, and most of all, getting more sleep. This goal seems to be universal, and if it's not, perhaps it should be on account of the 2,000 plus sleep deprived mummies who shuffle through the hallways five days a week. Yes, many start off with these lofty goals, but with deadlines, activities and demands looming over their heads, few obtain it. As the year gets more hectic during the second semester, many students fall back into the rut they found themselves in first semester: sleep deprivation. But before you decide to pull an allnighter to finish that project, there are some facts that you should consider. Although it may seem to be so, being frightfully tired during the day and snoozing during 6th period are not the worst symptoms of sleep deprivation. New research has been published spreading word of the disturbing short-term effects, and the downright serious and frightening effects of chronic sleep deprivation. According to Dr. Alan Green, adolescents need over nine hours of sleep a night. Studies show, however, that few teenagers actually sleep the recommended amount, and as many as a quarter report sleeping less than
seven hours a night. While seven hours a night is enough to get by, it is certainly not enough to maintain a healthy body. Short-term sleep deprivation has been linked to many common side effects that many high-schoolers are all too well aquatinted with. They include daytime fatigue, emotional mood swings, irritability, poor impulse control and poor decision making skills. Many high school students decide that those symptoms are a small price to pay for keeping up in the highly competitive and demanding school atmosphere. Many adolescents do not know what's really going on inside of their body, though. According to the University of Chicago Medical Center, getting four hours of sleep a night for just one week is enough to disturb many basic metabolic functions. The body can't store or process carbohydrates very well, and has a difficult time regulating hormone secretion. In fact, some of the body's processes actually resemble the early stages of diabetes. For example, it takes the body 40% longer to regulate blood sugar when sleep deprived. All of that can happen after just one week of sleep deprivation. Long term symptoms are even worse. By choosing to stay up the extra two hours in order to finish their homework, teens are putting themselves at a much higher risk for very serious health disorders
later in life. Chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to many alarming diseases. In fact, one is at a significantly higher risk of developing "old age" diseases if he has chronic sleep loss. These diseases include hypertension, heart disease, stroke, diabetes, obesity and memory loss. By staying up late, students run much greater of a risk than they realize. In light of recent research, it is fair to say that teenagers should be much less willing to disregard their sleep needs to meet with demands placed on them by school. While in the short term a student could get two points more by cramming for a test, they run the risk of serious diseases later in life. (Continued from p. 7) swings grows old, riding bikes loses its touch and suddenly you are left with work, school and television. Pretty soon you will graduate and, if it's not this way already, everything will be about working. You wiljj be working a job to make money, and working out to stay in shape. I have never seen my ten-year-old brother stay up until 3:00am studying. I have never seen him take an hour out of his day to take a trip to the gym. I have never seen him get up at six in the morning to go running. Why do you? Stop working all the time and start having some fun while your knees still work. You could go play tag or cops and robbers with your siblings, but you will probably look and feel a little strange. Arcing turns down the fall line, crashing down into innocent bystanders at the bottom of the hill, and riding up a lift with three of your friends or three strangers are only a few reasons why you should drop everything right now and go skiing. Abercrombie and Fitch have declared skiing to be cool by printing shirts with images of skiers and the names of fictitious ski patrols and competitions. Your money would be better spent on a ski trip with Ski Club. That day skiing or board- ^ ^ ing will ride on your soul better than an)^^P overpriced shirt ever will. The fact is, we did not need a trendy clothing company to tell us that skiing is cool, it already was. Check for yourself.