Text by ALLISON MOU AND SOUMYA JHAVERI Art by MAYA ANDERSON
DON’T SCRIMP ON YOUR SLEEP The insidious harms of sleep deprivation
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ENIOR MIGUEL MORENO DESCRIBES HIS WORST the lost of sleep over period of months or even years. night of sleep ever. Once in his first semester of junior “There’s no hard-and-fast rule, but basically if you’re not getyear, he went to bed at 5:45 a.m. only to wake up at 6:30 ting the amount of sleep you need to perform optimally, you’re a.m. sleep deprived,” says Christopher Farina, an AP Psychology “One night, I had to prepare for a communications speech, teacher at Paly. finish a chem lab, finish Analysis [Honors] homework, and look According to Farina, sleep debt is a term used to describe over my Japanese notes for a test,” Moreno says, “But every time I cumulative sleep deprivation over a two-week period of time. As sleep less than three hours, I always get sleep debt builds and sleepiness increases, a fever by the end of the day.” a person’s cognition decreases along with Moreno is in good company. Actheir ability to judge the severity of their cording to the 2015 Youth Risk Behavcondition. ior Survey conducted by the Center “You may notice that you’re getting for Disease Control, only 27.3 percent pretty tired, but you don’t notice the deof high school students get more than gree of the effect,” Farina says. 8 hours of sleep on an average school Zeitzer explains that people who re— NICHOLAS BLONSTEIN, senior main chronically awake at night for pronight. A proposed bill, which failed late fessional purposes are able to train themlast year in the California legislature, selves to ignore sleepiness, but would still would have required all California middle and high schools to perform just as poorly as any other person who is awake in the start at 8:30 a.m. at earliest. Currently, Gunn High School starts middle of the night. the day at 8:30 a.m., and Palo Alto High School’s Innovative “At a more local level, people just need to be more aware of Schedule Committee is considering the possibility of a later start the consequences,” says Nicholas Blonstein, a senior at Paly who time next year. gave a Tedx talk on sleep deprivation last year. All of these efforts are According to Kate Kaplan, a psychologist that treats sleep meant to combat sleep depriand anxiety disorder, there are some fairly severe effects vation, which decades of to chronic sleep deprivation. Kaplan is also a part research has shown to of the Stanford Center for Sleep Sciences and Medhave negative health conicine. sequences. “We have evidence that inadequate sleep in adolescence leads to poor health outcomes,” Kaplan says. “[Inadequate sleep] increases overweight and obesiHealth Effects ty, increases in poor food choices [and] other risks…. According to JaWe know that new episodes of depression, different anxiety mie Zeitzer, an associdisorders [and] suicide increase with sleep restrictions and ate professor at Stanford deprivation--that’s true in adolescents as well as adults.” University’s Center for Sleep Sciences and Medicine, there are two kinds of School Start Times sleep deprivation: acute Summaries on the issue of delayed school start times and chronic. Acute by the American Psychological Association and the Censleep deprivation is ter of Disease Control assert that significant improvea short term sleep ments in student’s mental, physical, and academic loss, like pulling well-being have been proven in studies following an “all-nighta shift back in school start times. er.” Chron“At a school like Paly where everyone is ic sleep taking hard classes, it’s not hard to imagine deprivawhy students aren’t getting enough sleep,” tion is junior Annie Tsui says.
“Even though you may not see the consequences on the person, they can be hidden monsters,”
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FEBRUARY 2018