Sleep can be hard to come by, especially for college students. To help students, SUNY Oswego held a sleep workshop on March 18, titled “Up All Night,” which was hosted by Julie Yankowsky, a psychiatric nurse practitioner with the Counseling Services Center.

“Everybody needs it [sleep],” Yankowsky said. “Nobody can get away with a lack of sleep. We’re all unique in our own ways, but sleep is one of those things that we all share.”

Yankowsky reviewed several methods to help students improve their sleep routine and also went over certain habits that may be detrimental to sleep. She emphasized that everyone is different and has different needs.

“Six hours of sleep is sometimes good enough for people,” Yankowsky said. “Going back to that typical eight hours that we all think we need, that isn’t set in stone. Everybody’s different.”

She also discussed the influence of sleep on mental health, specifically issues such as depression or anxiety.

“I think [sleep] is the root of a lot of depressive symptoms and anxiety-type symptoms,” Yankowsky said. “The less we sleep, or the more we sleep, it kind of compounds those types of symptoms for us a lot of times.”

One thing that Yankowsky said can play a major role in sleep habits is our internal body clock. While it varies from person to person, the body clock ultimately determines time of sleep.

“We all have kind of a drift in our body clock, where it can be individualized as well,” Yankowsky said. “The 24-hour time system is man-made, so our bodies don’t always follow exactly 24 hours. There’s a little drift.”

She said that having a regular bedtime and regular rise time, along with natural light exposure, can help to “set” the internal body clock and manage that drift. Yankowsky stated that getting out of bed at a consistent time each morning, even if the previous night’s sleep was suboptimal, can be a big factor as well.

“If you can get that thought process of getting up … it’s going to snowball in a positive direction, as opposed to falling into more insomnia,” Yankowsky said. 

But even if someone is unable to stick with regular bed and rise times,  maintaining a consistent amount of sleep each night can help that internal clock as well.

“Sometimes we think [that] there’s this magic window for sleep,” Yankowsky said. “There’s no magic window. The ‘balloon’ will keep filling … so don’t worry about missing your window. You still just want to keep maintaining that sleep schedule.” 

In addition, Yankowsky discussed the idea of building a sleep drive. This is when the body tires out, overriding alert signals that tell it to stay awake.

“The more active we are during the day, it generates sleep drive,” Yankowsky said. “With the quarantine and all that going on, a lot of people experienced decreased activity … so a lot of people experienced sleep problems.”

She added that going to bed early can actually work against those who are trying to improve their sleep quality.

“Some of us think, ‘Oh, I had a bad night’s sleep, so I’m going to go to bed early tonight.’ That actually competes with the alertness,” Yankowsky said.

She also said that more sleep does not necessarily equal better sleep.

“Our overall goal isn’t necessarily to increase time of sleep,” Yankowsky said. “The goal would actually be to increase your deep sleep, and that’s your quality sleep.”

Quality sleep can be negatively affected by the amount of time spent in bed. According to Yankowsky, more time spent in bed than needed will actually decrease sleep drive.

“If you need six hours [of sleep], and you actually stay in bed for nine hours to catch up on your sleep, it’s going to have the opposite effect,” she said. “Being in bed for nine hours will just lead to broken sleep … You’re just going to wake up feeling unrested or tired for the day.”

Yankowsky emphasized several methods to help build better sleep habits. This includes stimulus control, which can be done by only getting in bed when you are sleepy and getting out of bed when unable to sleep.

Yankowsky also discussed sleep restriction, which involves limiting the amount of time spent asleep. 

Sleep compression was another method discussed. Yankowsky described it as less strict than sleep restriction, it is a gradual reduction in overall time in bed. 

As Yankowsky continually emphasized throughout the workshop, more sleep and better sleep are not the same.

“Would you prefer that eight hours of really bad sleep, or six hours of really deep, good sleep?”

The Oswegonian file photo from 2018