Myah Brooks (00:00):
This is Myah Brooks with EagleAir Podcasts. Today, I’m here to talk about the science behind and the importance of students’ sleep. Now, that’s a sound I dread hearing. In fact, it feels ironic for me to be doing this topic considering how bad my sleep habits are. So I was curious to see if AP psychology teacher Josh Posegate noticed many other students struggling with a lack of sleep and what effect it has on their performance in class.
Josh Posegate (00:30):
It is important not only for your learning that you’ve done prior to sleep, but also for your memory consolidation for after sleep. So it is a big deal both before and after to have a good sleep cycle and the correct hours to be able to learn effectively, according to many, many studies.
Myah Brooks (00:49):
According to a Yale article on sleep’s crucial role in preserving memory, the brain does this ritual of organizing information in your sleep because the rest allows for moments of decreased stimulus and an increase in neurotransmitters. This improves communication between parts of the brain involving memory. But Postgate says sleep affects much more than just academics.
Josh Posegate (01:09):
Mental health, one of the biggest things you can do for it for all sufferings of mental health is get a certain sleep cycle and get on the schedule that you need to be on. It would be like number one priority with that and then other things. And then physical health, it’s usually impactful on your immune system. And as we talked about, just your core memories and doing those types of things, and there’s even some data that shows that it could be detrimental long term to your health and take years off of your life if you’re not getting a good sleep cycle. So there’s just a wide variety of things that it impacts.
Myah Brooks (01:46):
So if we know getting enough sleep is crucial for being happy and healthy, and most teens aren’t getting the recommended eight to 10 hours. I wanted to know what students could do to better their sleep schedules.
Josh Posegate (01:56):
There’s some things we talk about in psychology, like actually setting your temperature of your room to be pretty low or your home, which might be out of the kids’ controls. Having a consistent sleep cycle is important, going to bed and waking up at the same time, making sure you’re not using too much blue light before you go to bed, doing something like reading instead of looking at your phone or watching some TV is ideal. Not having caffeine after noon is another aspect you could use to try to help have a more consistent sleep cycle. I think those are some of the big things.
Myah Brooks (02:27):
Sleep Foundation wrote an article that agrees avoiding blue light before bed is a massive aid in your sleep schedule and syncing it with your circadian rhythm. Your circadian rhythm is a 24 hour cycle your body follows to perform its best. In that cycle, blue light from the sun makes us feel awake during the day. In the evening, electronics emitting blue light mimic that effect, keeping you awake. I’d like to thank Postgate for speaking and you for listening. I know I’ll be using this information to get better sleep going forward. This was Maya Brooks with Eagle Air Podcasts.
