Maybe it was homework that kept them up. Maybe it was a long shift at work, or maybe it was late-night infomercials. For whatever reason, countless students didn’t get enough sleep last night, or the night before that… or the night before that. These now bleary-eyed yawners decided to put rest on the bottom of their priority lists, which is why each morning they suddenly have a newfound appreciation for shuteye.

Few places are more familiar with sleepiness than a college campus. But we seldom step back and realize how intimate our relationships with sleep really are. We fight it, yearn for it, and most importantly, we don’t get enough of it. Approximately 70 million Americans are affected by sleep problems, according to the National Sleep Foundation.

“The research, of course, always shows that college students are not getting enough sleep,” says Phil Gehrman, a professor of psychology at the University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, whose research focuses on sleep disorders and treatments.

The amount of sleep each person needs varies, and anything less than that amount is sleep deprivation, he says.

The average person seems to need a bit more than eight hours of sleep a night and most people require seven to nine hours, Gehrman says.

The National Sleep Foundation recommends teenagers and young adults get more than nine hours of sleep a night. But take a full load of classes, add a part-time job, an extracurricular activity or two and a social life, and that eight- to nine-hour goal moves further and further out of reach.

Class, work, sleep, repeat

Jamie Klein, St. Charles, Mo., senior, says he usually sleeps about seven hours a night during the week, but gets less sleep on the weekends. Klein, who is majoring in philosophy, is kitchen manager and bartender at Quinton’s Bar & Deli, 615 Massachusetts St. His 30-hour work week, paired with his class load, makes the recommended eight hours of sleep unrealistic, he says.

“Most of the time when I don’t sleep it’s because of having to work really early,” he says. Plus, he stays up really late. For example, Klein says he works from 9:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. on Saturdays, takes a break, then returns to work and bartends from 9 p.m. to 3 a.m. He’s back at it again at 10:30 on Sunday morning.

“My weekends are usually low sleep and constant work. And then by Sunday night I can usually catch up on it, and then it helps I don’t have class until 1 on Monday,” he says. “If I had an early class Monday I might have flipped out by now.”

During the week, Klein says he is able to stay awake during classes, thanks in part to his laptop and his interest in the lectures. But Klein says fatigue sets in when he returns from school or work, which is why he relies on naps to give him a little boost.

Naptime

A nap can be a tired college student’s best friend, but sometimes it can backfire.

“In the sleep world, sleep is a drug and naps are a dose of that drug, and you want to give the right dose to the right person at the right time,” says Ronald E. Kramer, a neurologist and board-certified sleep medicine physician in Denver.

Certain people, such as chronic insomniacs who can’t even sleep well once during the day, should avoid naps and try instead to get their sleep all in one chunk, Kramer says.

For the typical college student, however, Kramer says a short nap is a good idea.

In fact, when it comes to napping, less is more.

Naps should be kept under half an hour in duration, with one study even suggesting that the optimal nap time is 10 minutes, Gehrman says.

“You want to avoid getting into deeper stages of sleep because then it’s hard to fully wake up from that,” he says.

The short sleeper

For Lea Salvo, Council Bluffs, Iowa, senior, naps are out of the question. The pre-physical therapy student says she has never been able to take naps, which is why she relies on the age-old “good night’s sleep” to get her through the day. She says that she usually goes to bed between 10:30 p.m. and midnight and gets up at 5 a.m. to run before getting ready for work. Salvo interns at Advance Rehabilitation in Topeka for 12 hours of class credit toward her degree.

“I don’t have a social life anymore with having to be up so early in the morning,” Salvo says with a laugh. “I’ve never gotten up at 5 in the morning before.”

Unlike most students, Salvo doesn’t have to worry about tests or papers, two things that used to keep her up, she says.

“I was more willing and able to stay up until 3 a.m. to get something done,” Salvo says about her previous semesters at the University.

Salvo certainly feels the lack of sleep she suffers during the day if she stayed up late the night before, which has happened most recently because of apartment hunting or “graduate school stuff,” she says.

A shorter attention span, poor listening skills and an overall drag are signs of sacrificed sleep, she says. But those symptoms don’t show up often; Salvo says she almost always feels rested during the day on her usual sleep of five or six hours. “On nights when I do stay up later and get less sleep, I seem to be more awake than if I get more sleep than I usually do,” she says.

But Gehrman, the sleep expert in Philadelphia, says many short sleepers, although they might say they feel awake, could benefit from a little more sleep.

He cited one study that looked at people who claimed to function well on little sleep. The test showed, however, that the participants slept longer when given the chance.

“At some point you think you’re adjusting to it,” he says about shortened sleep schedules, “but in reality you’re not. We’re actually really poor at our ability to tell how much we’re affected by sleep deprivation.”

You can sleep, but you can’t hide

For every set of drooping eyes looking toward the front of the classroom, there’s a professor staring back. Perhaps no one on campus — except a student — sees the effects of sleep deprivation more than a professor.

“Some of these people are so tired,” says Tracy Russo, associate professor of communication studies. “It’s painful to watch them.”

Although she dislikes how sleepy students take away from class atmosphere and make learning difficult, she says she understands the reason for their sleepiness. The more time college students spend with TV, iPods and cell phones, the less time they spend studying — and sleeping.

“I think what happens, especially with all the technology we have, is that everybody tries to multi-task,” Russo says. “Everything takes three or four times too long.”

Russo says she doesn’t perform as well at her job if she gets less sleep than her normal eight hours. “This is my pile of reading for today,” she says, holding up a three-inch stack of papers. “This is the time of year when graduate students try to defend their comprehensive exams, theses and dissertations.” Russo must read these projects and still make time for class work and grading, she says.

“Concentration is really important. You have to be able to just sit down and do it. And if I’m tired, my mind wanders,” she says.

She says she often has a headache and scratchy eyes after a night of little sleep.

Sleep deprivation: the price we pay

It seems simple enough. Sleep less, feel tired. Stay up late cramming for a test or hanging out with friends and expect to doze off in class the next day. But sleep deprivation can result in much more than yawning, heavy eyelids and irritability.

Sleep regulates the hormones ghrelin and leptin, which help determine our feelings of hunger and fullness, respectively, according to the National Sleep Foundation. When sleep is cut short, it interferes with these hormones. That’s why the link between a lack of sleep and obesity is one area that is gaining attention in sleep research, says Kramer, the Denver sleep expert.

“There are definite chemical and behavioral changes that occur when you lose sleep that make you hungry,” he says. “If you’re not sleeping well, we are biologically programmed to look for food.”

To make matters worse, the food that sleepy people go for is usually high in fat, sugar and salt, Kramer says.

He also says that acute sleep deprivation — about four or less hours of sleep a night — can play a part in the “freshman 15.”

The long sleeper

At 9:30 on any given night, when many students haven’t even given their homework a glance, Ruth Ann Atchley is probably sleeping.

“I sleep an abnormally large amount for any individual,” says Atchley, a cognitive neuroscientist and associate professor of psychology at the University who is beginning a line of research on sleep.

Atchley says it is not uncommon for her to sleep 10 hours a night during the week. As an undergraduate at The Ohio State University, Atchley says she lived at home and commuted to school each day with her father, who was a professor at the University. This structured environment allowed her to get a good amount of sleep, though her sleep schedule wasn’t consistent, she says.

“I know I shifted my sleep patterns on Friday and Saturday night because I closed the bars just like everybody else,” Atchley says.

Her situation was atypical, as most students, especially those in residence halls, have many more distractions to keep them awake. But Atchley says everyone can get eight hours a sleep a night if they budget their time wisely.

“If we could teach a major in time management we could probably serve our students almost as well as with any other major we could offer them,” she says.

Preparing for better sleep

When it comes to sleep deprivation, Atchley places some of the blame on the poor “sleep hygiene” — a set of habits that can promote healthy sleep — that some students display.

Students who eat, do homework and play video games in bed could find it harder to fall asleep because psychologically the bed no longer is a place designated only for sleeping, she says. She says that activities such as routinely putting on pajamas and brushing one’s teeth before bed can help students fall asleep more easily.

In line with the idea that sleep is a ritual, Gehrman recommends students set a sleep schedule and stick to it.

“Consistency is really important, especially keeping the timing relatively consistent, so the time you go to bed doesn’t vary by hours from night to night,” he says.

Up all night

The all-nighter is the last resort for the seasoned procrastinator, but might do more harm than good.

If you’ve put off writing that big paper until the last minute and you’re considering pulling an all-nighter, you’d be better off sleeping at least a few hours, Kramer says.

“You probably should really give in and sleep from 3 to 6 a.m. when your body temperature drops like a rock and you can barely keep your eyes open,” he says.

Body temperature naturally drops during sleep, so fighting that critical window is extremely detrimental to studying because the body is trying to go asleep, Kramer says.

Asleep. Kind of.

Alcohol and caffeine work in different ways, but each has a negative impact on sleep.

Although a person usually has no problem passing out after a night of drinking, the alcohol does not let your body reach the deeper stages of sleep, which is why a 10-hour sleep session after boozing leaves you feeling less than refreshed.

“It will make you go to sleep but then, as your body metabolizes the alcohol, the by-products that are produced actually destruct your sleep, so it’s really poor quality,” Gehrman says.

He says that caffeine also interferes with our sleep, even long after the buzz has worn off.

“Caffeine can actually last in your body up to 10 hours,” he says.

Just because you feel tired, that doesn’t mean the caffeine isn’t working to keep your body alert and thus disrupting your sleep, he says.

Sweet dreams

As technology advances and the world becomes more connected every day, it doesn’t appear our world, or campus, will slow down anytime soon.

“It’s kind of assumed, but it’s not scientifically proven, that all of society, adolescents and up are losing more and more sleep as we move to a 24-hour society based a lot on Internet and electronic communication and work,” says Kramer, the Denver sleep expert.

It looks like it’s going to be a long night.