If you are a student suffering from insomnia, this is for you!

Photo: Unsplash, by Zohre Nemati

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Introduction

Hi, guys, this is Maddy.

For so long, I was thinking as a medical student keeping an efficient sleep schedule is so hard. It’s not only exam weeks that I sacrifice my sleep for good grades, but I also sleep less before placements, or when we have lectures with heavy materials.

So I decided to change. I allowed my body to have 7-8 hours of rest each night, and I noticed the changes even after a week.

As I think my story is relevant to other medical students, today I want to talk to you why it is essential to get enough sleep as a future health care professional, and how can we all start this habit now.

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According to an article in JCSM:

Poor sleep is not only common among medical students, but its prevalence is also higher than in non-medical students and the general population.

You may think why is it a problem? We want to study more than sleeping so we can help people, right?

So let‘s talk about why sleeping is sometimes more important than studying:

1. Late reaction time

Well, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration found that:

100,000 of Crashes each year are the direct result of driver fatigue.

This number even exceeds the number of new breast cancer cases each year in the UK, with the incidence of 55,200 cases per year.

And now imagine you, a medical student, want to drive to your hospital placement, and you didn’t get enough sleep because you were studying hard.

If you experience microsleep, which is a temporary episode of sleep that can last for a fraction of a second, you may add to those number of crashes, and hurt someone.

So, you not only missed your chance to help someone after studying hard, but you also put yourself and others in danger.

2. Cognitive performance

During the day some byproducts are accumulated in the brain, like adenosine. These byproducts should be cleared from the brain, by the lymphatic system and glymphatic system.

What are these systems?

The lymphatic system has many vessels that go around your body and form networks and helps in many functions, like immunity and balancing fluid in the body.

The glymphatic system is also a network of vessels that clear the waste products in the brain and spine by cerebrospinal fluid (CSF).

When you sleep you allow all these systems to clear the byproducts from

your brain and allow a fresh start in the morning.

If you don’t sleep and allow all of those waste products to remain in your brain, you consequently cause impairment in your decision making and cognitive performance.

Reduce in cognitive performance can diminish the performance of medical students in both clinical and academic settings and may be dangerous for others.

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How to get a good sleep:

1. Dim Your light During the evening

When you dim your light during the evening, you help with the Dim light melatonin onset ( DLMO ) process. DLMO is the start of the melatonin production, and as you may know, melatonin is a sleeping hormone. It allows you to sleep and don’t wake up during the night.

So, try to turn off some of the lights by evening, or adjust the level of your lamp brightness, to raise your melatonin level and get better sleep.

2. Caffeine

Caffeine is one of the widely used stimulator for Brain.

It’s good to know caffeine‘s elimination half-life can take up to 9.5 hours.

This means after 9.5 hours the level of caffeine that you consumed will be halved in your body, so it takes a long time for your body to remove the caffeine and reduce its stimulation of your brain.

My advice would be, try to have your coffee and black tea in the morning and not in the afternoon.

If you want to have a hot beverage in the evening, go for green tea or camomile tea. They have much less caffeine and let your brain to relax during the night.

3. Exercise

Exercise has always been associated with better sleep, and it’s even used as a treatment option for disturbed sleep!

I believe exercise is one of the minimal cost and most accessible ways to improve your sleep.

It doesn’t matter when, and how you exercise. It can be 7 am or 7 pm, as long as you dedicate some time to it you see the change.

I use Thenx programmes. They have workouts for any ranges of people from beginners to advanced and allow you to choose which part of your body you want t work on.

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Conclusion

So, guys, this is it. You can now try these three habits and see if they help or not. Remember, sleep is crucial for medical students as much as other students and the general population.

If you don’t sleep enough you reduce your cognitive performance and you may also put other people in danger. To get better sleep you can try to dim your light from the evening, Exercise and try to have your coffee in the morning before noon.

I bet there are so many more habits that can help us sleep better, so please let us know about any other habits you found useful here.

XOXO

Maddy

Medxadventures