I personally have a special bond with my bed, it is comfy, warm and so hard to say goodbye to in the mornings. When it comes to school work, I either spend too much time studying and not enough sleeping or the other way around. In this blog, I will talk about how to maintain a recommended balance of sleep and things to avoid to help to improve your sleeping habits to be able to function at your best in college. Sleep is such an important factor when it comes to our success in college. In the moment, we might not realize how it is affecting our mental health, but over time it can really impact not only how we do in school but in our mental, physical and emotional health.
- Stop using cell phone right before bed!
– Scrolling through Instagram can seem like it’s not doing any harm. According to Mental Health America.Org exposing your eyes to the bright light right before bed can actually affect your body’s chemicals and rhythms. It is better to set up a dark environment where your body can recognize that it is time to rest, if there are lights everywhere and especially bright lights your body could keep working, making It harder to go to sleep.
2. Don’t eat heavy meals or go to bed hungry!
-Make sure you don’t good to bed right after having heavy meals and make sure not to go to bed without eating anything at all. It is not only important to feed your mind, but feeding your body right can help improve sleep quality. Your body is constantly working, eating too much or too little before bed can interrupt your sleep pattern, because your body is so focused on digesting or needing food.
3.Avoid caffeine
– I know as a college student, coffee can be very important! You can have your cup (or two) of coffee throughout the day, but once it starts getting later into the night try to avoid caffeine. According to American Academy of Sleep Medicine, caffeine can stay in your system for hours. If you are having coffee a couple hours before bed, it will make it harder for you to get some rest.
4.Avoid all- nighters
-Deadlines and exams seem to always creep up on us and force us to try to teach ourselves a lot of information in a short amount of time to make sure we are prepared. The best way to avoid having to pull all- nighters is to try your best to not procrastinate work and leaving things until last minute. I always tend to do this and always feel so much more stressed at the end. Breaking up the work into smaller chunks throughout the week and scheduling a time for each subject can help not only in making sure you cover everything, but also avoid the last minute stressed filled cram session. Once organizing everything it will give you enough time to get a full night’s rest and be able to obtain everything you just studied.
Do you want to improve your grades, improve your mood and tackle on the duties of college life? Then my recommendation is to sleep! According to affordablecollegesonline.org, it is important to have a have at least 7-8 hours of sleep per night to see better results in your academic and overall performance in life. Part of college is being able to balance out a lot of responsibilities, but in doing that don’t forget, living a healthy life and maintaining a healthy mind is the key to a successful college experience. Goodnight for now!
Mental Health Of College Students 