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So much for sweet dreams By Allison Villarreal Jan 10, 2008, 12:05

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“Do you feel like a zombie during the day? Unable to concentrate? Feel as if your eyes are on fire? Do you doze off during class or while you're doing your homework at night? Do you fall asleep at the wheel, potentially injuring yourself and those around you?! If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, ask your doctor if SLEEP is right for you!”

This is what it has come down to. I'm sure anyone who is reading this did in fact answer “yes” to at least one of those questions (although I would hope not the last question).

We just don't sleep anymore.

More and more doctors and researchers are emphasizing the importance of sleep, specifically in teenagers seeing as how a teenager's schedule tends to carry on further and further into the night.

The average teenager is only getting around 6 hours of sleep a night, nowadays. The recommended amount? A full 10 hours.

I'd like a count of how many students at Incarnate Word ACTUALLY sleep for 10 hours a night! If you are one of the people that do, please contact me and share your secret.

For the past two weeks my average has been a dismal 3 hours a night. Obviously my situation is one of the extremes and not typical of the average student, but I will bet that many out there can sympathize with the ailment that is sleep deprivation.

In a nutshell: it doesn't feel good.

So what can we do about it?

To put it simply, sleep. I know its a revolutionary idea for many of us here at Incarnate Word, this foreign object that is sleep, but according to the information out there it is almost essential that we make a greater effort to sleep.

Sleep physician Helene Emsellem has these suggestions for the typical teen (as provided in her interview with NPR):

— Remove clutter from your bedrooms.
— Paint walls calm colors, such as soft blues and greens, tan, light yellow or peach.
— Schedule early dinners; big meals close to bedtime require digestive processes that can keep you awake.
— Shower at night and set clothes out in the evening, too, so you can get a few more minutes of sleep in the morning.
— Encourage more exercise if you are not participating in a sport.
— Limit caffeinated drinks (this one is possibly the toughest).
— Help your teen set a regular sleep-wake routine that won't vary by more than two hours on the weekends (second toughest?)
Personally, these suggestions seem a bit, well, radical. Remove clutter, exercise, and limiting caffeinated drinks? If there were time in the day to do these things, then I wouldn't have the problem of not sleeping would I?
I'm tired of being so tired all the time, but honestly, what can I do? Homework seems to be appearing out of nowhere while all my time magically disappears.
I mean, the fact that I am a huge procrastinator couldn't have anything to do with it, could it?

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