A short nap or two throughout the day can go a long way in making a person feel energized and alert, especially those in a sedentary setting such as an office or classroom. But what about long hours of sleep during the daytime everyday for months on end? That’s when it treads the territory of excessive.
There are all kinds of reasons why someone would be feeling sleepy or fatigued when it’s a long time away from their bedtime. Fewer hours of sleep, whether it’s from insomnia or deliberate choice, is one of the biggest factors. The quality of sleep itself can be poor if the sleep cycle is interrupted by frequent trips to the bathroom at night or any other reasons (Pacheco, 2021). An unhealthy lifestyle ensures that the quality of rest at night is awful and the desire to sleep carries over to daytime hours, thus ruining the quality of life too.
For students especially, these consequences can be detrimental to academics. Sleep is more than just for giving the mind a rest and allowing the immune system to work its restorative powers. Your memory is also consolidated while you’re sleeping. You’ve probably heard teachers and professors telling you not to cram everything all in one night. They’re right for practical reasons, of course, as some concepts need more time and put into practice to truly be grasped and stick, but also for factual reasons. It’s during both your non-rapid eye movement and the rapid eye movement stages of the sleep cycle that your brain preserves the important information and tosses the unimportant (Pacheco, 2020). Only a full night of sleep will ensure that everything is sorted properly. People, unfortunately, may be under the impression that only the hours of sleep matter. Sleeping four hours during the night and then a few more during the day won’t allow for the sleep cycle to give its full benefits.
Worse even, it’ll be harder to control your mood and emotions (Pacheco, 2021). No one likes being faced with the sour expression of a grumpy person, right? But how about a person who’s grumpy every day? The grumps can’t help that their mood feels off due to feelings of sleepiness before a long nap or grogginess right after waking up from one. Then again, it isn’t your fault either and you don’t deserve to be subjected to a grumpy person’s attitude.
The best advice anyone can give to the daytime sleepers is to get a full night’s rest. Drinking coffee could help fight the drowsiness and get you through the day. Once its effects wear out, hopefully it’ll already be around your bedtime, so you could fall straight into your sheets and slip into a long slumber without interruptions. Furthermore, why stay up late when you can just wake up earlier? It’s harder to get out of the comfort of your warm blanket, yes, but you’re almost guaranteed to be much more productive than when the sun is down and you’re fighting the yawns.
References
Pacheco, D. (2020, November 13). Memory & sleep: How deprivation affects the brain. Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/memory-and-sleep
Pacheco, D. (2021, February 18). Excessive sleepiness: Causes, symptoms, and treatments. Retrieved April 10, 2021, from https://www.sleepfoundation.org/excessive-sleepiness
