The Anguish of All-Nighters

Featured in a copy of Christ Church's student newspaper UNIfied. Have a look at previous editions at http://ccsu.co.uk/UNIfied.

All-nighters are quite often a customary aspect of the student lifestyle.  You have a deadline looming, but you haven’t even started writing yet and to be honest, watching back to back episodes of Friends sounds far more appealing.

It doesn’t matter how many times you convince yourself that this time you will be organised and prepared, refusing to leave everything to the very last minute; you will probably still find yourself being drawn to other, more interesting things. And as a result, pulling an all-nighter is the only solution you believe you are left with, knowing that in a few precious hours you will be expected to hand in an important piece of work you are meant to have taken time and consideration over.

The thing is, I’m not even criticising you for it, because I’ve been there. In fact, I think we all have. It’s common knowledge in the student world that chatting to your mates on Facebook or Skype is a far more engaging activity than writing an assignment about Wuthering Heights. But procrastination can be poisonous, as more often than not you may find yourself moping into lectures powered with 4 hours sleep or less because you had a deadline and your time management skills had let you down.

We all know that sleep deprivation isn’t good for us, but having a frequent lack of sleep for the three to four years that you’re at University can be seriously damaging to your health.

Studies conducted by professors of sleep medicine have shown that there are clear links between sleep deprivation and the onset of neuropsychiatric disorders, like bipolar depression and anxiety. If you keep forcing your body to stay awake when it’s in severe need of a good rest, your blood pressure can be significantly affected, which in turn increases your susceptibility of cancer and heart disease.

You might even find yourself showing symptoms not just in the long-term; namely, short-term euphoria has been revealed in research at Harvard and Berkeley to be a condition which comes from sleep deprivation.

Here comes the science part: from missing a night’s sleep, the neutral circuit that controls pleasure and reward in your brain (something called the mesolimbic pathway) is stimulated in a process driven by a chemical called dopamine. If your dopamine levels are high, you receive a boost in positivity, motivation, even sex drive. And even though that sounds great, what comes next is not so wonderful.

Because not only is this boost extremely brief, this rush in dopamine also results in impulsive behaviour and addiction. The sections of your brain which control planning and evaluating shut down when they’re deprived of sleep, which means you’re more likely to become careless and happier about taking risks. When your brain is forced to operate in a different state regularly, it can permanently alter itself. So if the ‘mesolimbic pathway’ is continuously over-stimulated by lack of sleep, you could end up with permanent brain damage.

The moral of the story? Organisation of assignments, essays and exams is not only crucial to achieving great results, but crucial in keeping you healthy in body and mind. So every once in a while, switch off the TV, sign out of Facebook, sit down and actually study. If not for the sake of your work, at least for the sake of your health.