With the start of a new semester at U of C, many students are mentally preparing for increased sleep disruption to become all too normal.
Students suffering from sleep disorders frequently experience daytime impairment, mental health struggles and a resulting lower academic performance.
According to a study from ScienceDirect, an estimated 16.3 per cent of adults in Canada suffer from insomnia, with 14.7 per cent of respondents reporting use of prescribed sleep medications.
Another study from ScienceDirect suggests that post-secondary students are more likely to experience sleep disturbances than the general population.
The Gauntlet interviewed the UCalgary Sleep Club’s President Akshay Senthilkumar and Vice-President Nidhin Sunil.
“A lot of people really focus on how it impacts the studies, but it also impacts your mental health as well as your physical health, and all the other experiences that you can have on campus,” Sunil explained when asked about how poor sleep health impacts students.
“It's often very hard to focus when you have had maybe three or four hours of sleep and especially when that builds up over a week of finals or midterms. I think that's when all of us feel it as students,” Senthilkumar added.
“It really affects not only possibly your performance on that exam, but it stays with you even after the exam, and you're not able to recover from that,” Senthilkumar explained, “So I think it's really important that we try to figure out the root cause of sleep issues and that differs for each individual.”
“A lot of people focus on their sleep during the exam season because it's the most relevant,” added Sunil, “But we want to make sure that people are focusing on their sleep throughout the whole year, academically, by our events and other activities.”
UCalgary Sleep hosts events such as sleep clinics and workshops with sleep health professionals from Calgary.
“What we do at these events is we collect questions from students prior to [the workshops,] and we then create a document with specific questions the students have, which we send out to these professionals who are then able to address them during the event,” Senthilkumar explained.
“It's a very targeted approach in that sense and it also provides students with the opportunity to reach out to a professional [...] for help,” Senthilkumar added.
“They can see a speaker who is an expert in sleep psychology or respiratory health, which are all important aspects of sleep health,” added Sunil, “We try to make sure that we have a diversified people.”
Senthilkumar and Sunil explained what practicing good sleep hygiene looks like.
“It's trying to build better habits around your sleep,” Senthilkumar said, “The one thing that we can control is sleep hygiene, which is your traditional things of maybe limiting your screen time before or sleeping at a certain time, trying to wake up at a certain time [and] fixing your sleep schedule.”
“Everybody has their own sleep requirements, it's not the same for everybody,” Sunil added, “Taking the time to figure out what your sleep schedule is and sticking to it is the foundational definition of sleep hygiene.”
Senthilkumar discussed the benefits of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia (CBT-I).
“Cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia is more of a behavioral approach to sleep,” Senthilkumar explained. “[This] would be maybe writing down thoughts that are worrying to you and resolving those before you go to sleep [...] getting that off your mind.”
Senthilkumar and Sunil are also co-founders of the Canadian Student Sleep Health Organization (CSSHO).
“Our main goal was to take what we have at the University of Calgary, this club and this promotion of sleep health, and expand it to other institutes throughout Canada,” Sunil explained.
“What we've tried to do is also build an online platform where students can access things like podcasts with sleep health experts and send in their general questions that we can ask during these podcasts,” Senthilkumar added, “We want to expand and ensure that students of all ages, and young adults are able to access these sleep health supports that they need.”
“We've also worked with the Canadians Sleep Research Consortium, which is a large research organization focused on sleep health and sleep medicine,” said Senthilkumar.
UCalgary Sleep seeks to inform students about sleep wellness at a crucial time for students.
They post informative posts regarding sleep health and information about events on their instagram page which can be found at @ucalgarysleep.
Their aforementioned podcast, the Sleep, Mind and Medicine Podcast is on Spotify.
For more information on UCalgary Sleep, visit their page on the SU website.
