Hi my name is Molly, this is my first time at All Nighters Anonymous. I just pulled my first all-nighter (yes it was actually my first) and I do not feel good.
All jokes aside, I know we’ve all done it (now I can say that with the authority of having done it myself). Between classes, jobs, extracurriculars, and maybe taking time to eat and see friends on top of everything else, it feels as though there just isn’t enough time in the day to get everything done. Suddenly, it’s three in the morning and you’re writing your final essay for your European Music Literature class. No? Just me? Okay…ANYWHO, my very recent experience encouraged me to dive into the science of all-nighters, and see how damaging they really are. Because, come on, even if you don’t want to admit they are bad for you, you know they are. According to an article published on UWire, there are many adverse effects of staying up all night, beginning with decreased retention of information and memory loss and ending with an increased risk of stroke. According to a study done at Baylor University, students who averaged eight hours of sleep a night during finals week performed much better on their exams compared to those who stayed up late to cram. Michael Scullin, director of Baylor's Sleep Neuroscience and Cognition Laboratory noted that "better sleep helped rather than harmed final exam performance, which is contrary to most college students' perceptions that they have to sacrifice either studying or sleeping…” He found that his psychology students who averaged over eight hours of sleep a night performed much better than those who averaged seven hours or less. A student with a D+ in Scullin’s class noted that upon sleeping 8+ hours a day, they felt as though their brain actually “worked while taking an exam” for the first time ever.
So what is the overall message? SLEEP! Which is easier said than done. We all know sleep is important; it allows our brains to encode the information we consumed throughout the day. Experiencing sleep deprivation negatively impacts our attention span and ability to reason. This is a message I have told myself throughout the entirety of my college career, but somehow I can never get it through my head that sleep is actually more important than any grade I might get, good or bad. If I allow my brain to rest instead of flipping through slides for a physiology exam, I might do better in the long run anyway. So, the obvious take away is yes, all-nighters are bad for you. Will that stop me from possibly pulling another one in the next two week as finals approach? Maybe… Maybe not.
Sources Cited:
Sources Cited:
"Pulling all-nighters has adverse effects on health." UWIRE Text, November 11, 2013, 1. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed November 28, 2021). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A348807196/AONE?u=regis&sid=ebsco&xid=36e32c42.
"BETTER SLEEP NOT ALL-NIGHTERS' HELPS STUDENTS ON FINAL EXAMS." States News Service, December 3, 2018. Gale Academic OneFile (accessed November 28, 2021). https://link.gale.com/apps/doc/A564176864/AONE?u=regis&sid=ebsco&xid=3719f8df.
Hi Molly, thanks for your post. I used to work night shifts when I worked at a lab, previously. My mom would always tell me to switch to the day shift because of the negative health effects of working nights such as decreased lifespan. I found an article that discusses how working night shifts alter epigenetic patterns. A study by White et al. (2019) evaluated 2,574 women aged 35-74 and measured DNA methylation to calculate the epigenetic age estimators or “epigenetic clocks” to predict chronological age. DNA methylation is when transcription is repressed. Out of the 2,574 women, 175 women (7%) reported shift work (rotating shifts or night shifts) and 120 women (5%) reported night shift work. The results revealed that women who worked more than 10 years of shift work had an epigenetic age of approximately 3 years older than the women who never worked night shifts. The epigenome-wide association study revealed shift work was associated with DNA methylation in CpG sites (regions of the DNA where cytosine nucleotide is followed by a guanine nucleotide) across the epigenome, including the gene ZFHX3, a circadian rhythm gene (White et al., 2019). There have also been associations between shift work and increased risk of chronic disease and increased death rates. So turns out my mom was right! So get your sleep and listen to your mom!
ReplyDeleteReferences
White, A. J., Kresovich, J. K., Xu, Z., Sandler, D. P., & Taylor, J. A. (2019). Shift work, DNA methylation and epigenetic age. International journal of epidemiology, 48(5), 1536–1544. https://doi.org/10.1093/ije/dyz027