Students suffering from sleepless nights can rest assured that health problems will follow Marleen Troutt Daily Egyptian Americans call it burning the midnight oil. The French say they're spending a white night. Spanish speakers know it as burning their eyelashes. However it's said, finals crunch-time means SIUC students such as Melissa Mendiola will be doing without a few precious hours of sleep to get it all done. But Gary Myers, a professor of medical humanities and psychiatry from the SIU School of Medicine in Springfield, warns that all work and no sleep imposes health risks besides dulling the faculties.
Sleep deprivation affects the immune system, so students are more likely to get sick.
Students may experience depression, anxiety, difficulty in concentration and irritability. A 2000 study at the University of California Regents School of Medicine found sleep-deprived subjects had trouble performing simple verbal and mathematical learning tasks, and received lower test scores in mathematics and memory. Investigations into the Challenger, Chernobyl, Three Mile Island and the Exxon Valdez disasters all indicated that employees had been working long hours with little rest, and that the calamities could be partially attributed to sleep deprivation. Myers said stimulants can help people expend the period of alertness when they feel tired, but the effects can't last for long. Once this point hits you have to go to sleep.