How to Be Less Tired

How to Be Less Tired

Holly Reidinger and Erin Rubright, Managing Editor and Assistant Sectional Editor

 

How can I be less tired? The simple answer to this is to get more sleep. However, that’s easier said than done for a highschool student, and even teachers. We have recently interviewed a student at West Morris Central about how she’s affected by the amount of sleep she gets during the week. Senior, Zoe Toner, told us she gets 8 hours of sleep on average.

 

She mentioned, “If I don’t go to bed before 10 I can’t function.”

 

The reason she’s so tired is because she’s stressed all the time and stays up late watching tv. Cutting back on TV and computer time after 8 p.m. is recommended by http://www.webmd.com/, stating that the light from the screen stimulates the brain, so when you’re trying to go to bed, your brain is just waking up.

This is because light suppresses the production of melatonin, which is a hormone secreted at sunset that tells the brain that it’s nighttime. Therefore, when you use your cell phone at night, your mind thinks it’s morning.

 

We also asked another student at WMC, senior, Scott Jordan, about the subject as well. He gets 6 hours of sleep on average. This sounded like a decent amount of sleep to us, however if you really think about it and see how much it effects his work ethic, we realized how detrimental 6 hours really is. Scott finds that he is more tired during morning classes, leading him to sleep in, having to have to rush to school and skip breakfast.

 

Always give yourself enough time to get ready. According to http://www.wikihow.com/Not-Be-Tired you may think you’ll feel more well-rested if you let yourself sleep for ten extra minutes, but this will actually have a negative effect because you will actually be  giving yourself ten minutes less to get ready. In relation to time management, having breakfast is important also. Even if you don’t feel hungry, people who eat breakfast tend to feel better both mentally and physically than those who skip their morning meal.

 

Junior, Sarah Guida, expressed how she only gets 7.5 hours of sleep on average due to stress and homework. She finds that her afternoon classes are the ones shes most tired in. We find that depending on the classes you have and their level of rigor also affects whether or not you’re more tired in the morning or afternoon classes.

 

Although Sarah doesn’t drink coffee often, the fact that she is more tired in the afternoon may lead to a higher caffeine intake towards the end of the day. Typically, consuming a moderate amount of caffeine, two to three cups of coffee, can make you more energetic and alert in the hours following. This may cause an individual to be more energetic towards the end of the day, causing restlessness at night time.  

 

Though you may think students are the only ones, some teachers struggle with sleep deprivation as well. Mr. DelPreore said that he gets an average of 4 hours of sleep a night, most likely due to having two kids. We asked him how much of an impact his exhaustion has on his teaching and the way he responds to a disruptive student or someone who needs help with a lesson.

 

He said, “Being more tired in class requires me to be more conscientious about the way I react because you are more susceptible to reacting poorly to something you wouldn’t normally have any reaction to.”

 

As a teacher he said he has to think that this is his job and he can’t bring his personal sleeping habits into this. One of the main ways he tries to fight his exhaustion is by drinking coffee. Most people depend on coffee to stay awake, but this is doing more harm than good.

 

After reading up on http://www.webmd.com/, we found that “water makes up the majority of your blood and other body fluids, and even mild dehydration can cause blood to thicken, forcing the heart to pump harder to carry blood to your cells and organs and resulting in fatigue.” Therefore staying hydrated is important for staying awake on a day to day basis.