The caffeine-fueled all nighter is an enduring image of high school and college life. Students feeling pressure to succeed readily accept marathon study sessions, or "cramming," as an appropriate response. In reality, cramming is associated with emotional, mental and physical impairments that reduce the body's ability to cope with its environment. Students who embrace cramming to get through a final exam week find themselves struggling to perform consistently, once the brain adjusts to prolonged sleep deprivation.
Chronic all-night cramming leads to exaggerated emotional reactions in college students who don't break the habit. Harvard Medical School associate professor Seung-Schik Yoo drew this conclusion after doing a study that required subjects to forgo sleep for 36 hours and evaluate various visual stimuli, "The Harvard Crimson" reports. To Yoo's surprise, his sleepless subjects were more likely to evaluate neutral images favorably, even when no obvious basis existed for doing so.
As far as many college students are concerned, trading sleep for grades seems like an acceptable price to pay. However, Yoo's research also suggests that lack of sleep impairs mental function. Students who adopt cramming as a way of life don't recall as much as their peers who sleep normally, "The Harvard Crimson" states. Prolonged sleeplessness has also been shown to alter the brain, Yoo asserts, leaving students vulnerable to long-term, permanent damage.
Debate persists on whether cramming triggers bad grades. Researchers from the University of California Los Angeles sought to answer this question by asking 535 high school students to chronicle their sleeping and studying habits, "U.S. News & World Report" states. By their senior year, participating students were studying an hour per night, but sleeping about 41 minutes less. As a result, students reported prolonged academic problems after a day of sleeplessness.
The negative effects of cramming aren't limited to your psychological and mental state. Students who cut corners on sleep often adopt unhealthy eating habits, an analysis by the American Psychological Association states. In most cases, college students subsist on empty-calorie, high-fat snack foods that don't provide enough energy to function effectively. This situation is compounded by skipping healthier, balanced items that improve learning and memory, such as kiwi fruit, salmon and walnuts.
One justification for cramming sessions is the notion that it's possible to make up lost sleep. However, a study by Harvard Medical School neurologist Daniel Cohen shows little support for such beliefs among students. According to "Harvard Magazine," Cohen's nine research subjects displayed improved reaction times after sleeping 10 hours versus staying awake for 33 hours. As the three-week study continued, Cohen found that his subjects underwent severe mental impairment after just 18 hours, which he attributed to their chronic sleeplessness.
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