The following is a visitor-submitted question or story. For more, you can submit your own sleep story here, or browse the collection of experiences and questions other visitors have shared here.
Why Am I Sleepy During The School Year And Not In The Summer?
by Kirstin
(Utah)
I have no idea why I do not have any energy in the school year when I get 7 hours of sleep, where in the summer time I get 8 hours and am fine.
Kevin: Hey Kirstin, thanks for writing in. There are two main things I'd like to point out before handing it over to visitor comments. One is that 1 hour less of sleep per night can be hugely significant when stretched over a week, let alone an entire school year. If, for instance, you have a sleep need of 8 hours you'd be accumulating 1 hour of sleep debt per weekday. In a week you'd have a sleep debt of roughly 5 hours, over 20 hours of debt in a month, and nearly 70 hours of debt in 3 months. That's enough to seriously slow you down and make you super sleepy during the day. Go here for more on understanding sleep debt.
(Note: Individual sleep need varies. The 8 I used above was just an example. Your sleep need could also be something like 8.5 or 9 hours as well, which would lead to a faster accumulating sleep debt.)
Another point to consider is that at 5 am (when you wake up during the school year) your body is at a completely different point in its circadian rhythms than at 9 am (when you wake up during the summer). Different alertness-inducing or sleep-inducing hormones are being released at 5 am (and 6 am and 7 am, for that matter) than are being released later in the morning. Being awake (and struggling to stay awake at school perhaps) for the 4 hours before the 9 am alerting hormones kick in can give you an entirely different perception of how tired you feel during the day. These alertness and sleepiness hormones are known as part of a process called Clock-Dependent Alerting (CDA), and we should have some articles about it soon.
Kevin
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A Note On Visitor-Submitted Questions:
Publishing sleep stories and questions from our visitors is meant to create a forum for open and proactive dialogue about an extremely important portion of our lives (one that occupies 1/3 of it and affects the other 2/3). It is not meant to substitute a trip to the doctor or the advice of a specialist. It's good to talk; it is not good to avoid consulting someone who's profession it is to help you with this kind of stuff.
If you are in any way concerned about your sleep health, don't wait for an answer on here, and don't necessarily rely on them. See a sleep specialist in your area as soon as possible.
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