Most students have studied late or even pulled an all-nighter, but many are continuously making it a habit and setting themselves up for long-term sleep deprivation and other complications.

Not only can sleep deprivation cause abnormal daytime sleeping, but it can lead to health problems and even psychiatric disorders.

“Sleep deprivation plays with your immune system,” said Dr. Marc Shulman, staff physician at the Thielen Student Heath Center. “It makes you more susceptible to viral infections.”

Shulman said the longer you go depriving yourself of sleep, the easier it can become a chronic problem. Colds and infections are hard to fight when the body is not well rested.

“Sometimes [sleep deprivation] may continue and create sleep disorders like daytime sleep and insomnia,” Shulman said.

Felicia Mace, freshman in liberal arts and sciences-open option, said since she began denying herself sleep, it has been hard to get to sleep earlier than 3 a.m.

“Sometimes I stay up because of homework,” Mace said. “Sometimes it is just hard to sleep. I have tried to go to sleep earlier, but I can’t fall asleep and I just lay there, and when I get more sleep, I feel more tired.”

Although Mace is aware that lack of sleep is not healthy, she has not found herself getting sick because of it.

“I have a really good immune system and I haven’t found my lack of sleep affecting me in that way,” Mace said.

Studies have shown that the more a person is deprived of sleep, the more the brain’s cognitive thoughts and emotions are also affected.

“When we’re sleep deprived, it’s really as if the brain is reverting to primitive

behavior, regressing in terms of the control humans normally have over their emotions,” said Matthew Walker, a neuroscientist at the University of California-Berkeley, in an article for LiveScience.

Mace has found that, from her lack of sleep, she does not always act as she wishes to.

“When I am sleep deprived, everything makes me upset because I just want to sleep,” Mace said. “I am really annoyed when I’m tired.”

Walker and his colleagues conducted a study in which they showed the effects of the amount of sleep a person got and how it effected his or her emotions. They showed the participants a variety of images after an assigned amount of sleep and scanned their brain activity. The results were more negative than they had expected.

“While we predicted that the emotional centers of the brain would overreact after sleep deprivation, we didn’t predict they’d overreact as much as they did,” Walker said. “The emotional parts of the brain just seem to run amok.”

Shulman said people who already have emotion-related problems could be greatly affected by sleep deprivation.

“Lack of sleep can exacerbate emotions such as depression and anxiety,” Shulman said. “It just makes them worse.”

Shulman suggested to anyone who is not getting enough sleep to create a schedule to find out what works best with you, such as creating a space that is specific to sleeping and relaxation, away from studying and other activities.

Studies have shown that, instead of pulling an all-nighter and expecting yourself to recall the information the next day, if you get some sleep you will find yourself remembering more information and able to focus on the day ahead, Shulman said.