“Beep! Beep! Beep!” You roll over and slam the snooze button after what felt like only minutes of sleep. We’ve all heard we need to get more sleep, but we rarely do anything to fix the problem.

Now, science is giving us plenty of reasons to take action. Studies have found that sleep deprivation can lead to weight gain, and a new study found that a low grade point average is correlated with a lack of sleep. The National Sleep Foundation says sleep deprivation can lead to difficulties completing tasks, concentration troubles and poor decision-making.

Sleep your way to better grades

HealthDay News reported that the University of Colorado School of Medicine surveyed 238 students in middle school and high school about their sleep habits. Students with low GPAs were more likely than other students to have difficulty waking, problems with falling asleep during class, daytime sleepiness and nighttime snoring. College students often get less sleep than their younger peers because of more partying and less parental control.

Veronica Dark, associate professor of psychology, said college students should make sleep a priority.

“Sleep appears to help you consolidate what you’ve learned during the day. Students should have learning as their top priority, which means getting enough sleep,” Dark said.

Dark noted another study that was performed with medical students. The participants were split into groups who worked an 80- to 100-hour work week or a 50-hour work week. The participants were then tested on how quickly they could hit a button after a light came on. Some of the students who worked 50 hours drank three alcoholic drinks before the test, and they performed at the same level as the students who worked 80 to 100 hours. This suggested that a lack of sleep can be as mentally detrimental as intoxication.

“Sleep-deprived individuals can still perform tasks, just not as well as they would if they were not sleep-deprived,” Dark said.

Sleep yourself fit

Joe Eisenmann, assistant professor of health and human performance, published a study about sleep and weight gain among 7- to 15-year-olds. He found when boys got less than eight hours of sleep, they were 3.1 times more likely to be overweight than other boys who slept 10 or more hours.

“Other researchers have found similar trends in young adults,” Einsenmann said.

In 2004, Science Daily reported that the University of Chicago found people who sleep less have an increased appetite and prefer foods that are high in calories and carbohydrates. This can be detrimental for the waistlines of Americans, because Science Daily says that since the 1960s, adults are now sleeping almost two hours less per night. They calculated that only 23.5 percent of young adults sleep at least eight hours each night.

“Sleep is a restorative process and is vitally important to normal growth and maturation,” Einsenmann said. “It allows for the normal daily rhythm of key hormones. If this rhythm is upset, it can lead to several metabolic consequences.”

Students experiment for more time

Brian Cheney, junior in mechanical engineering, and Joseph Reischl, senior in mechanical engineering, both really enjoy taking power naps, which involves sleeping for 20 minutes during the day to restore energy. Reischl had heard of individuals who have lived on only power naps, so the two did more research. What they discovered was polyphasic sleeping. Normal sleep schedules are monophasic, because sleep occurs all at one time. Polyphasic means broken up into many phases.

During their research, Cheney and Reischl learned that someone had lived for five months while sleeping 20 minutes six times every day. Polyphasic sleeping allows for more time awake, which was appealing to Cheney and Reischl. However, if you skew from a strict schedule, your body reacts. The timing must be correct for the body to feel properly rested. They had to take their naps on couches rather than beds because they feared their beds would be too comfortable and they would sleep too long.

“We had to be strict about keeping our schedule because if we got off of it or missed a nap, we knew we would be in trouble,” Cheney said.

The first two weeks of a polyphasic sleep routine are said to be the hardest, which is the amount of time it takes the body to adapt. Cheney and Reischl hoped to make it at least two weeks, but lasted one-and-a-half weeks. Cheney wished that he and Reischl had made it over two weeks so they could see if their bodies would adjust like they were told, but the experiment proved too taxing on their brains and bodies.

“Staying awake in class was one of the hardest things I have ever attempted,” Cheney said. “I often felt like a zombie.”

On the whole, Cheney enjoyed his experience with polyphasic sleeping, although it did make learning difficult concepts and paying attention in class more challenging.

“It was fun to be awake when everyone else was sleeping,” Cheney said. “I felt like I was getting more out of life.”

Cheney does not recommend the polyphasic sleeping regimen, but did admit that it was a fun experiment to “shake up” his life.

“If anyone wants to attempt polyphasic sleeping, they should not do it alone. They need to be very disciplined and able to wake up when they need to,” Cheney said.

So what should I do about it?

College students blame their hectic schedules for lack of sleep, but Einsenmann thinks this is often a scapegoat.

“I am not sure if it is always a matter of being ‘time-crunched.’ I think it may be more of a matter of time management and priority. If health is a priority, then sleep and physical activity become part of a healthy lifestyle,” Einsenmann said.

Planning is usually all it takes to organize more time for sleep. Get a calendar and try to schedule in time for work, play and socializing. Leave at least seven hours for sleep each day.

If you really want to do something, you find time for it. Set aside time for your well-being and your body will thank you.