For Work, Studying, and More

Sometimes the dreaded all-nighter just can’t be avoided. Maybe you have a new job working night shifts, it’s finals week, or you’re having a sleepover party. Regardless of your reasons, staying up all night is tough.

Human sleep patterns follow natural circadian rhythms. Your circadian rhythms are like internal clocks affecting the way you think, feel, and behave throughout the day. Circadian rhythms are based on the lightness or darkness of your environment.

When your brain perceives darkness outside, your body begins to release a hormone called melatonin. Melatonin makes you drowsy and prepares your body for sleep.

Staying up all night means fighting this natural process, which is not only difficult, but also unhealthy. Sleep deprivation can impact your ability to learn and focus. It can even be dangerous. In 2013, there were at least 72,000 car accidents caused by drowsy driving.

If you must stay up all night, the following tips can help you do it safely.

The easiest way to stay up all night is to reset your internal clock. This can take up to one week, but it’s possible. You may experience serious drowsiness at first, but your body does catch on.

If you’re switching to the night shift, give your body a few days of practice. Your circadian rhythms still rely on light cues, so make sure you’re sleeping in a very dark room during the day. Blackout curtains and eye masks are particularly helpful.

Caffeine is a helpful pick-me-up and can increase your alertness. It helps fight one of the natural substances your body releases to make you drowsy.

Studies have found that moderate doses of caffeine (600 milligrams [mg] or more than four cups of coffee) can improve your ability to think and perform tasks, but high doses (900 mg or more) have the opposite effect. High doses of caffeine can cause symptoms like anxiety and shakiness that make it harder for you to concentrate.

To stay up all night, don’t rely on one big dose of caffeine. Too much coffee can lead to stomach upset. Instead, try taking several smaller doses throughout the night such as espresso shots, caffeine pills, or caffeinated gum.

Energy drinks contain varying amounts of caffeine, typically the equivalent of one to five cups of coffee. They also contain guarana, an ingredient that also contains caffeine, which makes the total amount of caffeine higher than it appears.

When using energy drinks, it’s difficult to know exactly how much caffeine you’re ingesting, and extremely high doses of caffeine can be toxic. They’re especially dangerous when mixed with drugs or alcohol. In 2011, more than 20,000 people went to the emergency room because of energy drinks.

Taking a series of small naps throughout the night may help you stay alert. Although it’s not equal to a full night’s sleep, short naps can be restorative. Most studies on night-shift workers find that naps reduce sleepiness and improve performance.

Try to catch 15 to 20 minutes of sleep during a break. If you’re driving through the night, pull into a rest stop for a quick nap.

Daily exercise helps you maintain a healthy sleep schedule, but experts recommend avoiding exercise late at night, if you want to sleep well at night. That’s because your body produces a lot of energy when you exercise, which can keep you awake.

If you’re trying to stay up all night, try 30 to 40 minutes of aerobic exercise. If you don’t want to exercise, try getting up and moving around. Pace back and forth for 10 minutes, take a walk outside, or do a few jumping jacks.

Darkness cues your body to release melatonin, a hormone that makes you feel sleepy. One study found that using bright lights at night and creating darkness during the day can help night-shift workers reset their circadian rhythms.

Find a lamp that can distribute light widely throughout the room. Look for an LED bulb that can simulate sunlight. This should help you stay awake longer.

Your electronic devices, including laptops, tablets, TVs, and phones, emit something called “blue light. ” The blue light emitted from your devices can delay the release of melatonin, the sleep hormone. This can prevent you from becoming sleepy.

To keep yourself awake, use a device that you can interact with. Try playing video games on your computer or tablet. The closer the blue light is to your face, the more awake you will feel.

Taking a cold or lukewarm shower can help wake you up when you start to get tired. If you don’t want to shower, splashing your face with cold water can help. Brushing your teeth can make you feel refreshed.

Staying up all night isn’t good for you and should only be done as a last resort. After staying up all night, you’ll feel very drowsy. Try to make up the sleep the next day.

For more sleep support, check out our sleep shop.

How to Stay Awake in Class: 11 Strategies for Alertness

Nodding off in class is common for students of any age.

Late nights studying, long hours on a job, sitting in a warm classroom after a big lunch, a long evening class, or simply finding the teacher or subject matter a trifle boring all can contribute to classroom sleepiness.

For tips on how to stay awake in class or in any setting that requires your attention, consider the following strategies.

While this may not be easy or appropriate in the middle of a lecture, walking around, jogging in place, doing jumping jacks, or any activity that gets your blood pumping can juice up your energy and attention levels.

If you’re in a long lecture that has a break in the middle, use that time to get up from your seat and move your body. And if there’s no formal break, ask to use the restroom and get a little exercise on the way there and back.

You can also try some chair stretches like shoulder rolls, seated twist, and others.

If you’ve ever seen a new parent pushing a stroller on the sidewalk with an infant aboard, they may be doing more than simply getting out of the house for a few minutes. Being out in fresh air is invigorating.

And if you’re stuck in a classroom or other indoor setting, taking a few deep breaths can help deliver a little more oxygen to your system. That might be just what you need to stay awake and attentive.

Downing a cup or two of coffee, tea, or other caffeinated beverage can be a simple but effective jolt to your senses.

But how much caffeine do you need to be alert? Well, it varies from person to person, in part, based on your sensitivity to this precious ingredient.

Mayo Clinic reports that about 400 milligrams of caffeine per day — about what you’d find in four cups of coffee — is usually plenty to keep a person awake and attentive.

Coffee can sometimes lead to higher spikes in energy and lower dips when the caffeine wears off, so caffeinated tea may have a somewhat milder, more consistent effect than coffee.

Coffee or teas without a lot of added sugar are also healthier choices than sweetened, high-caffeine energy drinks. A 16-ounce energy drink packs a lot of calories and more than twice as much caffeine as a standard cup of coffee.

Staying hydrated is a key strategy employed by long-haul truckers and others who have to put in long hours at tedious jobs.

Fluids help keep your blood flowing, which means your brain is getting plenty of oxygen and nutrients to keep working sharply in and outside of class.

Even becoming slightly dehydrated can cause fatigue, irritability, and other health problems. Having a water bottle with you in class — if it’s allowed — can make a big difference in keeping you hydrated and focused.

Being actively engaged, whether it’s taking notes or participating in a classroom discussion, can help keep you from snoozing during a lecture.

You may just need to occupy your mind more during class, so take good notes. They can be questions or comments on the lecture if there aren’t facts to jot down.

If the class allows for questions and discussions, be the student who raises a hand and keeps the conversation going.

One of the keys to getting a good night’s sleep, which in turn means less daytime sleepiness, is to follow a set schedule of bedtime and wake-up time.

By going to sleep at approximately the same time every day and waking up at the same time, you’re setting your body’s natural clock to know when it’s time to sleep and when it’s time to be awake and learning.

Try to aim for 7 to 8 hours of sleep each night, though if you’re in your teens or 20s, you may need as many as 9 or 10 hours to become fully rested.

Exposure to light, especially in the morning, is one of the simplest and cheapest ways to wake up your mind and body for the day ahead.

Taking a brisk walk in the morning can energize you for hours. If that’s not possible, open up your blinds as soon as you wake up to let the morning sunlight into your home.

Exposure to morning light helps you wake up faster, and perhaps more importantly, it sets your internal clock to be awake during the day and sleepy at night.

Sitting in the back of a large — or even a small — lecture class can put you one step closer to an unplanned nap. It’s a little tougher to fall asleep if you’re in the front row, just a few feet from the teacher.

Mint has many health benefits. One of the most useful in class — apart from making your breath smell better — is how peppermint can help stimulate the hippocampus, which is a key part of the brain involved with alertness, memory, and other thinking skills.

If you’re upset about your grades, the news, or something that happened this morning, your brain expends a lot of energy. It’s going to wear you out and make your tired.

If you’re experiencing emotional exhaustion, problems can range from daytime sleepiness to poor sleep at night, as well as irritability, poor concentration, headaches, increased pessimism, and much more.

Using meditation and relaxation techniques to help cope with stress and anger may help restore your energy and give you a happier outlook. Even just few days of mindfulness meditation training can help boost your attention and thinking skills.

You may feel more like sitting up, paying attention, and working if you’re wearing business-like clothes as opposed to comfier outfits. It may keep you focused on the work in front of you.

If you struggle to stay awake in class once in a while, just remind yourself to get enough sleep on “school nights” and try the strategies above.

But if you’re consistently sleepy in class or other times during the day, tell a doctor. You may have a condition such as obstructive sleep apnea that’s keeping you from getting enough restorative sleep at night.

Otherwise, a warm cup of tea or coffee, or perhaps a little exercise or meditation may offer more benefits than just helping you keep up with your schoolwork.

How to stay up all night if you really need to

Adviсe

October 1, 2020

Discomfort, coffee with chocolate and trolling will help you stay awake until the morning.

You can listen to this article. If it’s more convenient for you, turn on the podcast.

1. Avoid sleep rituals

Getting ready for bed usually involves some sequence of activities: putting on pajamas, drinking milk, reading a book. For ordinary days, this is an advantage: the body immediately understands that now you are going to bed. If you need to stay awake, these habits are best avoided.

2. Don’t overeat

Being slightly hungry will keep you awake, as you are supposed to be active in order to get your own food.

3. Choose the right clothes

Do not change into pajamas, even if they are very comfortable. Wear something you can’t sleep in, like brand new, unworn jeans. Another helper will be shoes with laces. It will not give you the opportunity to “just lie down for five minutes.” Unless, of course, you are used to falling asleep in your shoes every Friday.

4. Avoid sofas and beds

If you want to sleep badly, you will fall asleep even on a hard chair with nails sticking out in some places. A soft bed will not leave you a single chance to hold out until the morning. Therefore, choose not the most comfortable seats.

5. Make the Light Brighter

Studies have shown that bright light suppresses drowsiness. Turn on the overhead light, sconce, table lamp. It is impossible to overdo it in this matter. True, this trick should not be turned at parties: other visitors to the nightclub may be unhappy with the lights suddenly turned on.

6. Find out who is wrong on the Internet

Find a person with a questionable position on Facebook* and try to convince him. You can sincerely argue or frankly troll, but the effect will be the same: from indignation, you will not only fall asleep – you will not be able to sit still.

7. Get enough sleep the day before

Not the most unexpected, but working way. A sleepless night the day before leaves you virtually no chance to be productively awake. Unless, of course, you flew from the future to save John Connor. Therefore, before a strategically important night, sleep as hard as you can.

8. Drink coffee or caffeinated beverages

Caffeine does suppress sleepiness. True, there are nuances of drinking coffee, depending on how you want to spend the morning. If you drink it too actively, there is a risk that you will be too alert even when it’s time to go to bed. If you drink just a little bit of coffee, you will easily fall asleep when the caffeine leaves your bloodstream.

9. Eat spicy food

Instead of trying to pinch yourself to stay awake, outsource this activity. Eat a portion of spicy, burning food. It will irritate the mucous membrane in your mouth enough to make you forget about sleep.

10. Load up on fast carbohydrates

On a sleepless night, just the property of fast carbohydrates that adherents of a healthy diet scold them for is useful: they quickly break down into simple sugars and give a strong, albeit short-lived burst of energy. So ignore the advice of grandmothers “do not eat sweets at night, otherwise you will not fall asleep” and stock up on sweets.

Keep an eye on your level of fatigue, as the energy will leave your body just as quickly: as soon as you feel tired, it’s time to take another bite from the chocolate bar.

11. Wash with cold water

Rinse face and wrists. Cold water is a kind of stress for the body, and therefore it will inevitably cheer up to eliminate discomfort.

12. Chew gum

Research has shown that chewing will keep you awake. The brain receives a signal that food is on its way to the stomach, and does not allow the body to relax in anticipation of a portion of energy. In general, you can chew anything, but chewing gum will be a longer-lasting option than food.

13. Drink water

Dehydration can lead to fatigue, so listen carefully to your body’s signals of thirst. The advice has an added bonus: Have you ever tried to sleep with a full bladder?

14. Squat

Physical activity invigorates, and if you get up every hour and do 15 squats or push-ups, this will significantly extend the period of wakefulness. But jumping is better to avoid, although communication with the police squad, which the neighbors will call because of the noise, can invigorate better than any squats.

15. Keep your head busy

Surely there are puzzles that make you forget about everything in the world. For some, these are puzzles, for others – a new level of computer games. If you choose a movie or game, it is better that they are new to you and that you have to carefully follow the twists and turns of the plot.

16. Switch attention

A sleepless night is a great time to practice multitasking. Switch between different tasks to avoid switching to automatic work mode.

What methods do you use? Share in the comments.

Read also 🧐

• How to replace coffee to maintain energy and improve concentration0085
• How to deal with tiredness and sleepiness in the afternoon

*Activity of Meta Platforms Inc. and its social networks Facebook and Instagram are prohibited in the territory of the Russian Federation.

10 ways to stay up all night

Is it possible to stay up all night without harm to your health and what, apart from a few cups of coffee, will help you stay awake? Share the answers to these questions and help prepare for a sleepless night

Contents

• Consequences of a sleepless night
• Why people decide not to sleep
• How to stay up all night

What happens if you don’t sleep

Sleep is necessary for health: even one sleepless night can negatively affect the body. If you do not sleep for more than 17 hours in a row [1], the reaction rate will decrease by 50% and the brain will not work at full capacity. In addition, due to increased sleepiness, the risk of an accident will increase.

In 1963, researcher William Dement and test subject Randy Gardner set up an experiment to find out how long a person could stay awake. Their record is 11 days and 25 minutes (by 2022 it is still unbeaten) [2]. During the experiment, Randy’s mood fluctuated, he had hallucinations, he could not speak clearly, he forgot facts and got confused in his memories. This effect was from 11 days without sleep, but even one sleepless night can lead to health consequences.

Without sleep, the brain cannot “refresh”: fluid from the spine does not flow into it, which “washes away” toxins, some of which cause Alzheimer’s disease [3]. And this is not the only harmful effect of sleep deprivation: a study in Sweden showed that just one sleepless night increased the risk of damage to brain cells by 20% [4].

Why people decide not to sleep

The reasons can be different: accumulated deadlines at work, shift schedule, upcoming exams or a night event. Recently, psychologists have noticed a new reason for refusing healthy sleep – procrastination. In English, it is called Revenge Bedtime Procrastination – “procrastination, taking revenge on sleep patterns” [5]. This is the name given to situations when a person refuses sleep in favor of leisure: doing a hobby, flipping through a feed on social networks or watching TV shows. However, for this, no additional prescriptions that do not allow you to fall asleep are required.

But sometimes work or school makes us neglect sleep. We tell you how to do business at night, minimizing the risk to health.

How to stay up all night

1. Turn on the light

Our brain reacts to the change of day and night, and when it’s dark, we automatically fall asleep. This is how the internal biological clock works [6]. To drive away drowsiness and increase vigilance, provide yourself with a bright source of light (and it is desirable that it be not yellow, but white). In dim lighting, you will only want to sleep more, and your concentration will drop.

2. Get moving

Physical activity usually helps you fall asleep at night, but if you do sports 1-2 hours before bedtime, you will only cheer up [7]. Do a little exercise: jump, stretch or stretch. Do this every time you want to go to bed.

3. Take breaks

Staring at a computer screen for a long time can strain your eyes and cause dryness that will make you want to sleep even more. Try sometimes to take your eyes off the monitor: for example, go for tea or coffee or do a warm-up for the eyes.

4. Drink water

Dehydration reduces blood flow to the brain, resulting in a feeling of fatigue and increased sleepiness [8]. To avoid this, place a bottle of water near your workspace and drink when your mouth feels dry.

5. Drink coffee

One of the most obvious ways, but it works. Studies have shown that if the human body has more than 600 milligrams of caffeine per day (that’s about four mugs), it will be able to cope with tasks faster and more efficiently. But be careful: large doses (from 900 mg) have the opposite effect. You will become more anxious and unable to concentrate [9].

Energy drinks also contain caffeine, but their use can be dangerous. One drink is equal to about five mugs of coffee. In addition, energy drinks contain guarana, which also contains caffeine. It is quite difficult to calculate the exact dose, and you can overdo it: your head will start to hurt and feel dizzy, nervousness and anxiety will appear.

6. Take a shower

A cold or cool shower will help you feel refreshed and tired. If you don’t have time for it, you can rinse your face and neck with cold water and brush your teeth to freshen up.

7. Get 15–20 minutes of sleep

Short sleep will help you relieve accumulated fatigue and increase your own productivity [10]. Set yourself several alarms so you don’t oversleep. If you sleep for more than 20 minutes, you will most likely snap yourself out of deep sleep and feel more overwhelmed than you were before.