A report from The Huffington Post examines the effects of alcohol and marijuana on REM sleep and sleep disorders.

Venture onto a college campus on any given weekend (including finals week) and you’ll find students stumbling from one party to the next, visibly intoxicated. Some leave the party early, others don’t remember making it back at all. The partygoers are often drunk and under the influence of marijuana when returning home. What college students often don’t realize is that these two substances — alcohol and marijuana — are negatively affecting their sleep.

College students already have a difficult time getting enough sleep. A 2014 University of Alabama study found that 60 percent of college students are not getting a healthy amount of sleep. Students are overloading themselves with school, work, internships and other extracurriculars. As Arianna Huffington wrote in her recent article, college students have embraced the motto of “sleep, grades, social life: pick two.” While college students try to catch up on sleep on the weekends, often times they do so under the influence of substances that can be counterintuitive to getting a good night of sleep.

Get the full story at www.huffingtonpost.com