RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN HABITS AND SLEEP QUALITY, COGNITIVE PROCESSES AND BODY AND VISCERAL FAT LEVELS IN POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS
Postgraduate students; cognitive processes; sleep-wake cycle; body fat; visceral fat.
Insufficient and irregular sleep is a common problem for modern society, whether due to sleep disorders, stress and / or academic and social demands. This situation can impair the performance of daily activities and generate health problems. Postgraduate students are likely candidates for sleep deprivation and irregularity because they are subject to stressful situations and high academic demand. Studies have pointed out that poor sleep habits lead to deprivation and low sleep quality, in addition to irregular sleep schedules, which can lead to circadian desynchronization, causing an increase in daytime sleepiness. It can also lead to impairment of basic cognitive processes, such as attention, working memory, inhibitory control and cognitive flexibility. Insufficient and irregular sleep are also risk factors for obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. This work aims to characterize sleep habits and quality of postgraduate students, relating them to cognitive processes and levels of body and visceral fat. 68 students from postgraduate programs in the area of biosciences of a public university will participate in the study. Participants will complete questionnaires about sleep habits, chronotype, sleep quality, daytime sleepiness and will perform tasks to assess cognitive processes, in addition to measures of body indexes to assess body and visceral fat levels. They will also be followed for 10 days to assess sleep parameters through actimetry and sleep diaries