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Health and personal consequences of sleep deprivation essay
Theory about sleep deprivation
Health and personal consequences of sleep deprivation essay
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The Negative Effects of Sleep Deprivation
Most people are familiar with the after effects of a night or two without sleep. Without sleep, people are less efficient and more irritable. It's even difficult for them to think. A recent study by the University of California in San Diego reveals that brain activity is actually altered following sleep deprivation.
Parts of the brain, for instance the frontal lobe, did not function when the subject was severely sleep deprived. However, other parts of the brain, like the prefrontal cortex, exhibited more activity than normal, possibly to compensate for this non activity. The sleepier the subject, the more active the prefrontal lobe became.
This reversal of activity was evident in many regions of the brain. This reveals that the brain does try to compensate for the effects of sleep deprivation. However, lack of sleep does adversely effect the electrical patterns of the brain and it cannot function normally.
Another study, this one from the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center in 1997, also demonstrates that lack of sleep causes difference in how we think. Thinking slows down with lack of sleep, not only during the night, but also the next day. This can cause safety concerns for people who work or drive at night. This may be because people are using some of their resources to fight off a need for sleep.
In March, 1998, students at Colchester Sixth Form College in Britain also tested the results of sleep deprivation. Certain functions were, indeed, slowed down, like typing skills. Speech became slurred and reaction time slower. However, much to their surprise, they discovered that there was an improvement in math skills, short term memory and the ability to sort papers.
Carlyle Smith, a professor of psychology at Trent University in Peterborough, Ontario suggested yet another adverse effect of sleep deprivation. Students who studied hard all week and then stayed up all night partying on the weekend lost as much as 30% of what they had learned during the week.
Sleep deprivation, however, is almost a way of life for most students, especially as final exams loom on the horizon. In fact, much of society suffers to some extent from sleep deprivation. There just doesn't seem to be time during the normal day for career or job duties and the time we would like to have for play.
Sleep deprivation is a common condition that occurs if you don’t get enough sleep. In case of sleep deprivation people have trouble falling and staying asleep for a long period of time. In order to understand how serious sleep deprivation can be, one must need to know causes and consequences of sleep deprivation, how much sleep do we need? What does sleep do for us? And how we can cure sleep deprivation.
Many college students suffer from sleep deprivation; only a few students would say that they are getting enough rest at night. Sleep deprivation is caused by not receiving the amount of sleep that the human body needs to function properly throughout the day. Sleep deprivation has many causes and effects that most often lead to depression, physical illness, learning problems, and irregular sleep patterns; Elizabeth Austin offers two solutions to help college students cope with sleep deprivation.
In principle, a careful experiment should be able to isolate the effects of sleep deprivation by depriving people of sleep in the absence of stress and other such confounding variables. That seems to be what this experiment does, but as I read the article closely, I found myself unsure that the effects it reports are necessarily due to sleep deprivation per se.
The authors and scientists from a different study by the U.S National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health on long and short-term sleep deprivation state directly that “in certain jobs, people face sleep restriction. Some professions such as health care… require working at night. In such fields, the effect of acute total sleep deprivation (SD) on performance is crucial” (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance). Depending on their schedule, nurses can often be susceptible to sleep deprivation and are no exception, especially if they are working long hours. The study performed research on how acute and chronic sleep deprivation can affect the brain and how it can slow down or worsen thought process and rationality throughout the day for working adults. The authors also explain that “motor function, rhythm, receptive and expressive speech, and memory ...deteriorated after one night of SD.” (Alhola and Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance) Although everybody is affected by a lack of sleep differently, some might have the ability to handle it a lot better than others, but it is fair to say that no one can perform their jobs perfectly if their brains are being affected by sleep deprivation. This organization concludes this study by explaining that there is still much research that needs to be
Research shows that sleep is a necessity in order for someone to be able to perform at their maximum potential. College students are no exception to the rule and are often at a greater risk to suffer from conditions that accompany sleep deprivation. Regardless of the time period, a college student must be well rested in order to perform at his or her best in terms of physical performance, memorization capabilities, and test-taking abilities. Also, without adequate sleep, the person will be more susceptible to illnesses, both mental and physical. In conclusion, I believe that sleep deprivation among college students is extremely common and has a direct effect on how well that student will perform or feel.
In this regard, direct evidence for sleep deprivation in humans has mostly been looked for in indicators of the macro level functioning. Such an approach in solving the problem of the effect of sleep deprivation on neural functioning in humans is incomplete; however, for now, it offers an accessible manner of researching the problem, as well as a possible basis for targeted search for specific mechanisms in human subjects in future
In the world of higher education, students at the collegiate level are highly likely to be overwhelmed with course load, in addition to sports and extra-curricular activities (Jacobs & Dodd, 2003). These factors have the potential to lead to various amounts of sleep deprivation, and as the research of Nilsson, Sunderstrom, Karlsson et al. (2004) has shown, sleep deprivation is correlated with higher levels of fatigue, impairments in speed and accuracy as well as limitations in cognitive and physical performances. One way to cope with this fatigue that has shown to have very positive results on people of all ages is taking naps. In addition to reducing sleepiness, Milner & Cote (2008) have determined that “napping may lead to considerable benefits in terms of mood, alertness and cognitive performances”. It is these benefits that nappers seek when engaging in napping activities.
Many times people think they can accomplish more if they could eliminate so much sleeping time. However, they are only hurting their productivity if they lose sleep. Two articles deal with the issue of sleep deprivation. The College Student Journal published an article about the grade-point average of college students and sleep length, while U.S. News & World Report produced an article dealing with the lack of
There have been many studies that link “unhealthy sleep habits” with decreased cognitive functioning and academic performance. Pilcher and Huffcutt (1996) performed a meta-analysis on existing studies dealing with sleep deprivation and its effects upon various daytime functions. They define partial sleep deprivation as getting less than five hours of sleep in a night, short-term total sleep deprivation as a period of no sleep lasting less than or equal to 45 hours, and long-term total sleep deprivation as a period of no sleep lasting longer than 45 hours. Partial sleep deprivation is linked to decreased cognitive functioning, while long-term sleep deprivation is associated with mood disorders (Pilcher & Huffcutt, 1996). Sleepiness and irregular sleep schedules have many unintended consequences, one of which is to negatively impact learning, memory, and performance.
In today’s society, many college students do not get enough hours of sleep to function at their fullest potential the following day. Personally, I will not get enough sleep during the school week due to studying too late, watching television or using my phone for too long, choosing to go out, or etc. Sometimes, I find myself getting in bed early but not actually being able to fall asleep until many hours later. As a result, this causes me to excessively sleep on the weekends to try and makeup for the past week. This behavior indicates signs of sleep deprivation. Other signs include: continually not getting the recommended hours of sleep, always hungry the next day, gaining weight, acting more impulsively, memory decreasing, having difficulty making decisions, decrease in motor skills, emotional exhaustion, poor immune system, difficulty seeing, increased irritability, and skin breakouts (Swalin n.pag.). Sleep deprivation is extremely bad for your health, which many people do not realize:
Sleep deprivation can affect people of all ages, races, and ethnicities but there is a certain group of people that are more likely to get sleep
A night of sleep can enhance our ability to establish novel solutions and complicated problems. Russell Grant Foster, a neuroscientist who studied at the University of Bristol with a PhD in Neuroscience stated “In fact, a good night’s sleep could give us a threefold advantage in creativity.” Whenever I have problems that cannot figure out, for example, doing artworks, after a night sleep, there are always unexpected new ideas exist in my mind. On the other hand, I found that some people sleep-deprived in order to study for the next day test, as a result, the ability to do that task is enormously smashed and those students actually didn’t get higher marks than others. It shows that sleep and memory consolidation have an important association. So, sleeping is not wasting time, everyone needs sleep to perform better in our
Sleep deprivation is when someone hasn’t received enough sleep, and their mind and body begin to develop negative effects. Many do not understand the negative repercussions of not getting enough sleep, and how much it affects your physical health, mental health, development, and overall livelihood. Sleep is a very delicate process that involves different cycles and levels, and the slightest disturbance can have negative repercussions for a person’s life. Sleep deprivation has been linked to heart disease, diabetes, dementia, mental disorders, rapid aging, and even, in serious cases, death. Sleep deprivation also can affect anyone and can be most dangerous in the elderly and children. The elderly run risk of worsening already prominent conditions while children may affect their development and growth from lack of sleep. Those who are most affected by sleep deprivation are also the elderly and college students. Many college students are encouraged to pull all-nighters, and are never taught what negative affects sleep deprivation can have on their retention, assignments, tests results, and even overall
Sleep is a very important factor in the human function. Our body and brain is able to reset itself and rejuvenate while we sleep. When we do not get the required amount of sleep, we start to feel lethargic and foggy minded, because our mind and body wasn’t able to replenish itself. Sleep is imperative that an insignificant rest deficiency or lack of sleep can affect our ability to remember things; decisions and can affect our temperament. Chronic sleep deficiency can get the body to feel agitated and it could lead to serious health problems such as, heart problems, stress, acne, and obesity.
assesses the consequences of sleep deprivation in human beings and briefly look for the causes