Epinephrine Levels: Sheila's Lack Of Sleep

Sleep plays an essential role in maintaining good health and wellbeing throughout one’s life, so what happens both physically and mentally when one does not get enough sleep? As described in the introduction to chapter nine, Sheila decides to travel from Boston to Paris and wants to sleep on the flight in order to maximize her time awake, and thus her time to sight see, while in France. Unfortunately, due to the vibration of the plane, the loud family of travellers sitting behind her, and other extraneous stimuli, she was unable to fall asleep during the flight. When Sheila lands in Paris, she appears to be more excited than tired because the stress of travelling and not sleeping causes her epinephrine levels spike. This heightened epinephrine production results in a fight-or-flight response, which corresponds to increased blood pressure and focus, and could be mistaken for feeling awake. As Sheila wandered through the Louvre and explored Paris, however, her epinephrine levels slowly fell and eventually got so low that that she crashed for over ten hours.

When travelling through multiple time zones (the time difference from Boston to Paris is six hours), one’s circadian rhythm can be thrown off. This change in body clock regulation is largely due to the fluctuations in light and dark exposure, deregulation of body temperature, and change in daily activity experienced while in the air. These disruptions alter the activity of the suprachiasmatic nucleus of the hypothalamus and cause one to be more drowsy and fatigued the following day than they would be if not