Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Causes of sleep deprivation essay
Causes of obesity and effects
Causes of obesity
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Causes of sleep deprivation essay
The amount of people suffering from obesity has exploded in recent years. According to the textbook, A Wellness Way of Life, “Thirty-four and three fourths percent of American adults are obese. In 1960-62 the percentage was thirteen percent” (A Wellness Way of Life, pg. 264). The obesity problem is not isolated to the United States alone, but has become a worldwide health issue of epidemic proportions. Many factors, such as diet and physical activity, contribute to obesity. However, scientists have recently found a surprising link between obesity and lack of sleep. Multiple studies have been performed to confirm this link and though inconclusive, these studies support the idea that lack of sleep may be a major cause of obesity today.
Researchers have found that sleep deprivation impairs glucose, increases blood pressure, and deregulates appetite. A Wellness Way of Life states,
Insufficient sleep appears to affect hormones that regulate appetite and body weight. Leptin, which suppresses appetite, is lowered; ghrelin, which stimulates appetite, gets a boost. These hormone changes combined with more awake time to eat and feeling too tired to exercise all contribute to weight gain. (A Wellness Way of Life, pg. 375)
Eve Van Cauter, and endocrinologist at the University of Chicago School of medicine, conducted a study on the effect of sleep on the body. She monitored every system in her young volunteer’s bodies while they slept. They had limited sleep for 4 hours for six nights. According to the study “some volunteers were on the road to diabetes in just six days” (Cauter). Van Cauter made a shocking discovery that lack of sleep may be linked with obesity. Her volunteers also had a slight drop in their leptin levels, which is a hormon...
... middle of paper ...
...nsider that contribute to the obesity epidemic such as, social, cultural, and environmental situations. These studies, however, support the idea that lack of sleep may be a major cause of obesity today.
Work Cited
Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children Study Team. University of Bristol. ALSPCS, 2014. Web. 6 Mar. 2014
A Wellness Way of Life. Robbins, Gwen, Debbie Powers, and Sharon Burgess. 10th ed. Madison, Wis: WCB Brown & Benchmark Publishers, 1994. 264. Print.
Cauter, Eve Van. “Science of Sleep.” CBS News. 60 Minutes, 15 June 2008. Web. 6 Mar. 2014
Harvard School of Public Health. “Obesity Prevention Source.” Harvard School of Public Health. HSPH, n.d. Web. 18 Feb. 2014
North American Association for the Study of Obesity. “Short Sleep Duration and Weight Gain.” North American Association for the Study of Obesity. NAASO. 6 Sep. 2012. Web. 2 June. 2014
The article "Causes and consequences of sleep deprivation in hospitalized patients" written by Stephanie Pilkington is exploring the causes and consequences of sleep deprivation in hospitalized patients. The author provides a brilliant summary of factors that affect the level of sleep experienced by patients in hospitals and the effects of sleep deprivation on the health and the wellbeing of these individuals. The article goes on to state that for sleep-deprived patients, there were bio-cognitive consequences for their health and recovery, with particular effects on immune functioning, inflammation, parasympathetic equilibrium, carbohydrate metabolism and cognitive performance.
Obesity is a very complex condition as there are many physiological and psychological dimensions to it. The complications accompanying the disease are multiple and are associated with the increased risk of many other medical conditions. It is thought that we live in an obesogenic environment due to an interaction of environmental, developmental and cultural influences. With the main cause of the disorder thought to be due to a combination of a sedentary lifestyle accompanied by an increased consumption of poor quality food with a high calorie and sugar content. The lack of energy expenditure could be explained by many individuals working a large number of hours, most days of the week in jobs that require minimal physical activity and it is often difficult to accomplish the recommended ...
Obesity is a rising problem in the United States. With obesity rates on the rise something must be done to prevent this massive issue. There are ways to help including educating at young ages, improving nutrition facts at restaurants, and providing more space for citizens to get physically active.
Fain, N. C. & Lewis. N. M. (2002). Wellness: The Holistic Approach to Health. Journal of
The public health problem that I am addressing is the lack of sleep. The target population will be adolescents and college students in America. Sleep is important to health because the timing, quality, and duration are essential. Sleep plays a big role in good health and well-being throughout your life. How you feel when you are awake comes from how well you slept at night. Sleep has a direct correlation with metabolic regulation, emotional regulation, performance, memory consolidation, learning, and brain recuperation process. Because of these factors it should be viewed as just as important
One of the most common forms of chronic conditions is cardiovascular disease. This disease is commonly known to disrupt the normal function of the brain. From heart disease, many things can happen, for an example, heart attack and stroke. Although rare and not very commonly known they do happen from lack of sleep and sleep deprivation can be one of the leading cause to a heart attack or stroke if cardiovascular diseases is formed. Not only can a cardiovascular diseases be found, but obesity can also happen. It may seem pretty odd that obesity can happen due to the lack of sleep, but it happens by the lack of brain function and then releases certain hormones that will increase your appetite causing you to gain weight. Once you gain a reasonable amount of weight many aspects of your life will be affected, such as physical activity, and self hate. Obesity, increases many other health risk such as diabetes and breathing problems. Although depressing, if issues relying on sleep are not handled properly, people are risking early mortality. At this stage, they are no longer just affecting their self, but also everyone else around them. People no longer become their own issue but also the family and friends around them, because if they become sick enough the people around them will need to help them and care for them. When dealing with sleep deprivation, make sure to handle it correctly
According to Wilson (2005), sleep deprivation can cause not only traffic accidents, but also medical conditions such as: obesity, type 2 diabetes, metabo...
Obesity has been associated with energy intake and expenditure imbalance, genetics, cultural, socioeconomic, behavioral, and situational factors all play a role in eating and weight control (Bray, 2005). To get an idea of the scope of the problem, the American Journal of Health Promotion states that the rates of obesity has more than tripled among children and adolescents over the past 30 years (Gollust, 2014).
I realize that a brief summary article like this does not provide all the details of the experimental methodology, but a couple of things that were reported in the article struck me as curious. The researchers studied physical functioning (cortisol levels, etc.) in men who had a normal night’s sleep (eight hours in bed) the first three nights of the study, followed by a period of sleep deprivation (four hours in bed) the next six nights of the study, and finally a period of sleep recovery (12 hours in bed) the last seven nights of the study. In reporting the effects on the body (the discussion of glucose metabolism, in the fifth paragraph of the article) the author’s compare the sleep deprivation stage only to the sleep recovery stage, not to normal sleep. This seems to me like doing an experiment on drunkenness and comparing the drunk stage to the hangover stage, without ever reporting what happens when the person is sober.
Metcalf, T., & Metcalf, G. (Eds.). (2008). Perspectives on Diseases and Disorders: Obesity. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale Cengage Learning
If all of these important activities occur during sleep, why is it that people are so willing to short themselves of this vital activity? Although much about sleep still remains a mystery, research and experiments continue to show how important sleep is to each and every person. Throughout this paper, I will discuss sleep and the effects that it has on performance and health, especially among college students. A college student’s sleeping pattern is a reliable indicator of their level of performance in the classroom and other school-affiliated activities, as a lack of sleep leads to decreased performance. Sleep is directly related to the level of performance and health of an individual; the more rested a person is, the better that person will perform and feel (Dryer, 2006).
One of the most common and detrimental issues that the world battles does not have to be something as violent as war or as radical as drug abuse, it is in fact, sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation can cause serious damage to almost every aspect of the human body and mind, but is often overlooked in the big scheme of things because of its seemingly unimportance in modern society. Those who run off of five hours of sleep each night are praised for their hardworking efforts, while those who achieve a full nights rest and sleep in are considered lazy and irresponsible. The truth is, the world needs to be educated on the causes, and more importantly, the effects of sleep deprivation so they can be aware of how negatively not getting enough sleep affects them.
Siddique, M. I., Mahmud, I., & Siddique, R. M. (2010). Obesity and sleep disorders: Implications for bariatric patients. Bariatric Nursing And Surgical Patient Care, 5(1), 75-79. doi:10.1089/bar.2009.9937
Obesity: Our weight also depends on our sleep duration. Studies show that people who slept for 9-10 hours are more likely exposed to obesity compared to those who slept between 7-8 hours. Even when food intake and exercise were taken into account, this link between sleep and obesity stayed the same.
Wells, M., & Vaughn, B. V. (2012). Poor Sleep Challenging the Health of a Nation. Neurodiagnostic Journal,52(3), 233-249.