How Sleep Deprivation Affects Our Body

Sleep what is? Seems like it should be an obvious thing to everyone you go to sleep when you’re tired and awake when you’re rested though the unfortunate reality, most of us take sleep for granted and deprive ourselves of a vital our brain needs to function at its fullest. First and foremost the concept that everyone needs 8hours of sleep is false for most adults there is slight variation some of us are perfectly capable of functioning with 6 hours others need those few extra winks of 9 hours a night (p.97). The average amount of sleep for adults in the U.S is 7-8 hours a night (p.97). If you aren’t getting the amount of sleep your brain requires be it 6 hours or 9 hours you’re going to suffer from Sleep Deprivation. The idea that Sleep Deprivation is a torture used by societies past and present and we do it to ourselves almost willing is a serious matter in the United States, foolishly our society almost takes pride in it. All too often you hear during your day to day life someone imprudent says something along the lines “I can function on only 4 hours of sleep!” or “I pull all nighters all the time!” well if this is you you’re going to hurt yourself or someone else. When you aren’t getting enough sleep you start building a sleep-debt and you’re body and brain one way or another is going to want you to pay that back (p.99). After keeping track of how many hours of sleep for 5 nights I got, to no surprise I had a little bit of a sleep-debt owed. For 5 night’s total I should

Sleep is undoubtedly one of the most essential requirements for the human body to function properly. It plays a very important role in ensuring the wellness of the human body both physically as well as mentally. In fact, the importance of sleep is clear from the fact that it helps you in maintaining a good lifestyle throughout our entire lifetime. Not only does it help maintain our physical and mental health; rather it also helps in maintaining a decent and healthy lifestyle along with ensuring safety from a number of fatal diseases. It is usually said that the mood in which you wake up is largely dependent on the type of sleep you have been in. This in itself is a big proof of the importance of sleep in our lives. While sleeping, our body finally gets its share of rest and it also gets ample time in rejuvenating from all the wear and tear that it went through during the entire day. Not only this, the body is in its own working condition when we are sleeping as this is the time when it supports the healthy functioning of the brain as well as physical attributes of our body.

The suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) serves as the biological clock for the human body. It controls the melatonin production of the body, depending of the amount of light that fall into the eye causing the sleep-wake cycle. The human body goes through 5 ultradian sleep cycles, each approximately 90 minutes long. Each cycle consist of a number of stages going up to four; that then again reverse up to the second stage. Instead of going back to stage one, the body then enters a stage of active sleep with increased blood pressure, oxygen consumption and neural firing, as well as eye movement that resembles that of a waking person, called rapid eye movement sleep (REM). The less active stages are called non rapid eye movement (NREM) or slow-wave sleep.

of sleep is seen as an adaptive move to keep humans from wandering in the night. How we sleep? We go from waking to sleeping, then we get a little deeper into our sleep, sleeps spindles generate periods of extreme activity. Then we go deeper and deeper as delta waves come from our brain waves go lower. During REM (Rapid Eye Movement) the brain is hyped, blood pressure increases causing the heart rate to increase in speed. REM is also crucial in the strong ties we have in memories. REM Rebound goes up REM after decreasing it.

Typical sleep cycles begin around 11 p.m. for teenagers and continue through 8 a.m.. This means that an early wake-up call not only allows 6 or 7 hours of sleep per school night at most but also requires students to wake up in the middle of deep sleep. According to most sleep experts, most adolescents need about 9 hours of sleep per night. Today nearly 2/3 get under 8, and 2/5 get under 6 hours of sleep per night.

The proper amount of sleep is vital when it comes to using your cognitive skills to take on everyday tasks. Cognitive skills are essential to help the brain process things like; learning, remembering, and thinking. Lack of sleep makes the process extremely difficult. Not getting enough rest can make simple information hard to understand causing people not able to perform daily tasks. Not only is it hard to process the information given but it is even more difficult to pay attention to the information given. Not getting the proper amount of sleep can hinder the memory process as well. Things like misplacing the car keys or becoming more forgetful. It can damage the memory ability including short-term memory loss and eventually long-term. Being tired also affects the way people make decisions. It makes it harder to choose what to do because people are unable to evaluate the situation correctly.

My roommate has been coming into my dorm at all hours of the night and disrupting my sleep. I am going to describe a typical nights sleep cycle and describe how sleep deprivation impacts my ability to learn and my health.

Sleep deprivation is a serious matter when it comes to anyone really. I know adults that even struggle with this. Yes I do blame most of it on technology but you know it's not just on technology everyone has a lot going on. It could deal with technology, sports, homework, family, activities going on that you have to make, television. There are so much excuses you could say as to why you have sleep deprivation but in the end it is you. You are the reason why you don't sleep, don't blame it on everything else. You need sleep and when you need to sleep you drop everything and go to bed!

Today in 2017, 26-35% of American adults get a total of eight hours of sleep (Alic & Nienstedt, 2013). Sleep deprivation is a rising problem in college students today. 50% of college students report being sleepy on the day-to-day basis (Causes and Consequences, 2014). The average adult is supposed to be getting seven to eight hours of sleep a night, while teenagers are recommended nine hours of sleep a night (Alic & Nienstedt, 2013). There are many causes of sleep deprivation which affects attention performance, learning and memory, mental health, and has several effects that can be prevented.

Sleep deprivation has been a real problem for me for the past several years of my life. My sleep schedule has gotten terrible, where I end up sleeping well into the night and waking up utterly exhausted. Fed up with my self-insolence, I decided to focus on this problem for my project. Throughout the semester, by delving into the intricacies of this problem, I have discovered a great deal about sleep deprivation and how it relates to me. In this project, I documented how my problem has progressed, how I went about attempting to solve the problem, and the results of my methodologies in solving my sleep deprivation.

To understand the sleep rhythms, physiology and it's effects on our body. We need to base that on scientific foundation such as in this research.

This theory is also known as the evolutionary theory or the adaptive theory of sleep and is one of the earliest theories that arose. The simplest explanation of the theory is that energy demand and expenditure is decreased during sleep due to sleep being such an inactive ‘activity.’ Endotherms use much of their energy for homeostatic purposes, especially for regulating their core body temperature. The theory that we sleep in order to conserve energy came from the observation that our core body temperature decreases by 1 degree during sleep resulting in reduced metabolic energy cost. This hypothesis was supported by the observations that smaller animals with higher metabolic rates slept for longer periods of time than larger animals with lower metabolic rates and ectotherms (such as reptiles) that do not need to maintain their core body temperature, slept less than endotherms.

Sleep is the mysterious shift in consciousness that our bodies require every day (sleep council). Sleep scientists have explored these changes in depth, & their definition of sleep is tied to characteristic patterns of brain waves & other physiological functions (Harvard, 2008).

According the the website the Gallup “Medical studies have related a lack of sleep to health problems and cognitive impairment. Therefore, experts typically recommend seven to nine hours sleep for adults. Currently, 59% of U.S. adults meet that standard, but in 1942, 84% did. That means four in 10 Americans get less than the recommended amount of nightly sleep, compared with the 11% who did so 70 years ago.” One may feel like sleep deprivation effects just their mood, but it can also affect their mind and their physical performance.

Everyone has had a time in their life when they felt a little sleep deprived; there was a time in their life when they felt more tired than usual. It was either just a busy work week, or one night accidentally stayed up a few hours longer, but college students bring a new meaning to sleep deprivation. We are reported to be the highest number of sleep deprived people. Sleep deprivation comes in two stages: chronic and acute, whichever category, both come with extreme side-effects. The effects of chronic sleep deprivation form long-lasting symptoms and can lower your body’s natural defense system. One of the more obvious signs of sleep deprivation is yawning and increased irritability. As well as the obvious signs, chronic sleep deprivation has been linked to parts of the brain that decreases coordination and decision-making abilities. How many times have we reached a stage of exhaustion and called it “slap happy?” For the other stage of sleep deprivation, acute deprivation is more noticeable as it shows through appearance. Skin can start showing signs of hypoxia, which is when not enough oxygen is reaching the surface of the skin. Sleep deprived people’s skin can appear to be a pale, dull grey color. It is almost expected of college students to be sleep deprived and barely getting five hours a sleep a night. It is true, college students are almost walking zombies during the week. With the balance between classes, social life, working out, extra activities, and those that are