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Overgeneralization Of Sleep

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Sleep is undeniably a necessity for humans and other animals alike. At the beginning of each day, our bodies awake like clockwork in conjunction with the rising sun. Then, at day’s end, they begin to wind down into sleep until the morning. While there certainly may be plenty of mysteries revolving sleep that have yet to been unraveled, from all the way up until now and for centuries to come, it is evident that sleep should hold priority in the schedules of all people. Yet, despite all of this being true, sleep is consistently being taken for granted. And, it is not an overgeneralization to say that many people have, at least once, trudged through a late night as many people have. Even to the point of the night no longer being considered “a …show more content…

Based on the latest update on the National Sleep Foundation’s sleep time duration recommendation, seven to nine hours of sleep for young adults and adults represent the standard amount of sleep for healthy individuals.(Hirshkowitz et al., 2015) To be fair however, it comes as no surprise to most people, as it has, for many years, have been sleeping around those hours before. Be that as it may, it helps to bring into light why in recent years, more and more people are getting less sleep than they used to. As observed previously, it should not, and is not challenging to find evidence of people reportedly lacking sufficient sleep. In reference to a poll made by the National Sleep Foundation, approximately 39% of people living in Great Britain, 53% of Americans, and 66% of Japanese all report sleeping fewer than seven hours on an average work night. This is reason for concern evidently as any sleep times far below of the seven to nine hour time range most typically indicate signs or symptoms of more severe physical health problems. In particular, recent studies have been providing evidence that correlates the lack of adequate sleep with increased risk of health problems such as: type 2 diabetes, child- and adulthood obesity, cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and a higher risk of mortality to top it …show more content…

Day by day, if one were to consistently voluntarily restrict their sleeping hours, he or she would gradually build up what is referred to as “sleep debt”. Sleep debt defines the cumulative effect of reduced sleep hours. (Dinges et al., 1997) The more and more the sleep debt grows from not getting a single good night’s rest, the more moody, irritable, and incoherent a person can get. While there are no limits to the extent of how moody, irritable, and incoherent someone can become, there gets to a certain point where a person’s awareness of how tired or sleepy he or she is goes down. In addition to that, increased sleep debt has also resulted in a decrease in the responsiveness of cognitive brain functions. This phenomena is what is being described and what occurred in the introductory anecdote above. It was not because of the body genuinely feeling less tired and drowsy more so was it that the awareness of the hypothetical person to recognize how tired he/she was has gone down. In reality, it will take more than a few hours to fully recover from sleep deprivation. Based on a study focusing on the effects of cumulative sleep debt, a sample size of 16 adults were chosen and were forced to sleep approximately 5 hours each night, well under the recommended average. (Dinges et al., 1997) The results of this study show that there is

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