Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can have serious consequences, it can affect not only your physical health but your metal health as well. Some implications of a largely sleep deprived society would be poor work performance, bad moods, and anger or depression. According to the webmd article “The Toll of Sleep Loss in America” it states that “Today, about 20% of Americans report that they get less than 6 hours of sleep on average.” (Davis, 2006). The human body should be getting at least 8 hours of sleep at night on average. Sleep Deprivation can also cause driving accidents because people are out on the road while tired.

sleep is essential for our health and wellbeing. It allows our body to rejuvenate and restore itself. It helps the body to create new cells. Sleep deprivation is one of the biggest causes of premature aging. Tiredness can significantly affect your mood and how you feel. Sleep can help lower blood pressure and elevated levels of stress hormones. Your cardiovascular system is constantly under pressure and sleep helps to reduce the levels of stress and inflammation in your body. High levels of "inflammatory markers" are linked to heart disease and strokes. Sleep can also help keep blood pressure and cholesterol levels (which

Audience Relevance: Many of us are college students and young adults who are lacking sleep each night. It is not healthy to receive less than the amount we are supposed to each night. Each night, we are supposed to be getting 7 to 9 hours of sleep.

The current average amount of sleep every night is about 6.8 hours, when in 1942, the average was 8 hours (Friedman). “Teens need about 8 to 10 hours of sleep each night to function best. Most teens do not get enough sleep.” (Teens and Sleep). One good thing that would be that all the negative parts of sleep deprivation would be an opposite of what would happen if a student were to sleep enough.

Sleep deprivation has a lot of dangers associated with it. It can cause hypertension and, because of something commonly called Sleep Debt, it sometimes causes dangerous driving conditions. Sleep debt is the amount of sleep a person has lost over time, and it must be paid back just like a money loan would need to be (Dement & Vaughan, p. 501). Christopher Dement explains (1999), “Regardless of how rapidly it [sleep debt] can be paid back, the important thing is that the size of the sleep debt and its dengerous effects are definitely directly related to the amount of lost sleep” (p. 501). Risks for hypertension have also been linked to sleep deprivation because it can increase a person’s stress level. A study done by Dr. Susan Redline and published in the Science Journal Circulation on August 19, 2008 reports that:

Waking the sleeper momentarily so that he can start to breath properly again. The pattern repeats itself throughout the night and the heart has to work harder creating a rise in blood pressure. Left unchecked, the stress sleep apnea will place on the heart and the increased blood pressure can lead to serious heart disease, stroke or even heart failure. Often sleep apnea sufferers are not aware that they wake up and go back to sleep.

There is a high occurrence of apnea in patients with hypertension resistant to medication. The intermittent hypoxia seen in sleep apnea causes an increase blood pressure. A decrease in daytime blood pressure is seen in those sleep apnea patients being treated with CPAP, making CPAP favorable for sleep apnea patients with hypertension. This increased blood pressure can also lead to the deterioration of left ventricular function. The presence of sleep apnea yielded a two times greater likelihood of having heart failure. Apnea causes changes in cardiac sympathetic and parasympathetic activities as well as “interthoracic pressure changes that deform and alter the size of the cardiac chambers.”1 These changes are seen as cardiac arrhythmias. Bradycardia is the most common arrhythmia seen in obstructive sleep apnea patients because there is an increase in vagal tone during apnea. Hypertension and heart arrhythmias associated with sleep apnea could lead to the development of a cerebrovascular disease. It is for this reason stroke is a risk factor of untreated sleep apnea.2 There has been a proven relationship between obstructive sleep apnea and diabetes because of the common links between the two such as obesity and hypertension. Recent research has indicated that obstructive sleep apnea impairs glucose homeostasis, independent of obesity. Obstructive sleep apnea can activate the sympathetic

Sleep Apnea is a disorder in which one may have one or more pauses in breathing or shallow breaths while sleeping. It is a breathing disorder that is quite common amongst people with cardiovascular disease. Observational studies have demonstrated a correlation between obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) and the risk of hypertension. There are factors that have been reported that show prevalence of an increase risk for sleep apnea, such as weight, age and gender. Most people who have sleep apnea are not aware of it because it only occurs during sleep. It can affect physiological events of the body, which in turn can influence ones blood pressure.

During night sleep, the mean of blood pressure have a decrease of 10-20% compared to the one in daytime. Sleep plays a main part of circadian blood pressure variations with lowest BP during slow-wave sleep (SWS) and relatively higher BP during light and rapid eye movement (REM) sleep.

Most cases of sleep apnea are linked to stress, but the stress in sleep apnea can also lead to other medical problems such as an increased risk for cardiovascular consequences. It has been tested and proven that smoking and diabetes were also a large factor in the disorder of sleep apnea (Simiakakis M et al., 2012). Some studies have shown differences between cardiovascular disease and stress (Greenlund et al. 1995; Riese et al. 2000; Heslop et al. 2002a,b; Belkic et al. 2004). It is a terrifying fear to think that so many medical diseases can lead to the cause of a sleep disorder. It’s like most of the time with people one part of their body messes up, and it leads to something else. It’s an eye opener to realize that this sleep disorder can be caused by many health related problems, and not just stress.

What do the effects of sleep deprivation have on people? When a person does not get enough sleep, he or she is depriving his or her body of something that it needs. A delightful sleep is one of the most satisfying human experiences with a role to play in supporting a good mood and cognitive acuity as well as in promoting physiologic balance and resilience (Chittora, Jain and Suhalka). People think because they get an insufficient number of hours of sleep, they will not have an emotional impact by it. Sleep is a required need for peoples’ day to day life to be able to perform and stay healthy emotionally and physically. The effects of sleep deprivation are an issue because it affects mood, performance, and health.

Lack of enough sleep contributes to cardiovascular diseases; persons who take less time sleeping have a better chance of getting cardiovascular illness.

Not getting enough oxygen may damage the lining of the blood vessel walls, which may make your blood vessels less effective in regulating your blood pressure. In addition, sleep apnea causes part of the nervous system to be overactive and release certain chemicals that increase blood pressure.

This study was an experimental one. Researchers modified the sleep of an experimental group and a control group. After two baseline nights of 8 hours in bed, it was then restricted to 4 hours per night for five nights, followed by three recovery nights of 8 hours, representing a busy workweek and a recovery weekend. The control group had 8 hours in bed throughout the experiment. Cardiovascular readings were taken for both groups. There were 15

Being well rested can mean a lot of good things come to your body but what happens when you aren’t well rested or maybe have too much sleep? Stress can affect a person’s sleep state by using the extra energy that must keep them awake at night. The more stress, the sleep a person will receive this can lead to a form of