Why Do We Sleep?

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.

According to the Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School (2007), if one does not receive an adequate amount of sleep one may become sleep deprived, one’s health may decline, the immune system may be compromised, and the ability to learn or complete tasks may become impaired. The question evoked from this necessity is, why do we sleep? Psychologists typically take two stances concerning this controversy: an adaptive stance or a restorative stance. While psychologists are still not certain on the answer, both the restorative and adaptive approaches have strong evidence of truth and actuality. Supporters of the adaptive theory of sleep believe that sleep is a result of evolution (Ciccarelli, 2015, p. 141).

“Why do we sleep?” is a very popular questions that many humans ask today. Sleep is very sufficient to the human body. If it was not important, then God would not have designed for a third of our life to be occupied by sleep. During this time period, many people are interested to know what is a good amount of sleep and what are the harmful effects to not getting enough sleep.

According to the “National Sleep Foundation”, it is said,”The relationship between sleep and depressive illness is complex – depression may cause sleep problems and sleep problems may cause or contribute to depressive disorders. For some people, symptoms of depression occur before the onset of sleep problems. For others, sleep problems appear first. Sleep problems and depression may also share risk factors and biological features and the two conditions may respond to some of the same treatment strategies. Sleep problems are also associated with more severe depressive illness,”. This means that while we might not make this mental connection, not getting a propers night of sleep could have a grave effect on your mental health. But, lets say we pushed school back an hour or so, that means an additional hour of sleep and a chance for teenager’s temperaments to increase and level

Sleep is an important part of life, which has a broad effect on your quality of your life. If you are not able to get enough sleep some common effects are looking bad, feeling moody which might lead to fights or arguments with others, and performing poorly at school or just generally in life. An example could be while driving, if you’re sleepy you’re more prone to get into a crash, which of course isn’t good. Some other effects of lack of sleep are being more prone to injury, sickness, stress, acne and gaining weight. Furthermore, you might develop sleeping disorders, such as narcolepsy, insomnia or sleep apnea. Altogether, sleep is essential

Despite the unanswered questions and the unknown factors behind sleep and dreams, there are many theories behind their purposes. Many popular sleep theories have to do with keeping out body and mind in top shape. Some examples of sleep theories are: protection, recuperation, memory restoration, and growth. (Myers, 2014) All of these theories are beneficial to the body and its functionality. The protection theory assumes that the feeling of sleep kicks in when it is dark or dangerous out and danger is more prevalent.

Although indisputable dreaming still leaves us a mystery because NO ONE knows what the purpose of it is. Aside from the obvious understanding sleep and its stages it is very important to understand the inner workings and their effect on the brain and body.

People often forget that rest is very important for mental stability. Keeping a consistent sleep schedule can influence your emotions and attitude towards others and cause a chemical imbalance resulting in drastic mood swings. Your attitude is how people perceive you and can affect both personal and professional relationships.

There have been reports which have said sleep deprivation not only increases sleepiness but it also accelerates deterioration of mood (Kaida and Niki). Sleep and mood are closely connected; poor or inadequate sleep can be the source of irritability and anxiety, while healthy sleep can enhance well-being (Sleep and Mood). Therefore, sleep is crucial to have a pleasant mood and outlook on life on a daily basis. The typical adult requires about seven to eight hours of sleep for each night to have good well-being. University of Pennsylvania researchers found that subjects who were restricted to only four and a half hours of sleep a night for one week reported feeling more stressed, angry, sad, and mentally exhausted (Sleep and Mood). Furthermore, college students who

Why some of us sleep in? The very reason why some are over sleeping, it is because of sleep deprivation and because of that, they are so sleepy and they think that sleep in will retrieve the incomplete time of sleeps to recover. Over sleep in the morning or sleep in is mainly cause by series of sleepless nights, not enough, and not getting the real quality of sleep. Sleep deprivation affects our immune system like stress. The immune system is altered in similar ways by lack of sleep and physical stress, resulting to a possible connection to chronic diseases like obesity and diabetes The reason why we should not sleep in later in the morning because this practice often decreasing and emptying the bucket of our hearth, as time goes by and that makes us feel unhealthy and unproductive and it somehow stops us to do less of our daily living tasks and our life duties, which are the things that always give us the good feeling of a successful completion of not only our living tasks to do, but life accomplishment duties to be done per se. Making up for inadequate sleeps by way of sleep in will result to a very serious health problem. So, it is best to change the habit of sleeping and it is still the best to do it at night because it’s the most perfect time to attain the quality and adequate sleep to make feel better to gain the essential benefit for the healthy heart, weight, mind and more.

Sleep can affect how anyone acts in a negative and very severe way if they don’t get enough of it at night. Lack of sleep most hugely affects teenagers in the society today, because the biological clocks of teenagers are reset during puberty so it’s normal to not be able to fall asleep early. School however starts early, so teenagers lose a lot of sleep and so teenagers are the most vulnerable to lack of sleep. “Lack of sleep has been linked in other studies to high cholesterol, obesity, and depression” (How Much Do Teenagers Sleep). Lack of sleep can cause some very serious problems if people don’t get enough sleep every night for a long period of time. However, lack of sleep can still affect people even if they don’t get enough sleep for one night. Even if anyone loses a couple hours of sleep in one night, the side effects and consequences can be severe. “When teens don’t get enough sleep it can affect their daily life, such as performance in school, how they treat their friends, and how they look and act” (DiLonardo). Lack of sleep is a huge problem in the current society americans

Sleep is very important to a human being’s health. The consequences of sleep manifest in both health and performance. The relationships between sleep and performance have been studied in many different fields including human science, medicine, psychology, education, and business and etc. Sleep-related variables for instance sleep deficiency, sleep quality, sleep habits have been shown to influence the performance of students (Lack, 1986; Mulgrew et al., 2007; National Sleep Foundation, 2008; Pilcher & Huffcutt, 1996; Rosekind et al., 2010). According to Weitzman et al. (1981) , Delayed Sleep Phase Syndrome (DSPS) was defined into three big categories which are long sleep latency on weekdays (normally fall asleep between 2 a.m. to 6 a.m.),

One of the most recognizable effects of sleep deprivation is the change of behavior. A college student that is not receiving the correct amount of sleep will become irritable. A restless students attitude may seem harsh to other people. This might make it hard for them to socialize with their classmates. A student that has not received the adequate amount of sleep may find everything and everyone to be obnoxious. A sleep-deprived student would prefer to spend time alone. While this may seem like a good idea to them at the time it may cause them to become depressed. Depression is common among people who do not get enough sleep.

Getting eight hours of sleep a day can improve mental focus while feeling tired can result in not having enough energy to concentrate on simple tasks. Also, not having enough sleep can result in unwanted mood changes. In the article “First Things First” Gretchen Rubin states “I’m cranky, so I sometimes pick a fight with Jamie by wildly overreacting to his failure to change a light bulb or answer an email. Going to sleep on time means that I spend less time awake in that depleted state” (60). This statement explains how sleep deprivation can create anger and frustration.

Firstly, we must ask ourselves the consequences of not getting enough sleep. There is the obvious first effect, which