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How Can Lack of Sleep Affect the Body According to scientists, over 70 million Americans, 25 % are children; suffer from some kind of sleeping disorder. Sleeping pill prescriptions filled in 1997 totaled $ 14 million, over the counter pills totaled $ 33 million in grocery stores alone. The number of sleep clinics has also risen from three in 1977 to 337 in 1997. Such tendencies worry many doctors and pharmacists about the sleeping habits of Americans and the effects of sleep loss as a result.
There is four main effects of sleep loss: sleepiness, motivational aspects of tiredness, emotional changes, and alterations in attention and performance. These symptoms are often misdiagnosed in adolescents as chemical imbalances, leading them over medicated, scared, and not helped by many doctors who treat them. The effects of sleep loss and stress in adolescents can create these symptoms during and after puberty, even effecting their neurological development. Adolescents suffer from much stress causing sleep deprivation.
Despite the many symptoms of sleep deprivation, the most important sign of sleep loss is its influences on the effort of individual activities. Many Americans drink coffee to get that early morning energy needed to start work, but are actually covering up the universal symptom of sleep deprivation induced through the social pressures to work harder and longer while sleeping even less. Americans are cheating themselves at least one hour of sleep per day, says Dr. Alex Clerk, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Stanford University in Stanford, CA. He also adds, Lack of sleep can interfere with a persons natural immune system, making overworked or under slept individuals more likely to catch colds and other sicknesses. "Our society and economy encourage a 24 -hour existence. Were biologically stretched, " says Gary Zammit author of Good Nights, a book on sleep deprivation.
He also adds, "People dont realize they can go longer without food and water than without sleep", another indication that Americans are uneducated about the importance of a good nights sleep. Sleepiness is the most noticeable and direct effect of not enough sleep, and is most noticeable during periods of low stimulation or repeating activities. Highly stimulating activities can hide sleepiness, which is kind of the reason why people who stay out late are often not tired the next day. Mental lapses or micro-sleeps can also result from sleepiness, leaving gaps in response and awareness.
These can have bad consequences, especially if they happen when a person is driving or operating machinery. Sleepiness in adolescents can create problems when parents are fed up over the childs difficulty to awaken or stay awake at school. Sleepiness can lead to the increased use of stimulants and synergistic effects of alcohol. Another symptom of sleep loss is tiredness, where a person is fatigued. When a person experiences tiredness, they have problems displaying certain types of behavior. The effects of tiredness are more noticeable in motivational problems.
Sleep loss can create emotional changes. Sleep deprivation appears to be highly different across individuals and across situations. Emotion and behaviors are very hard to measure accurately, and there are bi-directional interactions between mood and sleep disturbances. The majority of emotional changes after sleep loss seem to provide less ability to control emotional responses. This lack of control would affect the persons ability to live up to their goals, rules, or other principles.
Sleep loss can also create changes in attention and performance. Sleep deprivation has been shown to be associated with short mental lapses in attention during easy problems that can be partially offset by increased effort or motivation. Its symptoms such as destructibility, impulsivity, and difficulty with control of attention are the same as the symptoms of attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder. Sleep deprivation studies report on how sleep loss greatly influences the ability to carry out problems that require attention in two or more areas at the same time. These effects of sleep loss can have consequences for people who are employed to work while their bodies light-activated circadian rhythms tell them to sleep. Some companies are looking into specially designed lighting systems to keep workers awake and alert.
This technique has been used by NASA astronauts and nuclear power plant workers. The American Sleep Disorders Association and Sleep Research Society studies suggest that most adults would sleep longer and several times a day if they could. This research showed that sleep deprivation most strongly affects the areas of the brain that deal with attention, alertness, short-term memory, calculation, sensory processing, and reasoning and problem solving. Non-rapid eye movements were shown to selectively help the brain areas associated with complex mental operations recuperate. Representative Zoe Login has proposed to provide a federal grant up to $ 25, 000 to aid in the cost for high schools that want to delay their start times to after 9: 00 a.
m. This proposal is based on research showing that high school students arent getting enough sleep, which harms their academic performance. Teenagers generally need nine hours of sleep, but many sleep less than seven hours since they need to get to school at 7: 30 or earlier and due to biological reasons, they cannot fall asleep before 11: 00 p. m. It is believed that puberty changes the bodys sleep cycle causing alertness at night and sleepiness in the morning due to the release of melatonin. Researchers in Italy studied people with untreated high blood pressure.
When they experienced sleep deprivation, their blood pressures and heart rates were higher in the morning than when they slept undisturbed all through the night. These findings show that a lack of sleep could possibly lead to heart attacks or strokes the mornings after sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is obviously harmful to our health. It can lead to serious long-term effects such as reduced immunity, reduced mental capacity, reduced fat metabolism, depression, and accelerated aging. It is very important that people make sleeping a high priority in their lives. The correct amount of sleep can be obtained by avoiding caffeinated drinks, avoiding alcohol, drugs, going to bed and getting up at the same time every day, not taking worries to bed, practicing stress reduction, use bed for sleeping only, not watching TV or eating in bed, exercising regularly but not just before going to bed, and eliminating tobacco use.
Bibliography: Dahl, R. E. The Consequences of Insufficient Sleep for Adolescents Links Between Sleep and Emotional Regulation. Phi Delta Kappa, 1999.
Fisher, Anna. Personal Interview on Effect of Sleep Deprivation. 24 July 1999. Grade Schoolers Grow Into Sleep Loss. Science News 20 May 2000: Science News of The week. Kranz, Cindy. Wake Up, Sleepy Teen: Adolescents Arent Getting the Nine Hours of Sleep.
Cincinnati Enquirer 28 October 1999. Martin, Gary J. M. D. All New Family Medical Guide to Health and Prevention Lincolnwood, Illinois: Publications International, 1995. Peters Principles on Health, Fitness, and Lifestyle, web Risks of sleep deprivation.
Body Bulletin 1999: 2. Sleep. The New Encyclopedia of Britannica. 1981.
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