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Teenagers grow more and more busy by the minute. Unfortunately, this means less and less sleep. Sleep deprivation can cause many serious negative side effects to teenagers already harried lives. These side effects can range from such common problems as sleepiness during the day to more serious problems such as headaches, to the most extreme effect of all death.
Misdiagnosed or undiagnosed, sleep deprivation is one of the hardest disorders to detect. Truthfully, the only way to correct it is by always getting sufficient sleep, but the environment in which an adolescent exists often makes to quest for sufficient sleep impossible. Sufficient sleep is defined as the amount necessary to permit optimal daytime functioning. (Dahl, 1) Some studies suggest adolescents need at least eight hours of consecutive sleep, but many indicate that 9. 2 hours of sleep is truly needed. But the average teenager only sleeps about six hours on any given school night.
And students at private schools generally sleep even less. Some students in upper level courses who are also involved in many extracurricular activities sleep as little as two hours a night many times during the week, if at all. (Sinnott) Private school students are preparing for the college world, but not even college demands only two hours of sleep per night. Sleep deprivation has many impacts on a teenagers life. These impacts are generally described in four categories: sleepiness; tiredness; negative effects on mood, attention, and behavior; and exaggerated impact on problems, both emotionally and behaviorally.
These categories are only the first layer of an extremely complex disorder, a disorder in which it is difficult to identify actions, reactions, and causes. The first category, sleepiness, is often attributed with brief mental lapses in which a student in school appears to be awake, but actually is mentally asleep, also know as daydreaming. Sleepiness can actually progress to the next step, where the student may actually, physically fall sleep. These micro sleeps (Freyer, 2) not only decrease a students school performance, but can lead to motor vehicle accidents. It is estimated that more than 200, 000 motor vehicle accidents that occur each year are caused by or are related to drowsy drivers at the wheel.
Sleepiness also creates difficulties in getting up on time, which further manifests conflicts with parents and teachers. (Falling asleep in class does not generally endear students to their teachers. ) The second category, tiredness, is a feeling of fatigue or decreased motivation. Tiredness makes tedious tasks more difficult to accomplish and even begin. The more sleep deprived a student, the less motivated (s) he becomes. Tiredness is less evident while performing exciting energetic, fun activities, but conversely it is extremely obvious in tasks deemed boring or repetitious. Tiredness is most problematic when attempting long-term goals, such as reading or studying uninteresting topics, when there is not an immediate consequence, such as a test, at hand. In these cases, motivation, is not only decreased, but often, simply, does not exist.
The third category involves the impact the lack of sleep can have on the ability to control attention, mood, and behavior. Generally, teenagers are already moody and easily frustrated due to the changes in hormone levels due to puberty. Add lack of sleep to that equation and the same teenager may seem overly excited, impulsive, or silly. They also may become angry, destructive, or abusive.
Or they may be incredibly forgetful, passive and withdrawn, or overly emotional. Basically, reactions vary from teenager to teenager, but one constant is that the more sleep deprived a teenager becomes the more likely s (he) is to be at odds with teachers or parents. This leads to the fourth category: impact of sleep deprivation on problems of teenagers, such as those caused by life or family. Emotional problems can create difficulties in getting to sleep and waking on time, which leads to conflicts. The impact from these conflicts is greater because of the lack of sleep.
For example, if faced with a frustrating task, a sleep-deprived teenager is more likely to become angry or aggressive. And with the added social pressures on teenagers today such as drugs, violence, divorce, peer pressure the likelihood of anger increases exponentially. With the divorce rate growing in this country teenagers are enduring greater family chaos in the home, which only adds to the already highly stressful life. Sleep deprivation can cause many other disorders in teenagers while they are adolescents and later in life. Often teenagers need to be alert and awake for longer periods of time than their bodies will allow.
The most obvious and easily accessible cure is caffeine. This wonder drug enables many teenagers that extra boost to finish an essay late at night or wake up for a seven am lecture. Unfortunately, caffeine is not just an aid to a teenagers hectic schedule. This drug greatly harms growing minds and bodies. Sleep deprivation can cause headaches, some minor, others as drastic as migraines. Adding caffeine to this, teenagers endure many headaches lasting entire days.
Some studies have found that lack of sleep actually inhibits the ability to perform daily metabolic functions. Some metabolic functions include processing and storing carbohydrates, which are one of the main sources of energy for the body. Because carbohydrates are not being processed, teenagers are not storing the correct type of energy producer, thus relying on caffeine to replace it. Caffeine can cause other side effects such as withdrawal headaches because it is an addictive drug. And that is a major societal problem.
Sleep deprivation, in teenagers, is spawning addictions. Not only addictions to something as relatively minor as caffeine, but to more serious substances. Once a body has been exposed to compromising effects of addiction, it is more susceptible to other addictions. Other addictions also are more prominent in sleep deprived teenagers. Cigarettes, become popular, and the nicotine, an extremely addictive drug, can have a similar effect on the sleep pattern of a teenager as caffeine. And some symptoms of caffeine addiction such as jitterynesscan actually be symptoms of often misdiagnosed conditions such as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, Attention Deficit Disorder, and Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, to name a few.
Sleep deprivation is one of the most misdiagnosed illnesses in teenagers. Chronic Fatigue Syndrome, which can last a lifetime, is extremely similar to simple lack of sleep, although sleep deprived students will fall asleep at any opportunity, where as Chronic Fatigue Syndrome patients will only be groggy, and in physical pain all day. Also ADD and ADHD can be misdiagnosed. Its medication, Ritalin, is one of the worlds most overly prescribed drugs. The symptoms are sometimes identical ADD patients are often withdrawn, and ADHD patients are hyperactive the reaction to medication is also the same. Hyperactivity is caused by lack of sleep.
Periodic Limb Movement during sleep causes the body to fidget during sleep, which releases energy; however, when sleep is deprived the Periodic Limb movement does not occur until the day, making it appear to be hyperactivity. With all of these disruptions to teenagers sleep patterns and a country full of sleep deprived teenagers, many school districts around the country have been taking steps towards moving high school openings to, at the latest, 10: 30 AM. This would be made possible by a proposed $ 25, 000 grant from the United States government (a bill was introduced by US Representative Zoe Lofgran, D-CA) to any district wanting to rearrange high school schedules. Without this grant, most school districts could not even begin to discuss rearrangement because of costs. Many districts, opponents of the bill point out, share busses between the high schools, junior highs, and elementary schools.
But, ironically, high schools start the earliest. The problem is that teenagers simply cannot wake-up that early without enduring health problems. Melatonin is one reason. Melatonin is a hormone which induces sleep and which tells the body when to go to sleep.
But in teenagers, the melatonin does not appear until 10: 30 - 11: 30 PM. Teenagers, because of this later surge of melatonin, cannot fall asleep until later in the evening, thus making it more difficult to get up for early classes. Although a later start to school means a later wake-up, it also means a later start to extracurricular activities, which means students get home and start their homework even later, which means they go to bed later. And that is a good thing.
Even if students get the same amount of sleep as with the original school day schedule, they would be better off. Students need to go to sleep later and wake later. This is because of the time of secretion of sleep inducing hormones. Rearrangement of schedules has been successful in some school districts in Minnesota.
Specifically, The high school start bell, at Edina High School, has been pushed back by 65 minutes, and teachers claim that there has been a great (positive) difference in the students since the change. (Lamberg, 1) Also, if teenagers are allowed to wake later during the school week, then staying up late and sleeping in later during the weekend will not cause a difference in their sleeping pattern. Changing sleep patterns of teenagers would have multiple lasting benefits. In general, the negative aspect symptoms anger, forgetfulness, withdrawal, aggression, confrontations, and drastic emotional catharsis would be reduced, if not eliminated. A great improvement, as seen in Edina, would occur in the school performance of a teenager.
Also, it can rule out misdiagnosed conditions like CFS, ADHD, and ADD. It can also reduce to vulnerability to addictions to caffeine, and nicotine, and many others. The final and greatest change would occur in the viscous cycle caused by sleep deprivation. For the more sleep deprived, the more susceptible to emotional distress, which causes more confrontations, which leads to later bed times which also causes even more confrontations, and so on and so on. Teenagers need to be given the possibility to change their life patterns in order to change their sleep patterns, until then, the cycle continues. Bibliography: Works Cited Abnormal Sleep Patterns Often Undiagnosed in Teenagers.
AORN Journal. December 1998 v 68 i 6 p 1018. Bates, Betsy. Chronic Fatigue? Teens May Just Be Sleep Deprived.
Family Practice News. August 1, 1999 v 29 i 15 p 32. Dahl, Ronald. The Consequences of Insufficient Sleep For Adolescents Links Between Sleep and Emotional Regulation. Phi Delta Kappa. January 1999 v 80 i 5 p 354 Eason, Nancy H.
Is Sleep A Problem For You? Current Health. January 2, 1997 v 23 n 5 p 28 Freyer, Felice J. Many Teens Are Severely Sleep-deprived, Professor Says. Knight-Ridder/Tribune News Service.
August 11, 1998 p 811 k 1014 Holden, Constance. Science. Washington July 3, 1998 v 281 p 39 Lack of Sleep in Young Adults Can Cause Health Problems Typical of Aging. Jet November 22, 1999 v 96 i 25 p 29 Lamberg, Lynne. Some Schools Agree to Let Sleeping Teens Lie. The Journal of the American Medical Association.
September 18, 1996 v 276 n 11 p 859 Lamberg, Lynne. Teens Arent Lying They Really Need to Sleep Later. American Medical News. December 5, 1994 v 45 p 24 Martin, Cate.
Dozing at Your Desk? Doctors Say Teens Need More Sleep and School Should Start Later! Science World. March 8, 1996 v 52 n 11 p 9 Research Finds High School Students May Get Better Grades If They Get More Sleep.
Jet. October 11, 1999 v 96 i 19 p 24
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Research essay sample on Hours Of Sleep Sleep Deprivation
