The Impact Of Sleep Deprivation On The Greater Community

In the United States 40% of car accidents are linked to lack of sleep (Souza). Sleep deprivation is a serious problem; people do not seem to care about or pay attention too. Everyone needs sleep; it is the mind and body’s natural way of restoring itself from a day’s work. There are four stages of sleep and according to The Better Sleep Council the first stage is when the mind is relaxing, and the eyes close. It is easy to wake someone during this stage, and people often feel like they are falling and suddenly jump. The second stage is when the heart rate is slowing down, and the body prepares to enter a deep sleep. Stage three is becoming more immersed in a deep sleep, approaching stage four, which is the most important. Stage four is

Universal to every human from birth to death, sleep is a necessary function to survival, productivity, and happiness. While most fall asleep at night with ease, it is estimated that 50-70 million Americans battle sleep or wakefulness disorders. Although sleep disorders do not immediately present with a threat comparable to other common disorders such as depression, bipolar, or schizophrenia, sleep disorders prove very disruptive to one’s quality of life. Insufficient sleep may result in difficulty concentrating, difficulty with memory, trouble with personal care such as hygiene, driving, or managing finances, and poor performance in the workplace. While there is a wide array of sleep related illnesses that may plague any given individual,

Success in life is typically measured by the result of what is accomplished during the waking hours. The degree of effectiveness of those hours however, depend on effective rest. “Sleep is integral to the health and well-being of all people” (Wells 233). Sleep is simply defined as the body’s rest cycle – a time to recharge. The widely accepted metric for normal or sufficient sleep is about 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep. When this metric is not met, either through total sleep loss or accumulated sleep debt, the effect can be dire, “Sleep deprivation results in poor memorizing, schematic thinking, which yields wrong decisions, and emotional disturbances such as deteriorated interpersonal responses and increased aggressiveness” (Orzeł-Gryglewska 95). Sleep deprivation hinders the abilities of the mind, harms the body, and shortens length of life.

Sleep as a whole is an extremely critical factor to human health , especially the well-being of full-time students’ due to today’s growingly time-consuming education system. Sleep plays an essential role in mental and physical health, as well as overall well-being. It is clear that sleep is crucial, however, who has the time for the recommended 8 hours of sleep a night, as a minimum? Full-time students especially are at high-risk for sleep deprivation – which has very damaging consequences. These consequences range from weight gain, memory issues, high blood pressure, poor balance and much more. A review of 16 studies have even shown that sleeping for less than 6-8 hours a night increases the risk of early death by about 12%. This information

Being a full time student and avid participant in the community, sleep usually falls by the wayside as the struggle to maintain a healthy balance of activities and work continues. Sleep deprivation can actually be very devastating, having a huge affects on work ethic and focus. Sleep deprivation is “the condition of being robbed of sleep,” according to Dictionary.com. “A chronic sleep-restricted state can cause fatigue, daytime sleepiness, clumsiness, weight loss or weight gain,” giving it a substantial impact on how one functions on a day-to-day basis (Wikipedia).

According to the National Sleep Foundation, 45% of Americans report that poor or insufficient sleep, at least one day each week or more, affects their day-to-day lives. Poor sleep not only makes us feel tired and sluggish, it can also affect our mood, relationships, health, and even our job performance. If that wasn’t enough, your personal risk of injury and accidents – at home, on the road, and at work – sharply increases with poor sleep patterns. It’s easy to see how lack of good sleep is quickly becoming a true health crisis in America.

Sleep deprivation is a worldwide epidemic. The increasingly rapid pace of society and round-the-clock access to technology are two factors that play a central role in sleep deprivation (Centers for Disease Control, 2015). Short-term effects of temporary sleep disturbance are typically limited, associated with only minor physiological consequences. However, long-term sleep deprivation (i.e., more than 24 hours) is associated with many harmful consequences (Meerlo, Mistlberger, Jacobs, Heller, & McGinty, 2009). Meerlo et al. (2009) found that sleep disruption leads to reduced neurological functioning, which can have a devastating impact on learning, concentration, and memory. It also increases susceptibility to neurological disorders such as

Medical ethics have served as a strong protective force for human participants in biomedical and behavioral experimentation. Unless they are utilized, human participants are at risk of being injured or even dying. In the United States today, these ethics and processes to get an experiment approved are crucial to avoiding the re-occurrence of inhumane experimentation. A current example of a breach of medical ethics is occurring in a research study lead by iCOMPARE regarding the effects of sleep deprivation of patient mortality rates when resident medical nurses are overtired. Professor of epidemiology and population health, Ruth Macklin explains, “According to the study protocol, the primary hypothesis of the research… assumes that 30-day patient

All of us are so less bothered about the fact that our sleep, and also its pattern, is getting affected due to increased stress levels of our daily life, and jam-packed schedules. Getting adequate sleep is almost becoming a luxury, rather than a necessity. Remaining awake till late night is becoming a habit – especially of the younger generation today - though even young parents are quite happy in remaining busy with their social network’s updates. From the well recommended standards of approximately 8 hours of sound sleep for an adult, the trend is alarmingly dropping to about 5-6 hours a day. Sleep is no longer on our priority list. This sleep deprivation is adversely affecting our overall health and life.

This issue is significant to public health because insufficient sleep leads to individual health risks that affect the community. Lack of sleep has contributed to dangerous outcomes such as industrial catastrophes, motor vehicle crashes, and other occupational errors. For example, driving among 1,039 undergraduate students, 16% reported falling asleep while driving and 2% had a motor vehicle accident due to sleepiness (Hershner & Chervin, 2014). Sleepiness is not only an issue towards college students but to anyone. Older adults, teenagers, and children can be affected by sleepiness and cause harm to not only themselves but others. For example, a surgeon may commit an error while performing a surgery or a lawyer missing out information for

Sleep is a necessity in which, its value has been undercut. People of all ages, from college students, to middle-aged adult, have experienced the effect of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation is has poisoned the positive affects sleep has on ones life. In order to challenge the effects of sleep deprivation and study its effect on me, I conducted an experiment designed by James B. Mass. This experiment was created in 1991 to help students determine if they were truly sleep deprived. Out of the 15 questions posed on the sleep quiz, I answered true to two of them. The first true statement was “ I need an alarm clock in order to wake up at the appropriate time. The second true statement was “I often fall asleep after heavy meals or after a low dose of alcohol.” Based on the results of Mass’s sleep assessment, I am not sleep deprived. Although the results were positive, I feel at times I get small doses of drowsiness and small burst of stress displayed throughout the week.

Sleep is one of our most basic physiological needs and getting enough of it is paramount to keeping our bodies and minds functioning at optimal performance. The amount of sleep needed varies and decreases by age. From 12-18 hours needed by a newborn to 7-9 hours needed by a health adult. The basal sleep need varies by individual with some people requiring more or less sleep than others (Czeisler 2014). When an individual does not get enough sleep they enter a state of sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation elicits a wide range of negative physiological effects, most notably sleep deprivation adversely effects cognition. Unfortunately insufficient sleep is a wide-spread phenomenon. A study by Hublin (2001) found sleep deficits in one fifth of

Sleep is as essential to the human body as food and water, but sometimes sleep quality and quantity is inadequate and this is known as sleep deprivation (SD). Sleep deprived people are sleepy and fatigued making them prone to accidents, impairing their judgement and they are more likely to make mistakes and bad decisions. Not sleeping for 24 hours reduces hand-to-eye coordination, which can be compared to having a blood alcohol content of 0.1 and contributes to road accidents and work injuries. A child’s school performance is negatively affected by the lack of sleep and may cause emotional problems such as depression. Sleep deprived adults suffer from lack concentration, irritability, sleep inertia and a grogginess that lasts

This unmanageable amount of stress is hurting people as the days go by, it’s becoming a serious problem unless we bring awareness to how important this issue truly is to people and help one another. To add to the effects of sleep deprivation, the individuals also appear extra-vulnerable to cardiovascular disease, hypertension, and depression, studies indicate. Particularly among the young, a sleep void can create a profound learning and behavior gap, researchers observed at the Feinberg School of Medicine at Northwestern University in Chicago. "I suspect that many people do not use their full brain capacities to learn and absorb information because of their chronic sleep deprivation," said psychologist Avi Sadeh of Tel Aviv University in Israel. Therefore, we need to

Sleep deprivation has recently become a reoccurring health topic. Students, doctors, educators, and workaholics all have questions about how much sleep they need, how to get more of it, and the bare minimum needed to survive. In the January/February 2017 issue of The Atlantic magazine, Dr. James Hamblin explores all of these sleep related questions in his article “How To Sleep”.