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Sleep Essays

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Everyone wants to lie down in their beds at bedtime and effortlessly float away to a magical land of slumber, staying there until their alarm clock calls them back in the morning. For a lot of people, it’s just not that simple. Some people have a hard time falling asleep, but when they finally do, they stay asleep until their regular wake-up time. Others can easily fall asleep as soon as their head hits the pillow, but they wake up just as easily throughout the night. In both cases, this has a serious impact on a person’s overall quality of life.

Role and Significance of Sleep

It’s simple, sleep is an essential part of our lives, as it’s necessary for normal neurological and other physiologic functioning. Just as important as a healthy diet, a good night’s sleep reduces the risk of disease and weight gain in both children and adults. Though it may seem like people experience complete body and mind shutdown during sleep, this is not the case. The human body still works. Processing, restoration, and strengthening are occurring during this period, making sleep a crucial ingredient of a healthy life.

When people are awake, their brains absorb a lot of information. Processing and storing all this information happens during sleep. Memories are solidified and consolidated. They are transferred from short-term memory to long-term memory. After sleeping, people tend to retain information and improve their performance in memory-intense tasks.

In summary, people require adequate sleep for their bodies to restore and rejuvenate. Muscle growth, tissue repair, and hormone synthesis also depend on good sleep. Children need more sleep than adults because of their critical periods of growth and learning. Kids develop their language, social, and motor skills at a fast pace, making proper sleeping patterns essential for optimal development.

Healthy Sleep Patterns

There are recommended guidelines for each age group to get adequate sleep. Most adults aged 18 to 64 require seven to nine hours a night. Here are a few steps that will help you keep a healthy sleeping pattern:

  • Going to bed at the same time every night
  • Waking up at the same time in the morning
  • Maintaining the same schedule on weekends and holidays
  • Avoiding or limiting naps during the day
  • Avoiding caffeinated beverages after noon
  • Reading a book, meditating, or taking a warm bath an hour before bed
  • Staying away from heavy food two hours before bedtime
  • No television in the bedroom
  • Not using any smartphones, tablets, or computers before bed
  • Exercising on a regular basis, but not before going to bed

Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation can be extremely dangerous, especially since you can’t make up for the sleep you lose. Lack of sleep and poor sleeping habits can lead to accidents and injuries in the workplace. This is because sleep deprivation impairs cognitive processes like our attention span, focus, alertness, and problem-solving abilities. Healthy sleep habits have consistent bedtime routines to meet our sleep needs.

Insomnia is a sleeping disorder where a person has trouble falling and staying asleep. Many people suffering from insomnia also deal with health conditions like heart disease, high blood pressure, stroke, and diabetes. As people sleep, their brains form pathways between nerve cells that to remember what they have learned. Not getting enough sleep will cause the brain to be exhausted and not perform at optimum.

Mental health can be compromised too. Individuals may start to portray impulsive behavior, anxiety, depression, paranoia, and even suicidal thoughts. It even possible for sleep-deprived individuals to start having hallucinations, seeing and/or hearing things that are just not there. Some people can suffer a manic episode because of sleep deprivation, especially those dealing with conditions like bipolar disorder.

Nighttime breathing disorders like apnea can interrupt and lower the quality of your sleep. Waking up throughout the night causes sleep deprivation, leaving the individual vulnerable to respiratory infections like the flu and worsening existing respiratory diseases. Hormones leptin and ghrelin are affected by the quality of sleep. These two control hunger pangs and feeling full. Leptin tells your brain when you’ve had enough to eat. Lack of sleep reduces leptin and raises ghrelin, the hormone that stimulates appetite, causing night eating syndrome in severe cases.

Sleep-deprived individuals have higher levels of insulin, which is responsible for controlling blood sugar levels. Increased insulin promotes the storage of fat, preventing it from being converted into energy, as well as raising the risk of type II diabetes.

Recommendation

The best way to treat sleep deprivation is by simply getting more sleep. It’s not as easy as it sounds, especially if you’ve suffered for extended periods. Medical doctors and sleep specialists may need to diagnose and treat any possible sleep disorder.

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Sleep Anatomy: Stages, Rhythms And Effects. Sleep Deprivation And Disorders

While our sleeping habits have fallen behind in priority as a result of our fast-paced lifestyles, humanity must learn to hold adequate sleep to utmost importance in order to maintain peak physical and mental well-being, and to avoid the disastrous effects of deprivation. As the complexity of the sleep process is often overlooked, appreciating sleep means understanding the intricate biological workings behind it. The need for sleep is controlled by the body’s drive for homeostasis, making it just as important...
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Is the Amount of Sleep You’re Getting Enough?

You felt rested when you woke up this morning or the other day, but were you? You had breakfast this morning and your hunger was satisfied. Your brain needs its hunger satisfied too and you feed it when you sleep. Sleep deprivation is not good for you and can have many negative side effects. Skipping your sleep can be deadly as a driver and can really affect your performance at school, on the job, or anywhere else. Research shows that...
1 Page 440 Words

Types, Stages And Psychological Effects Of Sleep

Sleep is defined as unconsciousness from which the person can be aroused by sensory or other stimuli. It is to be distinguished from coma, which is unconsciousness from which the person cannot be aroused. There are multiple stages of sleep, from very light sleep to very deep sleep; sleep researchers also divide sleep into two entirely different types of sleep that have different qualities, as follows. the cortical activation necessary to maintain wakefulness is supported by an extensive network of...
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The Effects Of Sleep On Teenage Brain

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2 Pages 704 Words

A Discussion on Whether Sleep Disturbance can Cause Cognitive Decline

Sleep plays a crucial role in brain function and the systematic physiology of many-body systems. Difficulty with sleep has become widely prevalent, consisting of deficits in quantity and quality of sleep. Insomnia is a subtype, associated with difficulty falling asleep, waking up often during the night and having trouble going back to sleep. These sleep difficulties begin with short term sleep disturbances, but can eventually branch to sleep deprivation, which are the same symptoms on a long-term scale. Recent literature...
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Sleep Issues among College Students

Sleep is an important physiological need that every human beings and animals have, to keep the mind and body working well. We, the human, spent at least one in third of our lifetime sleeping. Research suggests and it is also well-known that sleeping plays a critical role in restoring our strength physically and mentally, and is closely related to our consciousness, memory and emotions. Studies through the decades have found that having good sleep or bad sleep will lead to...
2 Pages 720 Words

Sleep Deprivation: Effects on the Brain & Body

According to Amway connection this article speaks about how sleep deprivation affects your brain and body. In this article sleep deprivation is a health condition that occurs when a person does not get enough sleep. Our bodies need a certain amount of sleep to function. While we are sleeping, our bodies perform all kinds of repair and maintains our internal organs and our muscles. Sleep plays a role in maintaining the memory in our brains, helping us retain what we’ve...
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Sleep Quality and Associated Factors

Sleep is defined as a periodic, temporary unconscious state of cognitive, and sensory disconnection from the external stimuli. Sleep peririod has its unique behavioral, electroencephalography, and physiological properties that it consists of four to six 90 to 100 minutes period which is alternative fashion cyclic during NREM and REM sleep periods which is taken 7 to 8 total sleep hours(1). Human being existence is impossible without sleep at all the life. Maslow defined the sleep state in his Hierarchy model...
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Sleep And Its Absence: Mental And Physical Effects On The Body

DEFINITIONS OF SLEEP Lack of sleep is a general term to portray a state brought about by insufficient amount or nature of rest, including deliberate or automatic restlessness and circadian musicality rest issue. Rest is as imperative to the human body as nourishment and water, yet huge numbers of us don’t get enough rest. Deficient rest, lacking nature of rest or interruptions to the rest wake cycle, (for example, those that happen with move work or making a trip to...
4 Pages 1812 Words

The Association Between Hours of Sleep and Stress Levels among Undergraduate Students

Abstract Past research suggested that undergraduate students experience academic stress, and on top of that they have to manage sleep. This study was performed to see if there was a correlation between sleep and stress. Stress was split into seven items: family life, academics, relationships, finances, overall health, and the total impact on their daily lives. Sleep was split into two items: quality and quantity. Students were asked to measure their stress levels in the last two weeks, on a...
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Basic Perspectives On Motivation: Evaluating Three Perspectives For Understanding Sleep And Sleep Deprivation In Australian Adults

Abstract No one knows precisely what the main function of sleep serves, what we do know is that on average individuals sleep for a third of their life, equivalent to 25 years. Sleep plays an essential role in emotional and physical wellness. Some researchers believe that the role of sleep is to conserve energy as it lowers the body’s thermostat. Other researchers emphasise on the belief that sleep works as a restoration function, meaning sleep restores both body and mind...
2 Pages 1008 Words

The Correlation Of Yoga, Coffee, And Sleep

INTRO As our day progresses, our moods and behaviors change depending on the environment that we are in. In some cases our moods are even affected by the time of day it is, for at one time of day we are at our happiest, and others we are the complete opposite. The thing about moods in that they are able to fluctuate very easily, with a simple emotion or comment they can be changed for both the better and the...
3 Pages 1356 Words

The Importance of Sleep Throughout Development

Sleep is an important activity that children, adolescents, adults, and even animals need in order to partake in daily functions. While this may be common knowledge for some, the why, and the how sleep affects daily activities is considerably more complicated. Sleep is vital for our neurosensory system, motor system, memory system, and brain plasticity over a person’s lifespan. Boyson (2016) discovered through Penn & Shatz (1999) that not enough sleep, specifically REM can cause problems with all the senses,...
3 Pages 1435 Words

Why is Sleep Important? Essay

Introduction People nowadays seem to neglect their sleeping habits. There are various reasons for this, all different for everyone. Whatever the case is for you, the day to finally improve your sleeping habits has come. In this article you are going to find out why sleep is so important and what the magic techniques for getting good quality sleep are! Importance of Sleep Sleeping is equally as important as eating nourishing foods and exercising regularly. Without it, your body can’t...
3 Pages 1540 Words

Sleep: Will I Ever Get Enough?

Sleep, it seems like college students can never get enough of it. I am certainly not an exception to that. Even during my days in Elementary school, I could never get enough sleep. Every night I find myself getting less and less sleep. The older I got the worse this has gotten. The most amount of sleep I can remember getting is eight hours, and that was very early in my childhood. I would say probably around the age of...
2 Pages 964 Words

Influence Of Sleep Patterns On Wellbeing

Introduction Data shows that irregular sleep can be linked to cardiovascular illnesses and increased reports of mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. Although the data that links physical problems with sleep irregularity was gathered through the use of the Sleep Regularity Index (SRI), which is independent of the duration of sleep, other sources, such as the study by Philips, et al., 2017, reported that the regularity of sleep had a greater impact than the length of sleep on...
4 Pages 1870 Words

How Sleep is Related to Memory

Its a well known fact that a decent night’s sleep makes us feel much better. Apart from the fact that sleep gives us body time to rest and revive, it might likewise be pivotal to our brain’s capacity to learn and remember. This may not be brand new information to any individual who has pulled an all-nighter preparing for an exam just to discover that what they knew at 3 a.m wouldn’t be able to be recalled the following day....
2 Pages 1066 Words

Meditation and the Effects on Sleep in Adolescence

Introduction: Sleep is vital for the human body to function but due to the stressful and busy life of adolescence sleep is often overlooked. Those aged between 14 and 17 years require approximately 8 to 10 hours of sleep per night. The statistics for sleep in teenagers is extremely shocking, all finding that most don’t meet the required sleep per night, in fact “one study found that only 15% reported sleeping 8 1/2 hours on school nights” (Sleepfoundation.org, n.d.). Along...
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Does Low Quality Sleep Cause Schizophrenia?

Many biological necessities that human take, such as eating foods or interacting with others can vary from one culture to another. Asian people mainly consume rice while western people consume wheat and they both are totally acceptable. Interaction with others is more diverse: Every culture has a unique style of showing their emotions. However, it seems sleeping has a small—perhaps no—difference among many religion, cultures or nations that exist in this world. As sleeping is universal and uniform action of...
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What is the Biopsychological Approach on Dreams

Introduction Sleep is defined as the state when your body is reduced in consciousness and your body is less responsive to the external world. We go through 5 different stages throughout the night. The first is a light sleep as you are drifting off and it lasts 5-10 minutes. The second includes a deeper sleep as your brain waves slow and sleep spindles show up on an EEG (used to check your brains activity). The body’s temperature and heart rate...
4 Pages 1600 Words

Influence Of Diabetes Mellitus Type 1 On Sleep Architecture

Introduction Diabetes Mellitus type 1 (DM1) is one of the most common chronic health conditions in youth, with over 18,000 new cases diagnosed each year, and the prevalence is increasing. (Hamman et al, 2014) The recommended treatment regimen is complex and demanding, including frequent blood glucose monitoring, insulin administration (via injections or pump), careful tracking of diet and activity levels, and frequent insulin adjustments. (American Diabetes Association, 2015) Adherence to this regimen is linked with better glycemic control and reduces...
2 Pages 1117 Words

Sleep and the Modern Society

Sleeping in modern society is often connected with working late hours, technology among children, high stress level and bad immune, respiratory and digestive systems. Not getting enough sleep can cause a negative mood, low energy level, difficulty concentrating, and a general inability to function as usual. Significant lack of sleep exists when sleep is insufficient to support awakeness performance, and health. Chronic sleep insufficiency exists when an individual routinely sleeps less than the amount required for optimal functioning. To understand...
2 Pages 1032 Words

How Sleep Impacts College Students

Although college students face many challenges throughout their time in school, one of the crucial obstacle one that they face is lack of sleep. Many of them believe that 6 hours or even less hours of sleep for the night will make them very product but in reality, it has negative impact on them. Such of the impacts that inadequate of sleep has towards the students are; waking up fatigue, having mood issue, trouble focusing in morning classes, drinking alcohol...
5 Pages 2443 Words

Sleep Study: Patterns, Issues And Reflection

Introduction Over the course of the past couple weeks my sleep and work schedule have been completely interrupted by operational commitments. My normal sleep schedule is from 0330 to 1030 in the morning. Followed by a simple morning routine of waking up around 1030, making a cup of coffee and going to the gym. I would get home from the around 1230 in the afternoon with enough time to make lunch and cook a healthy dinner before I head to...
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The Correlation Of Sleep Extension And Athletic Performance

Literature driven synthesis In everyone’s body there is an internal clock that releases chemicals in a daily rhythm. This is otherwise known as a circadian rhythm. The suprachiasmatic nucleus in the hypothalamus of the brain is suggested as where this circadian rhythm is controlled (Beersma & Gordijn, 2007). The circadian cycle also controls basic components of exercise. These components include muscular strength, flexibility, body temperature, and vigilance and may be altered by the disturbance of sleep (Famodu, 2014). It is...
6 Pages 2739 Words
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