Being sleep deprived is one of the worst things for the human body. One of the many side effects that could possibly happen is early stages of Alzheimer’s (slats, Claassen, verbeek, and overeem, 2013). “ Sleep is a physiological mechanism that is important for cognitive functions. It is essential to have adequate sleep for good health. Modern day society has people working 24 hours or more without proper sleep or breaks (Dixit and Mittal)”. Sleep is food for the brain. When students are not sleeping, their brain is not getting the food and energy that is needs to function (National Sleep Foundation). Another factor of being sleep deprived is your health. “Obesity is obviously a very complex issue, and no one is suggesting that lack of sleep is the cause of the obesity epidemic," says Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Last month a survey by a survey by the University of Leeds found that an astonishing 25% of people get less than five hours' sleep a night. Lastly, sports could also be a huge impact on your sleep schedule. If you’re in highschool and you play a sport, you’re constantly putting in countless hours of hard work and practice so often times you wait until the last minute to do your homework which puts you behind on the hours of sleep you get. work, school, health, and school work are just some of the things that play a huge role on your sleeping schedule. So the question you should be asking yourself is To What Extent Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Students’ Ability To Complete Everyday Tasks?
Health
Sleep deprivation is a key factor to failure for students around the world. Students could be awake all night doing things that are productive but many do tasks that are not so productive. Sleep deprivation has many health factors that do negative to the human body. Additional weight, loss of a sense of humor, impaired body, and an impaired brain all harm the student with sleep deprivation. “Obesity is obviously a very complex issue, and no one is suggesting that lack of sleep is the cause of the obesity epidemic," says Carl Hunt, director of the National Center on sleep Disorders Research at the National Institutes of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. If a student sleeps more at night their risk of obesity will decrease. Last month a survey by a survey by the University of Leeds found that an astonishing 25% of people get less than five hours' sleep a night. These health factors are only the beginning of the negatives of sleep deprivation.
The first factor that affects sleep deprivation is additional weight added to the students body. The link between sleep and weight was first noticed in the 1990s, when European researchers were puzzling over why so many children were getting heavier. "They were surprised to discover that it wasn't how much TV a child watched, but how much sleep the child got, that best predicted whether he or she was overweight," says Dinges. "The less children slept, the heavier they were." Now, researchers are finding the same link in adults as well. In the Wisconsin Sleep Cohort Study, which tracks the sleep habits of nearly 3,000 middle-aged state government employees, those who reported that they typically slept less than eight hours a night were more likely to be overweight. Researchers at Columbia University in New York City found that people who slept six hours a night were 23% more likely to be obese than people who slept between seven and nine hours. Those who slept five hours were 50% more likely–while those who slept four hours or less were 73% more likely–to be obese. Solutions to these issues could be to decrease work hours and allow more sleep for the better.
The second factor that affects sleep deprivation is loss of sense of humor. People who sleep for less than six hours a night are four times more likely to come down with a cold than those sleeping for seven or more hours, reported researchers at Carnegie Mellon University in the U.S. in September. The moment a student gets sick is the moment their sense of humor is decreased. “Sleep deprivation affects the immune system in many ways,” says Dr Victoria Revell, a chronobiologist at the University of Surrey. “It acts similarly to a state of stress — something known to have a negative impact on immunity.” White blood cells called lymphocytes, which recognise and help attack viruses and bacteria, don't reproduce effectively when we're sleep deprived. While a student is sleep deprived, our chances of fighting off a disease is decreased. In 2006, scientists at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S. found that we lose our sense of humour when we're tired. In a study where people who'd been kept awake for 49.5 hours were asked to compare cartoons and amusing newspaper headlines, they were found to have lost the ability to find the material funny. In order to increase one’s sense of humor they must receive more sleep.
The last factor that affects sleep deprivation is the harm against our bodies which could be deadly. Some of the consequences of lost sleep are immediate, obvious and unpleasant, such as a toddler's crabbiness after missing a nap. Older children and adults get irritable when tired, too. Sleepy students don't learn or perform as well as their well-rested peers, and nodding off at work probably won't help anyone get a promotion. These are a few examples of the cause and benefit of what may happen. Other penalties for staying up too late can be far more serious, even deadly. Studies have linked chronic sleep loss to obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and shorter lives in people. Just one night of short sleep has been shown to increase levels of inflammatory chemicals in the blood and increase hunger-promoting hormones. A week of getting just two hours less sleep per night than usual changed the way people in one study responded to glucose, mirroring a change seen in people who develop diabetes. A solution is for students to get the right amount of food in their bodies to lead into getting a good night sleep.
Work
Being sleep deprived is one of the worst things for the human body. One of the many side effects that could possibly happen is early stages of Alzheimer’s (slats, Claassen, verbeek, and overeem, 2013). It is very hard for the person to complete everyday tasks when you can’t focus on what you’re doing. Most students suffer from this in high school and college and it really starts to affect their school work, sports, and jobs they might have. Many kids have a hard time completing all the tasks they have in the short time period they have during the day so often times they’ll stay up all night to get their work done. “ Sleep is a physiological mechanism that is important for cognitive functions. It is essential to have adequate sleep for good health. Modern day society has people working 24 hours or more without proper sleep or breaks (Dixit and Mittal)”. This statement is true because most of the time students don’t understand the importance of sleep. So the question being asked here is to what extent does sleep deprivation affect students ability to complete everyday tasks?
One of the ways to look at sleep deprivation is through a scientific lens. Sleep is an important factor affecting cognitive performance. Sleep deprivation results in fatigue, lack of concentration, confusion and sleepiness along with anxiety, depression and irritability (Dixit and Mittal). There have been many studies throughout the years that show how people specifically high school and college students have suffered from being sleep deprived. Thirty healthy male medical student volunteers in the age group of 18-25 years were recruited for the study after explaining the procedure and taking written consent. The study was approved by the Institute Ethics Committee. The subjects were asked to refrain from caffeine or any other stimulant intake for at least 12 hours prior to the study (Dixit and Mittal). This test was designed to show how medical students are one of the most affected by sleep deprivation. An online questionnaire was chosen as the method for data collection given the popularity and convenience of the Internet for students. The questionnaire had four sections as follows: demographics, sleep habits and sleep quality, academic performance, and job performance. The demographic section was created by the researchers and was developed based on a review of related literature. The demographic information was used to determine if the sample was similar to the population and to enable analysis of the data by subgroups. For the sleep habits and sleep quality section, all items were adopted from the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index (PSQI). The PSQI has been found to be reliable (Cronbach's alpha = .80) and valid and has been used in previous sleep quality research (Backhaus, Junghanns, Broocks, Riemann, & Hohagen, 2002; Carpenter & Andrykowski, 1998). Student cumulative GPA and semester GPA were used to measure academic performance (Trockel et al 2000). The job performance section was adopted from a reliable instrument (Cronbach's alpha = .81) of job performance evaluation (Brown & Arendt, 2011).
There are many different types of jobs in the world and some people affected by sleep more than others. Shift work, also defined as working non-standard hours, has been shown to impact sleep and circadian rhythms (Wyatt, 2001). Shift workers are often classified as people that have hospitality jobs. Job performance has a huge impact on the number of hours you receive of sleep in a day. Job performance has been defined as "the level of productivity of an individual employee, relative to his or her peers, on several job-related behaviors and outcomes" (Babin & Boles, 1998, p. 82). If you’re not getting enough sleep every night you will most likely have a poor work ethic which could cause errors and mistakes while you are working. The influence of sleep on job performance has been discussed through clinical cases, national reports, and the financial cost of poor sleep habits. Snyder (2003) showed that nocturnal awakenings were negatively correlated with individual productivity (Chiang, Arendt, Zheng, and Hanisch). Not getting enough sleep can be very crucial to your job and can affect not only you but the people around you that are working.
School work & Homework
Sleep is food for the brain. When students are not sleeping, their brain is not getting the food and energy is needs to function (National Sleep Foundation). After coming home from a long day of school students are generally tired and have homework that needs to be completed by the next day. It’s not like students have only one teacher that will assign them one assignment, they have multiple teachers causing the homework to pile on. As students stay up to complete their work, they essentially become sleep deprived. To what extent does sleep deprivation affect students’ ability to complete everyday tasks?
During the school week, students not only receive homework from one class but as well from the other classes they attend. On top of all this work there are also tests that need to be studied for that count for a major part of their grade. When students are dismissed from of school at around 3-4 pm this leaves them with only a certain amount of time to complete their homework, not including extra time to study for tests and exams. Many students can relate to the fact that when teachers pile on homework, they get very minimum hours to complete their homework, not counting extra time to study for tests. Also, extra curricular activities need to be considered. By having activities that take place after school, Students are held back a great amount of time after hours, leaving them with less time to study and finish their homework. Another study showed that students who are student athletes lose more sleep and have less time not to be get their work done. When students don’t get their work done, this could lead not to be bad grades, also causing students to be not eligible to play (NCAA).
While students are staying up late to complete their work for the next day, they become very sleep deprived, leaving them unable to function properly in class. According to Start School Later, 33% of teeenagers report falling asleep in class (School Start Later). As the students are falling asleep in class they are also missing the material that they need to comprehend in the class. Also, by missing the material, they will not be prepared for the exam. A study done by the Sleep Foundation showed that students need around 8-10 hours of sleep to function properly. Without the right amount of hours, students will become “zombies” (Sleep Foundation). A resolution to this issue is to have school start later. By starting later, students will be able to function better, hopefully causing less kids to fall asleep in class and allow students to absorb the information properly.
Now, some may argue that students need homework to perform well in not only school but in “the real world”. According to a poll ran by the Student Success Blog, people said that by doing homework, it helps students break their procrastinations cycles. According to Debate.org, when students are assigned homework, it also teaches you a sense of responsibility and time management. What people are not seeing is that if students are not able to complete their school/homework, they will not have the right grades to graduate, leaving students not ready for the real world.
Sports
One of the worst feelings in the world is knowing that you let your team down. In sports, mental stability and focus is one of the key factors in performing to the best of your ability. Specifically, a reasonable amount of sleep should always be taken seriously. Sleep deprivation can, in fact, lead to that horrible feeling of letting your team down. Playing tired not only affects mental stability but it also affects one’s emotions and attitude towards their teammate or coach. Sleep deprivation should be taken account for by athletes to ensure they play to their best ability and present themselves as the best teammate possible.
Everyone knows what they’re getting themselves into when they decide to change their sleeping habits. Often times, kids are having such a good time it’s hard for them to settle down and go to bed. However, this, indeed, has its consequences. To start, research shows that not getting enough sleep slows glucose metabolism by 30 to 40%. Evan Van Cauter, from the University of Chicago did a study on three different durations of sleep in men age 18-27. As expected the studies showed that the durations of less sleep resulted in higher stress hormone levels and memory impairment. This doesn’t come as much of a surprise because most of us associate sleep deprivation with brain function anyways. A lack of sleep deprives the brain of performing normal daily tasks because it isn't able to function properly. Therefore, sports performance is at the forefront of these tasks.
Another aspect of sleep deprivation in sports is the recovery standpoint. After training or competition, the most important thing for an athlete to do is to recover. With a loss of sleep, this is made harder than it should be. Specifically, peak power, or the time an individual is at their best physical measure, has been shown to be unchanged after 24 hours of wake. However, it was impaired after 36 hours without sleep (Souissi). This aspect is crucial to the athlete because performance is hindered quite easily. Without the proper amount of sleep muscle strength and other physical factors are left unaffected. In spite of this, these factors are not truly important to the overall performance of the athlete during physical activity. Reilly and Deykin reported results that showed gross motor functions such as muscle strength, lung power, and endurance were unaffected due to partial lack of sleep. Clearly, sleep is a necessity for all young individuals and in this case especially, young athletes. However, there is an equal argument stating that athletic performance is a product of many other factors.
Overall, we can learn a lot from how much sleep a young individual is attaining. In health, work, school, and sports, this data tells us why someone may not be at their peak of power. Obviously, other factors play a role in this. But, this is one specific way to try and find ways to improve in this area. One solution is to develop a teen sleep program to ensure that these young adults get the proper sleep needed to do well in school and other extra curricular activities. In addition, sleep deprivation is a very serious topic that is affecting high school and college students everywhere. All the statistics show how bad it is for your health and it could cause some major problems that could possibly affect you for the rest of your life. Another thing it really affects is your work ethic when you’re at your jobs. If you don’t have a good night’s rest you can really mess important things up at work. It will give you a lot of room for accidents and mistakes that could hurt yourself and others. Sleep deprivation also affects students ability to complete everyday tasks while attending school or at home. Factors that this includes are: additional weight, harm to the body, and a loss of sense of humor which all have an effect on a student’s body which starts from sleep deprivation. Yet another solution is to find a new rhythm at night to get the best sleep possible for the human body. A change in rhythm would cause changes to the human’s body cycle which could result in more hours of sleep every night. Lastly, one solution could be to optimize your sleep sanctuary. These are solutions that could help a teen’s health, work ethic, school work, and athletic ability while struggling through sleep deprivation.
Work Cited
● Foster, Helen. Lost Your Sense of Humor? Maybe You're Sleep Deprived . Gale Group, 2015. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Schardt, David. "How Sleep Affects Your Weight." Nutrition Action Healthletter. Gale Group, 2005. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Saey, Tina H. "Dying to Sleep: Getting Too Little Sleep Can Impair Body and Brain, and Could Even Be Deadly." Science News. Gale Group, 2009. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Christopher, Drea. "The Negative Effects of Video Game Addiction." Livestrong. livestrong, 28 Jan. 2015. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
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● Loo, Kara. "7 Ways video Games Will Help Your Kids in School." The Blog. Huffington Post, 4 Nov. 2014. Web. 2 Dec. 2015.
● Chiang, Yu-Chih, Susan W. Arendt, Tianshu Zheng, and Kathy A. Hanisch. "The Effects of Sleep on Academic Performance and Job Performance." College Student Journal 48.1 (2014): 72+. Questia School. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Dixit, Abhinav, and Tushar Mittal. "Executive Functions Are Not Affected by 24 Hours of Sleep Deprivation: A Color-Word Stroop Task Study." Indian Journal of Psychological Medicine 37.2 (2015). Questia School. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Hockey, G. Robert J., David G. Wastell, and Jurgen Sauer. "Effects of Sleep Deprivation and User Interface on Complex Performance: A Multilevel Analysis of Compensatory Control." Human Factors 40.2 (1998): 233+. Questia School. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.
● Shafer, Patricia Osborne. "Seizures and Teens: Stress, Sleep, & Seizures." Exceptional Parent July 2007: 48+. Questia School. Web. 29 Nov. 2015.