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Essay on sleep deprivation and health
How sleep deprivation affects mental and physical health essay
How sleep deprivation affects mental and physical health essay
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Many articles and journals were reviewed concerning sleep, sleep deprivation and neurogenesis. Since the effects of sleep as it directly relates to neurogenesis is a broad topic and relatively recent study, there has not been much up to date research on their correlation. Even though a few articles found are current, it may not be enough which will cause the initial research question to become a bit narrower. The question will be changed to, how does sleep deprivation affect the hippocampal region of the brain? The following paragraphs seek to review, summarize and integrate each of the sources found.
The article, "New Neurons in the Adult Brain: The Role of Sleep and Consequences of Sleep Loss," published in Sleep Medicine Reviews (I)
Many college students suffer from sleep deprivation; only a few students would say that they are getting enough rest at night. Sleep deprivation is caused by not receiving the amount of sleep that the human body needs to function properly throughout the day. Sleep deprivation has many causes and effects that most often lead to depression, physical illness, learning problems, and irregular sleep patterns; Elizabeth Austin offers two solutions to help college students cope with sleep deprivation.
The public health problem that I am addressing is the lack of sleep. The target population will be adolescents and college students in America. Sleep is important to health because the timing, quality, and duration are essential. Sleep plays a big role in good health and well-being throughout your life. How you feel when you are awake comes from how well you slept at night. Sleep has a direct correlation with metabolic regulation, emotional regulation, performance, memory consolidation, learning, and brain recuperation process. Because of these factors it should be viewed as just as important
However, scientists are beginning to uncover that stress can also inhibit the plasticity and neurogenesis within the hippocampus. By inhibiting these processes, stress can negatively influence the mechanism responsible for memory consolidation in the brain. These effects, if not treated promptly with suitable sleep, could have harmful and damaging effects on nerve cells in the hippocampus. By identifying these effects within sleep deprivation, scientists can formulate new effective drugs and mechanisms to enhance memory impairment caused by sleep loss.
Sleep deprivation is a commonplace occurrence in modern culture. Every day there seems to be twice as much work and half as much time to complete it in. This results in either extended periods of wakefulness or a decrease in sleep over an extended period of time. While some people may like to believe that they can train their bodies to not require as much sleep as they once did this belief is false (1). Sleep is needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, especially the brain, so that it may continue to function optimally. After periods of extended wakefulness or reduced sleep neurons may begin to malfunction, visibly effecting a person's behavior. Some organs, such as muscles, are able to regenerate even when a person is not sleeping so long as they are resting. This could involve lying awake but relaxed within a quite environment. Even though cognitive functions might not seem necessary in this scenario the brain, especially the cerebral cortex, is not able to rest but rather remains semi-alert in a state of "quiet readiness" (2). Certain stages of sleep are needed for the regeneration of neurons within the cerebral cortex while other stages of sleep seem to be used for forming new memories and generating new synaptic connections. The effects of sleep deprivation on behavior have been tested with relation to the presence of activity in different sections of the cerebral cortex.
When most people think of sleep, they think of it as a relaxed but yet not a very important part of our daily lives. What most people don’t understand is although we are not up and moving around and getting tasks completed, our brains are still very active. Without sleep our bodies do not function correctly on a daily basis, and our mental state is at risk.
We live our entire life in two states, sleep and awake1. These two states are characterized by two distinct behaviors. For instance, the brain demonstrates a well-defined activity during non-REM sleep (nREM) that is different when we are awake. In the study of sleep by Huber et. al., the authors stated that sleep is in fact a global state2. It is unclear whether this statement means that sleep is a state of global behavioural inactivity or the state of the global nervous system. The notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system served as basis for sleep researchers to search for a sleep switch. The discovery of the sleep switch, in return, provided evidence and enhanced the notion that sleep is a global state of the nervous system. The switch hypothesis developed from the fact that sleep can be initiated without fatigue and it is reversible1. It was hypothesized that there is something in the brain that has the ability to control the whole brain and initiate sleep. Studies have found a good candidate that demonstrated this ability3. They found a group of neurons in the Ventrolateral Preoptic (VLPO) nucleus. It was a good candidate because it was active during sleep, has neuronal output that can influence the wakefulness pathway, and lesion in the area followed reduce sleep3. The idea that there is something that can control the whole brain and result sleep state supports the idea that sleep is a global state of the nervous system.
studying the subject, the origins in the brain responsible for sleep are still not fully understood and thus, facilitate continual probes
My paper is based on an article from the text’s web site (chapter 9) entitled “Lack of sleep ages body’s systems.” The basic claim of the article is that sleep deprivation has various harmful effects on the body. The reported effects include decreased ability to metabolize glucose (similar to what occurs in diabetes) and increased levels of cortisol (a stress hormone involved in memory and regulation of blood sugar levels). The article also briefly alludes (in the quote at the bottom of page 1) to unspecified changes in brain and immune functioning with sleep deprivation.
Many studies of the role of sleep are partial or total sleep deprivation studies which support Oswold’s restoration theory. One of these supporting studies was Dement’s. He deprived participants of REM sleep and consequently found that they increased their number of attempted REM stages from 12 to 26 over 4-7 nights. During their first uninterrupted night, participants increased their REM sleep by 10% which is known as REM rebound. This suggests the importance of REM and the possibility that the purpose of sleep is to get into REM sleep. The participants reported anxiety, irritability and difficulty concentrating which shows that REM sleep is needed to avoid these affects and enable brain recovery which corresponds with Oswold’s theory. Even so, Dement’s study has low ecological validity, it has low population validity because there were only 8 participants and they were a self-selected sample. Participants would probably have shown demand characteristics because the experiment took place in a lab. It also has low mundane realism because people would not usually sleep in a lab and be interrupted repeatedly.
The authors and scientists from a different study by the U.S National Library of Medicine National Institutes of Health on long and short-term sleep deprivation state directly that “in certain jobs, people face sleep restriction. Some professions such as health care… require working at night. In such fields, the effect of acute total sleep deprivation (SD) on performance is crucial” (Alhola & Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance). Depending on their schedule, nurses can often be susceptible to sleep deprivation and are no exception, especially if they are working long hours. The study performed research on how acute and chronic sleep deprivation can affect the brain and how it can slow down or worsen thought process and rationality throughout the day for working adults. The authors also explain that “motor function, rhythm, receptive and expressive speech, and memory ...deteriorated after one night of SD.” (Alhola and Polo-Kantola, Sleep deprivation: Impact on cognitive performance) Although everybody is affected by a lack of sleep differently, some might have the ability to handle it a lot better than others, but it is fair to say that no one can perform their jobs perfectly if their brains are being affected by sleep deprivation. This organization concludes this study by explaining that there is still much research that needs to be
In the world of higher education, students at the collegiate level are highly likely to be overwhelmed with course load, in addition to sports and extra-curricular activities (Jacobs & Dodd, 2003). These factors have the potential to lead to various amounts of sleep deprivation, and as the research of Nilsson, Sunderstrom, Karlsson et al. (2004) has shown, sleep deprivation is correlated with higher levels of fatigue, impairments in speed and accuracy as well as limitations in cognitive and physical performances. One way to cope with this fatigue that has shown to have very positive results on people of all ages is taking naps. In addition to reducing sleepiness, Milner & Cote (2008) have determined that “napping may lead to considerable benefits in terms of mood, alertness and cognitive performances”. It is these benefits that nappers seek when engaging in napping activities.
Sleep disorders are an underestimated public health concern considering that fifty to seventy million Americans are affected. Technological advances in the field of sleep have facilitated various theories to explain the need for and the purpose of sleep. Scientist have uncovered many types of sleep disorders such as insomnia, sleep apnea, and narcolepsy. Sleep disorders affect men ,women, children, the elderly, and the obese in different ways. Factors such as the number of children and the effects of menopause have been studied to determine their effects on sleep. Various treatments have been utilized ranging from non-pharmacologic to pharmacologic methods. Scientist have pinpointed areas of the brain that are involved in sleep deprivation and hormones that ultimately affect sleep.
Sleep is a reversible, repetitive, and active behavior which plays different roles. These roles include restoration processes, memory consolidation, learning or growth. As argued out by Curcio, Ferrara and De Gennaro (2006), during sleep, neuro-cognitive, psychological, as well as behavioral processes take place. Many individuals sacrifice their sleep with an aim of carrying out extra activities. However, sleep loss has been found to have various negative effects. Some of these effects include impairment in psychomotor, neurocognitive performances, and sleepiness (Curcio et al., 2006). Results from recent studies have demonstrated that sleep plays an integral role in memory consideration and learning processes (Deregnaucourt et al., 2005 & Curcio et al., 2006). This paper will evaluate journals and other accredited sources of information in an effort to review, analyze, critique and synthesize works of other scholars on how sleep affects learning.
Sleep is very important to our body for relaxation, preparing ourselves for the next day. Unfortunately, poor sleeping quality is prevalent in modern cities such as Hong Kong. An increasing number of university students have stated sleep problems. (Suen, Hon & Tam, 2008). Meerlo, Mistlberger, Jacobs, Heller & McGinty (2009) have reported that prolonged sleep loss may affect the rate of neurogenesis...
Wells, M., & Vaughn, B. V. (2012). Poor Sleep Challenging the Health of a Nation. Neurodiagnostic Journal,52(3), 233-249.