Sleep Deprivation and Health

663 Words2 Pages

Through long term research of sleep deprivation, studies show that is has a substantial impact in correlation with stress to the mind, body, and soul. With the fast paced lifestyle humans live today, staying up past midnight to type papers for school, get unfinished work done, or simply to watch television becomes a habit to many people, making sleep more and more extinct, and therefore causing strain on their physical, psychological, and mental health. The intricate question is why. Why do we need humans need adequate sleep to stay in good health? Many researchers have performed studies and traveled the world in search for answers for the pandemic habits of many people all over the world. David Dinges believes that, “The relationship between stress and sleep is bidirectional” (Sleep Deprivation and Stressors 1). This means that stress and sleep deprivation go hand-in-hand. Not getting enough sleep can cause stress on humans, while high levels of stress can lead to a loss in sleep.
In the article Sleep Deprivation Predisposes Liver To Oxidative Stress And Phospholipid Damage: A Quantitative Molecular Imaging Study, Chang et al. Mai, Chen, Wu, Huang, Lan, and Lin argue that sleep disorders are associated with an increased rate of various metabolic disturbances, which may be related to oxidative stress and consequent lipid peroxidation (Chang et al. 1). To test this study, they used adult rats to monitor their patterns between the normal stages and when they had been sleep deprived for five days. The results showed that following total sleep deprivation, phosphatidylcholine levels were lowered to one third their original values. Phosphatidylcholine plays an important role in stress. Therefore, when it is lowered, this causes a rise...

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... to sleep. Exercising daily with exercises such as running, walking, or even yoga can help to alleviate the amount of stress that we have. Other ways to do this are setting a regular bedtime, avoiding stimulants, unwinding by keeping the lights at a lower set level, avoiding all-nighters, waking up with bright light, and creating the right sleeping environment (45).
It has become evident that sleep deprivation is becoming more common throughout the world. If there is not adequate sleep in the mix, the fast paced lifestyles that we live could be causing harm to our bodies, as well as our mind and spirit. Results from many studies show that sleep deprivation does affect the amount of stress that we face. It can be concluded that stress and sleep deprivation play hand in hand roles with each other. With high levels of one of these elements leads to less in the other.

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