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. Patricia Alpert and colleagues (2011), state that fifty to seventy million Americans have chronic sleep and wakefulness disorders. Those most affected are women and ethnically are non-Hispanic Blacks compared with all other ethnic adults. According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults need an average of seven to nine hours of sleep per night. However, as a general rule the length of sleep varies per individual. Technological advancements such as the electroencephalograph (EEG), that can measure activity of the sleeping brain, have facilitated various theories to explain the necessity of and the purpose of sleep. Sleep studies measure brain waves (EEG), eye movements (EOG), and muscle skeletal activity (EMG) using a polysomnography. We experience two phases of sleep which repeat themselves every ninety to one hundred and ten minutes, achieving approximately five complete cycles per night. The phases are non- rapi... ... middle of paper ... ...an, L., Nadaraja, D., Onen, F., & Richards, K. C. (2011). Perceived effectiveness of diverse sleep treatments in older adults. Journal Of The American Geriatrics Society, 59(2), 297-303. doi:10.1111/j.1532-5415.2010.03247.x Kyle, S. D., Espie, C. A., & Morgan, K. (2010). “… Not just a minor thing, it is something major, which stops you from functioning daily”: Quality of life and daytime functioning in insomnia. Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 8(3), 123-140. doi:10.1080/15402002.2010.487450 Siddique, M. I., Mahmud, I., & Siddique, R. M. (2010). Obesity and sleep disorders: Implications for bariatric patients. Bariatric Nursing And Surgical Patient Care, 5(1), 75-79. doi:10.1089/bar.2009.9937 Vandekerckhove, M., & Cluydts, R. (2010). The emotional brain and sleep: An intimate relationship. Sleep Medicine Reviews, 14(4), 219-226. doi:10.1016/j.smrv.2010.01.002
Each year at least 40 million Americans suffer from long term, persistent sleep disorders, and an additional 20 million experience occasional sleeping problems. About 60 million Americans a year have insomnia and it tends to increase with age and affects about 40 percent of women and 30 percent of men. It is estimated that 18 million Americas are suffering from sleep apnea, 12 million have RLS, and 250,000 are affected by narcolepsy. Adults typically need between 6 and 10 hours of sleep per 24 hour period, and most people need approximately 8 hours of sleep per day. Infants generally need about 16 hours per day; whereas, teenagers require 9 hours on average. In the first 3 months of...
Having no sleep can lead to unhealthy lives, relationships, one’s ability to function and interact with the world, and an unbalanced state of body, mind, and spirit. Sleep is crucial to an individual because it is a time where the body rests and restores energy and develops important information and without sleep, the body will slowly disintegrate. Poor sleep quality often is associated with Insomnia, but the two are two different items. Poor sleep quality is where an individual does not get at least 4 hours of sleep, but is still able to sleep and does not have a normal sleeping cycle. Insomnia is classified as a sleeping disorder, where one persistently lacks the ability to sleep or maintain sleep. This paper goes into a deep discussion of what Insomnia is and the two different types, the causes of Insomnia and how it affects a person’s lifestyle, a comparison between Men and Women who have Insomnia, and possible treatments to aid this disorder.
Chronic sleep loss is becoming more common in modern culture and less restricted to sleep-deprived diseases such as insomnia. Suggested to be the result of a number car, industrial, medical, and other occupational accidents, sleep deprivation is beginning to be recognized as a public concern. As a result, the Centers for Disease Control
The National Sleep Foundation describes sadness as an emotion experienced by humans in difficult times. Findings show that constant emotions are found in depression. Furthermore depression is not something which simply will disappear. Additionally, symptoms may reoccur throughout a person’s lifetime. Overall sleep and depressive illness can be a complex relationship. In general depression can bring about long term problems in sleep disorders stemming from depression. Sleep problems and risk factors may share biological factor and risk factors. These factors lead to important concepts discussed in the article such as insomnia and sleep apnea treatments strategies. Research has found people who have depression are more likely to develop insomnia and suffer from insomniatic symptoms. Some these symptoms include sleep maintenance insomnia, daytime sleepiness, difficulty falling asleep (onset insomnia), and refreshing sleep. Justly researchers suggest depression development is high among those who have both onset insomnia and sleep maintenance insomnia. In 2006, the NSF polls focused on 11-17 ages in children. One of slee...
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
Sleep is one of our basic needs to survive and to function in day to day operations, but not everyone needs the same amount of sleep. Some people can survive on very little sleep, i.e. five hours a night, and some people need a lot of sleep, to the extend that they are sleeping up to 10 to sometimes 15 hours a night (Nature, 2005). According to Wilson (2005) the general rule states that most people need from seven to eight hours of sleep. The deprivation of sleep in our society in continually increasing with the demands in society increasing work loads, the myth that a few hours of sleep is only necessary to function properly and that sleep is sometimes considered as killing time (Nature, 2005). Sometimes sleep deprivation is also caused by other situations like sleep disorders, i.e. sleep apnea, chronic insomnia or medical conditions such as stress (Wilson, 2005).
During the cycle of the phases each lasts for a different period of time during the time we are sleeping.
Kales, A. (1972). The evaluation and treatment of sleep disorders : Pharmacological and psychological studies. In M. Chase (ed.)The Sleeping Brain. Los Angeles : Brain Information Service.
Some parents find that there children sleep to much, while others don't sleep enough. Some fall asleep at the wrong times while others cant ever even get to sleep. There are about 100 different sleep disorders being researched currently. Although sleep is a basic behavior in animals as well as hu...
Heilman, E. (2000). Rest for the Weary: Words from an Insomnia Expert. Retrieved March 21, 2005 from http://www.healthysleeping.com/
Important public policy issues have arisen in our modern 24-hour society, where it is crucial to weigh the value of sleep versus wakefulness. Scientific knowledge about sleep is currently insufficient to resolve the political and academic debates raging about how much and when people should sleep. These issues affect almost everybody, from the shift worker to the international traveler, from the physician to the policy maker, from the anthropologist to the student preparing for an exam.
Sleep and Sleep Disorders. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 1 July 2013. Web. 7 May 2014. .
Wells, M., & Vaughn, B. V. (2012). Poor Sleep Challenging the Health of a Nation. Neurodiagnostic Journal,52(3), 233-249.