The Vital Role of Sleep in Human Health

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Sleep is a vital component in human life. It plays a key role in maintaining adequate physical and mental health as well as improving quality of life. Growth and development is also greatly boosted during sleep in children and adolescents as more growth hormones peak production occurs while sleeping (NIH,2017). Adequate sleep makes the body get sufficient rest and readjust in readiness for the activities of the following day.
Adequate sleep refers to acquiring sufficient and quality rest period per day. The average number of hours that a person should sleep per day varies according to age. Adults need 7-9 hours of sleep per day as compared to children who need 10-13 hours of sleep. The number of sleep hours needed increases with decrease in …show more content…

Quality sleep includes several parameters such as the ease of falling asleep, maintenance of sleep, absence of restlessness overnight and ease of awakening (Harvey, 2008). Sleep deprivation refers to total lack of sleep over a particular time or reduced period of sleep. It may also be defined as failure to achieve rapid eye movement sleep, as this is the deep sleep phase in which dreams occur (ASA, 2017)
Short time sleep deprivation, also referred to as acute sleep deprivation comes about as a result of staying awake overnight for one or two nights. It does not bear serious consequences. The impact includes body discomfort, mild fine motor tremors which may affect activities such as writing and handling equipment, general fatigue and a strong desire to acquire sleep. This commonly occurs in night shift workers such as nurses and watchmen who do not get adequate sleep over the day …show more content…

This may be attributed to muscle tremors and altered sensorium thus inability to control normalcy of the body posture. Response to both auditory, visual and tactile stimuli is also affected. Speech is impaired as the urge to acquire immediate sleep increases. The person may exhibit confused speech or in worse scenarios incoherence sets in. Visual hallucinations are one of the earliest signs of sleep deprivation since the eyes are directly affected. Colour distinction becomes a problem after missing 72 hours of sleep

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