Assignment #16 - Buddy Goodwin - Sleep deprivation

Sleep Deprivation

Did you know that the average human spends about ⅓ of their life asleep (thomson)? This means that the average american will spend 25 years of their life sleeping. While this is an extremely long period of time still a large amount of Americans don’t get the recommended amount of sleep. In fact the CDC finds that depending on the area, around 30-45% of adults don't get the recommended 7 hours of sleep each night (cdc). Why is this such a concern you might ask? Well the CDC also finds that when people don’t get the recommended amount of sleep they are more prone to having a heart attack, coronary heart disease, stroke, asthma, cancer and depression. These are all deleterious things that nobody wants yet so many people prioritize other things over a good nights rests and fail to get the sleep they need. In my speech today I am going to start by explaining the many benefits that come with getting a sufficient amount of sleep, then move on to to describe the things that prevent people from getting the sleep they need, and finally go onto talk about ways that people can get more sleep. 

There are many benefits to getting a lot of sleep at night, some more surprising than others. Some of the more obvious ones are it improves your mood, reduces stress, helps you think more clearly and do better at work or school, and helps you get along better with other people (get). In addition to these there are also some more surprising and interesting benefits to getting a lot of sleep. One is that it helps improve your memory. Your mind is surprisingly busy while you snooze. Through a process called consolidation, sleep helps your brain strengthen memories and skills learned while you were awake (sparacino). Another interesting benefit of sleep is that it helps people control their weight. The average human burns about .42 calories an hour for every pound they weigh while they sleep (how). This means that a person who weighs 150 pounds would burn about 63 calories for every hour they sleep. With this in mind it is easy to understand how you lose weight while you sleep because while you're asleep you are both burning calories and not intaking any more through eating. 

Some of you may be thinking “If there are so many benefits to getting good sleep then why do so many people fail to do so”. Well the main reason is that there are so many things out there today that prevent people from doing so. One main one is exposure to blue light. Blue light is produced by practically every electronics screen in our world today and this is so impactful because a large majority of the population get frequently exposed to these screens. The National Sleep Foundation finds that exposure to blue light delays the release of sleep inducing melanin (the). This means that being exposed to blue light makes it harder for people to fall asleep and reduces the amount of sleep the get. Another thing that prevents people from getting the sleep they need is the fact that a lot of people prioritize other things over sleep. Whether it’s work, sports, video games, homework, or anything else that requires you to be awake people choose to do these things instead of sleep and I think this is largely due to a lack of knowledge of how important sleep is.

Now that we know what prevents people from getting the sleep they need lets move on to what action should be done. Since the blue light that is emitted from electric screens all around us delays the release of sleep inducing melanin people should get in the habit of turning off all electronics hours before bed. Linsday Tigar, a writer for the online health magazine called SELF, says in an article that she had always had trouble falling asleep at night. Some nights she would attempt to fall asleep around 11 PM and find herself still wide awake at 2 AM. She tried many things to help with her self diagnosed sleep problem with no success. Then lindsay started reading books at night before she fell asleep instead of being on her computer all the way up to when she fell asleep like she had normally done. What she found was that she started to be able to fall right asleep (Tigar). I think that if Americans were to be like lindsay and turn off electronics at least an hour before bed then they would be able to fall asleep a lot faster and get more sleep. In addition to this I think another thing that can be done to increase the amount of sleep Americans get is to spread awareness of how important it is. As previously stated one main reason people don’t get the sleep they need to because they prioritize other things over it. To combat this I also think that awareness of the importance of sleep needs to be spread throughout our society. 

In conclusion thousands of Americans live their lives and go each day without getting enough sleep. In my speech today we looked at the many benefits of getting a lot of sleep, then we examined what prevents people from getting this sleep, and finally we talked about ways to combat this sleep deprivation. Now I would like you guys to imagine how much different your life would be if you were to get sufficient sleep. 

Sources

“CDC - Data and Statistics - Sleep and Sleep Disorders.” Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 2 May 2017, https://www.cdc.gov/sleep/data_statistics.html.

“Get Enough Sleep.” Healthfinder.gov, https://healthfinder.gov/healthtopics/category/everyday-healthy-living/mental-health-and-relationship/get-enough-sleep.

“How Many Calories Do You Burn Sleeping?” Moose and Doc, 13 Oct. 2019, https://halls.md/calories-burn-sleeping/.

Kadian, Arnav, et al. “Mobile Phone Use and Its Effect on Quality of Sleep in Medical Undergraduate Students at a Tertiary Care Hospital.” Open Journal of Psychiatry & Allied Sciences, vol. 10, no. 2, July 2019, pp. 129–131. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5958/2394-2061.2019.00028.4.

sparacino, Alyssa. “11 Surprising Health Benefits of Sleep.” Health.com, https://www.health.com/health/gallery/0,,20459221,00.html.

“The Sneaky Ways That Blue Light Can Interfere With Your Kids' Sleep.” National Sleep Foundation, https://www.sleepfoundation.org/articles/how-blue-light-affects-kids-sleep.

Thomson, Chris. “22 Interesting Facts You Didn't Know About Sleep.” The Sleep Matters Club, The Sleep Matters Club, 13 Nov. 2019, https://www.dreams.co.uk/sleep-matters-club/25-facts-about-sleep/. 

Tigar, Lindsay. “Turning Off Electronics Before Bed Finally Cured My Insomnia.” SELF, SELF, 1 Oct. 2018, https://www.self.com/story/turning-off-electronics-before-bed-finally-cured-my-insomnia.

Verma, Kedarmal, and Naveen Kashyap. “Sleep Deprivation Enhances False Memory on the Deese-Roediger-McDermott (DRM) Task.” Psychological Thought, vol. 12, no. 1, Jan. 2019, pp. 120–130. EBSCOhost, doi:10.5964/psyct.v12i1.339.