Free Essay, Research Proposal, Dissertation, Thesis and More: Sleep Disorder

A sleep disorder exists whenever a lower quality of sleep results in impaired functioning or excessive sleepiness. Being deprived of sleep can cause serious damage to your health both physically and mentally. Disorderly sleep can impair our ability to think. The inability to sleep is called insomnia. It affects the way we handle stress and just how healthy our immune system is. Studies have proven that the result for total lack of sleep can be fatal.

I would say that the brain is the most affected when talking about sleep disorders. Inadequate sleep messes with our brain and causes us to be unable to moderate our emotions normally. Disorderly sleep causes the brain’s function to weaken and the concentration level drops. Also memory loss occurs and the brain's ability to solve problems becomes greatly impaired. When it comes to making decisions, the brain refuses to adapt to new ideas or problem solving. Hallucinations have also been known to occur from insufficient sleep.

Typical effects of sleep are:

Depression: a mood disorder that leaves the person feeling sad, hopeless, worthless. Everybody feels down from time to time however, at times the sad feelings become intense and extreme. They last for long periods of time and keep a person from leading a normal life. Lack of sleep alone can’t cause depression, but it does play a pretty big role. Lack of sleep that’s caused by a medical illness or by personal problems can make worsen depression. Insomnia that lasts over a long period of time is also a big clue that someone may be depressed.

Heart disease: some early still in progress studies show that the amount of sleep you get may contribute to development of coronary artery disease, or heart attacks. Studies showed that if received less than 6-7 hrs of sleep a night, the risk of heart attack steeply increased. People who slept about five hours a night had about a 40 percent higher rate of having a heart attack than did people that slept eight hours. WOW!

Hypertension: being deprived of sleep has been shown to intenselyincrease blood pressure and sympathetic nervous system activity.Prolonged short sleep durations could lead to hypertension thrucomplete exposure to raised 24-hour blood pressure and heartrate, elevated sympathetic nervous system activity, and increasedsalt retention. Sleep durations of less than five hours per nightwere linked with a drastically increased risk of hypertensionin subjects betweenthe ages of 32 and 59 years old.Short sleepduration could be a major risk factor forhypertension.

Irritability: a state of extreme sensitivity to stimulation of any kind. Often people feel stressed, impatient or might easily become angry when they are in this state. Irritability is a sign that a repulsive or potentially threatening situation can’t be avoided or solved in an appropriate way. Lack of sleep may result in personality changes occurring, irritability in particular.

Slower reaction times: After about 18 hours without sleep, your reaction time begins to slow from a quarter of a second to half a second and then longer. The longer you go without sleep, the more your brain fights staying awake. After going past 20 hours without sleep, you begin to fall asleep and your senses slow way down. You go thru a state of mind where you’ll see something but you won’t really be sure about it.

Sleep disorders affect 50 to 70 million Americans. That represents approximately 20 percent of our population. Insomnia is the most common sleep disorder and affects between 6 to 12 percent of the adult population. In addition to the adult population, problems initiating and maintaining sleep are very common in children, affecting about 15 to 25 percent of this population.

I chose to do this article because a lot of persons all around the world are getting insufficient sleep hours. It’s very important to know all the effects of sleep and how it could impact our daily life. I’ve concluded from all the studies that are now know that getting a good night's sleep is critical. It’s just as important as many of the other things that doctors now recommend for people who have heart disease in order to prevent a second heart attack or worsening of their heart. Sleeping a good 8 to 10 hours will improve your daily life and you will get so much more accomplished than if you try cramming all your work and lose sleep. This article opened my eyes and I am definitely getting more sleep from now on. I’ve realized how important it is to keep my health in tip top shape.