Side Effects of a Lack of Sleep
Side Effects of a Lack of Sleep
Do you suffer from sleep deprivation? Most teenagers need 8-12 hours of sleep. Lack of sleep can cause delayed reactions or even learning disorders. Prolonged loss of sleep occurs for physical and mental reasons and has harmful physical and mental effects to the human body.
Prolonged sleep is caused by many different functions of the body. An important cause of prolonged sleep is a teenagers biological phase-delay or a tendency to fall asleep and wake up at different times. Changes that occur at puberty in the internal body clock governing their circadian biological rhythms can cause them to sleep irregularly(Johnson, 3).
Another good reasons why teenagers do not get enough sleep is because they simply do not make time for it. Some schoolwork, sports, jobs, girlfriends or boyfriends may take up most of a teenagers time or cause them to have stressful sleep(Johnson 3).
Sleep deprivation can cause slow reactions of time. It may also cause headaches and nightmares more frequently. The mind will fall asleep if it cannot get enough sleep causing it to not function properly. Some side symptoms of chronic lack of sleep are feeling fatigue or depression as body becomes drained (Haynes).
A major problem caused by sleep deprivation is behavioral changes such as: irritability, short temper, impatience, and stressful situations with more anger or sadness, also can cause more fear than they would normally have. If you continue to have prolonged lack of sleep your immune systems will begin to break down and become unstable to fight diseases (Haynes). To show how this is caused the researcher has done a study on how much sleep he/she got and how they felt that day.
Sleep deprivation has many harmful effects and there are some reasons you cannot stop prolonged lack of sleep. Sleep is essential to the studying and learning if you do not get enough sleep the mind can shut down from not having enough rest and can harm the human body.
Works Cited
Haynes, Kendra. "Into bed late, out of bed late." Studies show teens perform better when sleeping late. April 24, 1997. Http://lps.k12.co.us/schools/littleton/activities/newspapper/1996_7/v49i6/ef.htm February 20, 2002
Hemos. "This-explains-my-college-years." Sleep deprivation increases brain activity. February 11, 2002. Online. Forum. Http://slahsdot.org/articles.pl? February 20, 2002.
Johnson, Kyle P. "The sleepy teenager." Harvard Mental Health Letter. Novembor 2001: 3. Online. Letter. Http://ehostvgw7.epenet.com/fulltext.asp? February 12, 2002.
Love, Aileen. "How much sleep do kids need?" Parenting. September 2000: 35....