Sleep Deprivation

Sleep Deprivation
Jackie Yasgar

Sleep Deprivation is a condition that is caused by lack of sleep. It affects the cognitive functions of the brain and in turn results in body aches, headaches, irritability, depression, hallucinations, hand tremors and many more. WebMD outlines some short term and long term effects of getting lack of sleep. The short term effects listed are decreased performance and alertness, memory and cognitive impairment, stress relationships, poor quality of life, occupational injury and automobile injury. The long term affects include high blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, obesity, psychiatric problems, attention deficit disorder, mental impairment, fetal and childhood growth retardation, injury from accidents, disruption of bed partner's sleep quality and poor quality of life. Another huge effect sleep deprivation causes is weight loss or gain. According to our Lilienfeld Psychology book, researchers believe sleep deprivation is the factor that has mainly caused obesity in the last few decades. This is such a significant problem, because sleeping patterns are a very important part in how the body functions. Writing about this topic is extremely interesting for me because, like most college students, I have definitely fallen victim to this problem. College and homework play an enormous role in why college students lose sleep. When we did the sleep inventory test in our psych discussion last week, every student's results that we recorded in our averages reflected a typical college student. They all proved that sleep deprivation was an issue in their lives. Another thing I found interesting was that sleep deprivation was more common in females. We hypothesized that this is because most females stress a lot more about school, relationships, and what people think about them. Also, females need to set a lot more time aside for getting ready in the morning, which might be a reason why they are getting less sleep. A vocab word that our book used when talking about sleep deprivation is insomnia. Insomnia is difficulty falling and staying asleep (Lilienfeld 171). I have really experienced this in my life, and more specifically, in my college career. When I end up staying up late doing homework and studying, I reach a point where when I lay down to go to sleep, I am so over tired that it is actually hard for me to fall asleep. Also, when I worry about school and upcoming tests, I often continue to wake up and fall back asleep throughout the night, which definitely effects how I feel the next day. I always feel fatigued and groggy during the day. The worst feeling is not being able to stay awake during class; I can definitely admit to letting sleep deprivation be a part of my life.