Essay/Term paper: Sleep deprivation

Essay, term paper, research paper:  Sociology Essays

Sleep deprivation has become a major problem with Americans. Over 100 million Americans today suffer from lack of sleep. This has been an ongoing problem throughout the centuries. People owe their bodies sleep and scientist are calling it a "Sleep debt". An average American owes their body at least thirty hours of sleep. This lack of sleep is as hazardous as drunk driving.
One man caught sleep deprivation at it"s best. He pushed himself to the limits as much as possible. One day he went thirty hours without sleep and was on his way to his parents for supper. On his way to his parents house he stopped on some railroad tracks and stared a train in the face until it hit him. He survived the incident with torn cartilage in his rib. It has been said that had he not had been deprived of the sleep his body needed, his reflexes would have told him that the train was going to hit him.
Cultural belief leads people into thinking that one can not be successful without sleep. This is the main theory that Doctor William Dement bases his study on. Dr. Dement has done marvelous work on REM sleep, sleep apnea and narcolepsy. He is sure that eating and sleeping are in the same category of importance. Eight hours of sleep a night is the minimum of sleep for one person, any less gives a sleep debt that has to be fulfilled.
If you are feeling dizzy during the day, or if you have become clumsy on a regular basis, you may suffer from sleep deprivation. This clumsiness has proved sleep deprivation a huge problem in our society. Take the Challenger Space shuttle explosion, for instance, It has been recorded that the main mistakes of that shuttle came from the sleep deprived NASA managers. The huge tanker that had the catastrophic oil spill, it was said that the sleepy crewman that was in charge of turning the tanker was the main cause of the accident. Gerald Ford was famous for his announcing that he only needed five hours of sleep a night, but if you check the history books it is shown that he might have needed a little more than five hours.
"Driving drowsy is the same as driving drunk," says Dement. "You"re very impaired, your judgment is impaired, your reaction time is impaired, your memory is impaired, and this huge sleep debt you"ve accumulated suddenly seizes you, and that"s when people die." Dement tries to enforce over and over that drowsiness can cause the same disorientation as drunkenness and that most of our society suffers from it.
Drowsiness is more than a sign of sleep deprivation, it is fact the pre-sleep state of the body. Weather you want to or not, when you get drowsy you are going to have to sleep soon after. Dement points out that we need to force ourself to sleep as much as some people have to force themselves to stop drinking. A sleep debt cannot be taken away in one morning of sleep. It has to be removed by going to bed an hour early and waking up an hour late.
Dement has determined that there is no condition as too much sleep. There is no condition such as over-sleeping it is just our bodies trying to reduce the sleep debt. Don"t fight the urge to sleep more than usually. Sleep as much as possible. If you do have the time, take a sleep vacation and try to get rid of as much of that debt as possible. Try to use your weekends as much as possible to sleep of your debt to your body. A good catnap can keep a person running at OPTIMAL performance. There in nothing better than a quick nap to get a person to fire up their creative gears and use their body to full potential again.
Personally I think that I don"t get enough sleep and that I will do my best to get more so I can run at full potential. I am glad that I found this article it will help myself and many of my friends, and I am certain that this article will make many other people think twice about not sleeping at night. I hope that Dr. Dement"s studies are true and there is no such thing as over-sleeping.
From the source of this article I think that it is from a factual base. Microsoft has not let me down yet and this article is just one of many write-ups I have found on this website that have been useful to apply to my daily life. Not to lift this article on a petistal or anything, but I think we could all learn a thing or two from it. I t talks about how to sleep better, tricks to play that will give you a better sleep, and just what to do to catch up on your sleep.
All in all I would recommend this article to anyone, sleep deprived or not. Everyone could use a tip from this page and will be rewarded at night if they take it seriously.