thesis statement for importance of sleep

Why sleep is important

• Mental Health

Sleep is essential for a person’s health and wellbeing, according to the National Sleep Foundation (NSF). Yet millions of people do not get enough sleep and many suffer from lack of sleep. For example, surveys conducted by the NSF (1999-2004) reveal that at least 40 million Americans suffer from over 70 different sleep disorders and 60 percent of adults report having sleep problems a few nights a week or more. Most of those with these problems go undiagnosed and untreated. In addition, more than 40 percent of adults experience daytime sleepiness severe enough to interfere with their daily activities at least a few days each month — with 20 percent reporting problem sleepiness a few days a week or more. Furthermore, 69 percent of children experience one or more sleep problems a few nights or more during a week.

According to psychologist and sleep expert David F. Dinges, Ph.D., of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology and Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, irritability, moodiness and disinhibition are some of the first signs a person experiences from lack of sleep . If a sleep-deprived person doesn’t sleep after the initial signs, said Dinges, the person may then start to experience apathy, slowed speech and flattened emotional responses, impaired memory and an inability to be novel or multitask. As a person gets to the point of falling asleep, he or she will fall into micro sleeps (5-10 seconds) that cause lapses in attention, nod off while doing an activity like driving or reading and then finally experience hypnagogic hallucinations, the beginning of REM sleep. (Dinges, Sleep, Sleepiness and Performance , 1991)

Everyone’s individual sleep needs vary. In general, most healthy adults are built for 16 hours of wakefulness and need an average of eight hours of sleep a night. However, some individuals are able to function without sleepiness or drowsiness after as little as six hours of sleep. Others can't perform at their peak unless they've slept ten hours. And, contrary to common myth, the need for sleep doesn't decline with age but the ability to sleep for six to eight hours at one time may be reduced. (Van Dongen & Dinges, Principles & Practice of Sleep Medicine , 2000)

Psychologists and other scientists who study the causes of sleep disorders have shown that such problems can directly or indirectly be tied to abnormalities in the following systems:

Physiological systems

Brain and nervous system

Cardiovascular system

Metabolic functions

Immune system

Furthermore, unhealthy conditions, disorders and diseases can also cause sleep problems, including:

Pathological sleepiness, insomnia and accidents

Hypertension and elevated cardiovascular risks (MI, stroke)

Emotional disorders (depression, bipolar disorder)

Obesity; metabolic syndrome and diabetes

Alcohol and drug abuse (Dinges, 2004)

Groups that are at particular risk for sleep deprivation include night shift workers, physicians (average sleep = 6.5 hours a day; residents = 5 hours a day), truck drivers, parents and teenagers. (American Academy of Sleep Medicine and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute Working Group on Problem Sleepiness. 1997).

Stress is the number one cause of short-term sleeping difficulties , according to sleep experts. Common triggers include school- or job-related pressures, a family or marriage problem and a serious illness or death in the family. Usually the sleep problem disappears when the stressful situation passes. However, if short-term sleep problems such as insomnia aren't managed properly from the beginning, they can persist long after the original stress has passed.

Drinking alcohol or beverages containing caffeine in the afternoon or evening, exercising close to bedtime, following an irregular morning and nighttime schedule, and working or doing other mentally intense activities right before or after getting into bed can disrupt sleep.

If you are among the 20 percent of employees in the United States who are shift workers, sleep may be particularly elusive. Shift work forces you to try to sleep when activities around you — and your own "biological rhythms" — signal you to be awake. One study shows that shift workers are two to five times more likely than employees with regular, daytime hours to fall asleep on the job.

Traveling also disrupts sleep, especially jet lag and traveling across several time zones. This can upset your biological or “circadian” rhythms.

Environmental factors such as a room that's too hot or cold, too noisy or too brightly lit can be a barrier to sound sleep. And interruptions from children or other family members can also disrupt sleep. Other influences to pay attention to are the comfort and size of your bed and the habits of your sleep partner. If you have to lie beside someone who has different sleep preferences, snores, can't fall or stay asleep, or has other sleep difficulties, it often becomes your problem too!

Having a 24/7 lifestyle can also interrupt regular sleep patterns: the global economy that includes round the clock industries working to beat the competition; widespread use of nonstop automated systems to communicate and an increase in shift work makes for sleeping at regular times difficult.

A number of physical problems can interfere with your ability to fall or stay asleep. For example, arthritis and other conditions that cause pain, backache, or discomfort can make it difficult to sleep well.

Epidemiological studies suggest self-reported sleep complaints are associated with an increased relative risk of cardiovascular morbidity and mortality. For women, pregnancy and hormonal shifts including those that cause premenstrual syndrome (PMS) or menopause and its accompanying hot flashes can also intrude on sleep.

Finally, certain medications such as decongestants, steroids and some medicines for high blood pressure, asthma, or depression can cause sleeping difficulties as a side effect.

It is a good idea to talk to a physician or mental health provider about any sleeping problem that recurs or persists for longer than a few weeks.

According to the DSM, some psychiatric disorders have fatigue as a major symptom. Included are: major depressive disorder (includes postpartum blues), minor depression , dysthymia, mixed anxiety-depression, seasonal affective disorder and bipolar disorder .

According to a long-term study published in the 2004 April issue of Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research , young teenagers whose preschool sleep habits were poor were more than twice as likely to use drugs, tobacco or alcohol. This finding was made by the University of Michigan Health System as part of a family health study that followed 257 boys and their parents for 10 years. The study found a significant connection between sleep problems in children and later drug use, even when other issues such as depression, aggression, attention problems and parental alcoholism were taken into account. Long-term data on girls isn't available yet. The researchers suggest that early sleep problems may be a "marker" for predicting later risk of early adolescent substance abuse — and that there may be a common biological factor underlying both traits. Although the relationship between sleep problems and the abuse of alcohol in adults is well known, this is the first study to look at the issue in children.

Nightmares are dreams with vivid and disturbing content. They are common in children during REM sleep. They usually involve an immediate awakening and good recall of the dream content.

Sleep terrors are often described as extreme nightmares. Like nightmares, they most often occur during childhood, however they typically take place during non-REM (NREM) sleep. Characteristics of a sleep terror include arousal, agitation, large pupils, sweating, and increased blood pressure. The child appears terrified, screams and is usually inconsolable for several minutes, after which he or she relaxes and returns to sleep. Sleep terrors usually take place early in the night and may be combined with sleepwalking. The child typically does not remember or has only a vague memory of the terrifying events.

In the August 2004 issue of the journal Sleep , Dr. Timothy Roehrs, the Director of research at the Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit published one of the first studies to measure the effect of sleepiness on decision making and risk taking. He found that sleepiness does take a toll on effective decision making.

Cited in the October 12, New York Times Science section, Dr. Roehrs and his colleagues paid sleepy and fully alert subjects to complete a series of computer tasks. At random times, they were given a choice to take their money and stop. Or they could forge ahead with the potential of either earning more money or losing it all if their work was not completed within an unknown remainder of time.

Dr. Roehrs found that the alert people were very sensitive to the amount of work they needed to do to finish the tasks and understood the risk of losing their money if they didn't. But the sleepy subjects chose to quit the tasks prematurely or they risked losing everything by trying to finish the task for more money even when it was 100 percent likely that they would be unable to finish, said Dr. Roehrs.

According to the National Commission on Sleep Disorders Research (1998) and reports from the National Highway Safety Administration (NHSA)(2002), high-profile accidents can partly be attributed to people suffering from a severe lack of sleep.

Each year the cost of sleep disorders, sleep deprivation and sleepiness, according to the NCSDR, is estimated to be $15.9 million in direct costs and $50 to $100 billion a year in indirect and related costs. And according to the NHSA, falling asleep while driving is responsible for at least 100,000 crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths each year in the United States. Young people in their teens and twenties, who are particularly susceptible to the effects of chronic sleep loss, are involved in more than half of the fall-asleep crashes on the nation's highways each year. Sleep loss also interferes with the learning of young people in our nation's schools, with 60 percent of grade school and high school children reporting that they are tired during the daytime and 15 percent of them admitting to falling asleep in class.

According to the Department of Transportation (DOT), one to four percent of all highway crashes are due to sleepiness, especially in rural areas and four percent of these crashes are fatal.

Risk factors for drowsy driving crashes:

Late night/early morning driving

Patients with untreated excessive sleepiness

People who obtain six or fewer hours of sleep per day

Young adult males

Commercial truck drivers

Night shift workers

Medical residents after their shift

According to sleep researchers, a night's sleep is divided into five continually shifting stages, defined by types of brain waves that reflect either lighter or deeper sleep. Toward morning, there is an increase in rapid eye movement, or REM sleep, when the muscles are relaxed and dreaming occurs, and recent memories may be consolidated in the brain. The experts say that hitting a snooze alarm over and over again to wake up is not the best way to feel rested. “The restorative value of rest is diminished, especially when the increments are short,” said psychologist Edward Stepanski, PhD who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago. This on and off again effect of dozing and waking causes shifts in the brain-wave patterns. Sleep-deprived snooze-button addicts are likely to shorten their quota of REM sleep, impairing their mental functioning during the day. ( New York Times , October 12, 2004)

Certain therapies, like cognitive behavioral therapy teach people how to recognize and change patterns of thought and behavior to solve their problems. Recently this type of therapy has been shown to be very effective in getting people to fall asleep and conquer insomnia.

According to a study published in the October 2004 issue of The Archives of Internal Medicine , cognitive behavior therapy is more effective and lasts longer than a widely used sleeping pill, Ambien, in reducing insomnia. The study involved 63 healthy people with insomnia who were randomly assigned to receive Ambien, the cognitive behavior therapy, both or a placebo. The patients in the therapy group received five 30-minute sessions over six weeks. They were given daily exercises to “recognize, challenge and change stress-inducing” thoughts and were taught techniques, like delaying bedtime or getting up to read if they were unable to fall asleep after 20 minutes. The patients taking Ambien were on a full dose for a month and then were weaned off the drug. At three weeks, 44 percent of the patients receiving the therapy and those receiving the combination therapy and pills fell asleep faster compared to 29 percent of the patients taking only the sleeping pills. Two weeks after all the treatment was over, the patients receiving the therapy fell asleep in half the time it took before the study and only 17 percent of the patients taking the sleeping pills fell asleep in half the time. (New York Times, October 5, 2004)

According to leading sleep researchers, there are techniques to combat common sleep problems:

Keep a regular sleep/wake schedule

Don’t drink or eat caffeine four to six hours before bed and minimize daytime use

Don’t smoke, especially near bedtime or if you awake in the night

Avoid alcohol and heavy meals before sleep

Get regular exercise

Minimize noise, light and excessive hot and cold temperatures where you sleep

Develop a regular bed time and go to bed at the same time each night

Try and wake up without an alarm clock

Attempt to go to bed earlier every night for certain period; this will ensure that you’re getting enough sleep

In clinical settings, cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT) has a 70-80 percent success rate for helping those who suffer from chronic insomnia. Almost one third of people with insomnia achieve normal sleep and most reduce their symptoms by 50 percent and sleep an extra 45-60 minutes a night. When insomnia exists along with other psychological disorders like depression, say the experts, the initial treatment should address the underlying condition.

But sometimes even after resolving the underlying condition, the insomnia still exists, says psychologist Jack Edinger, PhD, of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University and cautions that treating the depression usually doesn’t resolve the sleep difficulties. From his clinical experience, he has found that most patients with insomnia should be examined for specific behaviors and thoughts that may perpetuate the sleep problems. When people develop insomnia, they try to compensate by engaging in activities to help them get more sleep. They sleep later in the mornings or spend excessive times in bed. These efforts usually backfire, said Edinger.

From his clinical work and research on sleep, psychologist Charles M. Morin, PhD, a Professor in the Psychology Department and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at University Laval in Quebec, Canada says that ten percent of adults suffer from chronic insomnia. In a study released in the recent issue of Sleep Medicine Alert published by the NSF, Morin outlines how CBT helps people overcome insomnia. Clinicians use sleep diaries to get an accurate picture of someone’s sleep patterns. Bedtime, waking time, time to fall asleep, number and durations of awakening, actual sleep time and quality of sleep are documented by the person suffering from insomnia.

A person can develop poor sleep habits (i.e. watching TV in bed or eating too much before bedtime), irregular sleep patterns (sleeping too late, taking long naps during the day) to compensate for lost sleep at night. Some patients also develop a fear of not sleeping and a pattern of worrying about the consequences of not sleeping, said Morin. “Treatments that address the poor sleep habits and the faulty beliefs and attitudes about sleep work but sometimes,” said Morin, “medication may play a role in breaking the cycle of insomnia. But behavioral therapies are essential for patients to alter the conditions that perpetuate it.”

CBT attempts to change a patient’s dysfunctional beliefs and attitudes about sleep. “It restructure thoughts — like, ‘I’ve got to sleep eight hours tonight’ or ‘I’ve got to take medication to sleep’ or ‘I just can’t function or I’ll get sick if I don’t sleep.’ These thoughts focus too much on sleep, which can become something like performance anxiety — sleep will come around to you when you’re not chasing it,” said Edinger.

What works in many cases, said Morin and Edinger, is to standardize or restrict a person’s sleep to give a person more control over his or her sleep. A person can keep a sleep diary for a couple of weeks and a clinician can monitor the amount of time spent in bed to the actual amount of time sleeping. Then the clinician can instruct the patient to either go to bed later and get up earlier or visa versa. This procedure improves the length of sleeping time by imposing a mild sleep deprivation situation, which has the result of reducing the anxiety surrounding sleep. To keep from falling asleep during the day, patients are told not to restrict sleep to less than five hours.

Standardizing sleep actually helps a person adjust his or her homeostatic mechanism that balances sleep, said Edinger. “Therefore, if you lose sleep, your homeostatic mechanism will kick in and will work to increase the likelihood of sleeping longer and deeper to promote sleep recovery. This helps a person come back to their baseline and works for the majority.”

A person can also establish more stimulus control over his or her bedroom environment, said Morin. This could include: going to bed only when sleepy, getting out of bed when unable to sleep, prohibiting non-sleep activities in the bedroom, getting up at the same time every morning (including weekends) and avoiding daytime naps.

Finally, a person can incorporate relaxation techniques as part of his or her treatment. For example, a person can give herself or himself an extra hour before bed to relax and unwind and time to write down worries and plans for the following day.

In CBT, said Morin, breaking the thought process and anxiety over sleep is the goal. “After identifying the dysfunctional thought patterns, a clinician can offer alternative interpretations of what is getting the person anxious so a person can think about his or her insomnia in a different way.” Morin offers some techniques to restructure a person’s cognitions. “Keep realistic expectations, don’t blame insomnia for all daytime impairments, do not feel that losing a night’s sleep will bring horrible consequences, do not give too much importance to sleep and finally develop some tolerance to the effects of lost sleep.

According to Edinger, aging weakens a person’s homeostatic sleep drive after age 50. Interestingly, the length of the circadian cycle stays roughly the same over the lifespan but the amplitude of the circadian rhythm may decline somewhat with aging.

National Sleep Foundation http://www.thensf.org

American Academy of Sleep Medicine http://www.aasmnet.org/

American Insomnia Association http://www.americaninsomniaassociation.org/

Sleep Research Society http://www.sleepresearchsociety.org/

NIH National Center for Sleep Disorders Research http://www.nhlbi.nih.gov/sleep

The MayoClinic.com Sleep Center

(Blake, et al, Psychological Reports, 1998; National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute Working Group on Insomnia, 1998)

David F. Dinges, PhD , Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, Chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine

Jack Edinger, PhD , of the VA Medical Center in Durham, North Carolina and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Duke University

Charles M. Morin, PhD , a Professor in the Psychology Department and Director of the Sleep Disorders Center at University Laval in Quebec, Canada

Timothy Roehrs, PhD , the Director of Research, Sleep Disorders and Research Center at Henry Ford Hospital

Edward Stepanski, PhD , who has studied sleep fragmentation at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago

Related Reading

• Getting a good night’s sleep: How psychologists help with insomnia
• What to Do When You Dread Your Bed

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The Extraordinary Importance of Sleep

The Detrimental Effects of Inadequate Sleep on Health and Public Safety Drive an Explosion of Sleep Research

Susan L Worley

• Copyright and License information

New sleep deprivation studies confirm the relationship between inadequate sleep and a wide range of disorders, such as hypertension, obesity and type-2 diabetes, cardiovascular disease, impaired immune functioning, and more.

In the inaugural issue of the Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine (2005), a feature article 1 traced early milestones in the developing field of sleep medicine, which slowly emerged from the older field of sleep research during the 1970s and 1980s. Sleep medicine, the article noted, was closely linked with and made possible by the discovery of electrical activity in the brain. The examination of electroencephalogram (EEG) patterns that occur during sleep led to the classification of stages of sleep, which in turn created an important foundation for probing human sleep, discerning abnormalities, and discovering significant relationships between sleep and health. By 2005, scientists and clinicians had not only identified and clearly defined a large number of sleep disorders but had discovered that many of them were highly prevalent.

The pace of research and discovery has only accelerated since 2005, and the number of peer-reviewed sleep journals has more than tripled. Today, researchers are more deeply probing the cellular and subcellular effects of disrupted sleep, as well as the effects of sleep deprivation on metabolism, hormone regulation, and gene expression. Newer studies are strengthening known and suspected relationships between inadequate sleep and a wide range of disorders, including hypertension, 2 obesity and type-2 diabetes, 3 impaired immune functioning, 4 cardiovascular disease and arrhythmias, 5 , 6 mood disorders, 7 neurodegeneration and dementia, 8 , 9 and even loneliness. 10

Research findings continue to underscore early concerns about public safety that were first raised when major industrial disasters such as the Exxon Valdez oil spill were linked to inadequate sleep. 11 Related research sponsored by major organizations, including the U.S. Department of Transportation, the U.S. Department of Defense, the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), has helped to inspire national initiatives aimed at improving public safety and health. However, despite the astounding acceleration in research during the past few decades, inadequate sleep due to sleep disorders, work schedules, and chaotic lifestyles continues to threaten both health and safety.

“Pushing against the wave of accelerated growth in the field has been a shoreline of indifference,” says David F. Dinges, PhD, Professor and Chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “Modern industrial pressures to use time 24 hours a day have led to shiftwork and a world in which virtually everything—law Susan L. Worley is a freelance medical writer who resides in Pennsylvania. enforcement, airports and all kinds of transportation, industrial operations, and hospitals—operates 24/7. People have come to value time so much that sleep is often regarded as an annoying interference, a wasteful state that you enter into when you do not have enough willpower to work harder and longer.”

David F. Dinges, PhD

It has become increasingly clear, however, that no matter how hectic our lives may be, we can no longer afford to ignore what research is telling us about the importance of sleep for our safety and mental and physical well-being.

Impact on Attention, Cognition, and Mood

While scientists are still working to identify and clarify all of the functions of sleep, 12 decades of studies—many of which have used the method of disrupting sleep and examining the consequences—have confirmed that sleep is necessary for our healthy functioning and even survival.

“We know for sure that sleep serves multiple functions,” says Dr. Dinges. “Nature tends to be very parsimonious in that it often uses a single system or biology in multiple ways to optimize the functioning of an organism. We know, for example, that sleep is critical for waking cognition—that is, for the ability to think clearly, to be vigilant and alert, and sustain attention. We also know that memories are consolidated during sleep, and that sleep serves a key role in emotional regulation.”

Studies conducted by Dr. Dinges and other scientists have shown that cognitive performance and vigilant attention begin to decline fairly quickly after more than 16 hours of continuous wakefulness, and that sleep deficits from partial sleep deprivation can accumulate over time, resulting in a steady deterioration in alertness. The widely used psychomotor vigilance test (PVT), a simple neurocognitive test developed by Dr. Dinges and colleagues that assesses an individual’s ability to sustain attention and respond to signals in a timely manner, has proven to be an exceptionally sensitive tool for capturing dose–response effects of sleep loss on neurobehavioral functioning. 13 The PVT also reliably detects sleep deficits caused by disrupted or fragmented sleep, and/or poorly timed sleep, which is important because a growing body of evidence suggests that the continuity and timing (or circadian alignment) of sleep may be as important as the total amount of time spent sleeping.

“We know that sleep is much more restorative of waking functions and health when it is consolidated and not fragmented,” explains Dr. Dinges. “That is, when sleep goes through the appropriate physiological sequences of non-REM (rapid eye movement) and REM states at night, and occurs when human sleep is temporally programmed by our circadian clock to occur. Such consolidated sleep is typically of a longer duration and better sleep quality than sleep taken at other times of the day, such as that which occurs with nightshift work, jet lag, and other conditions of circadian misalignment.”

Dr. Dinges and his colleagues have found that people whose daily sleep duration is inadequate, or repeatedly disrupted (e.g., by obstructive sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome, pain or stress, or shiftwork or jet lag), often are not aware of their accumulating sleep deficits or the toll that these deficits can take on their waking cognitive functions, including their performance, working memory, cognitive speed, and accuracy. Inadequate sleep also can take a toll on psychological well-being, significantly affecting our emotional and psychosocial interpretation of events and exacerbating our stress levels. Studies have indicated that changes in mood may be due in part to the effects of sleep deprivation on the processing of emotional memory—in other words, our tendency to select and remember negative memories after inadequate sleep. 14

In one study conducted by Dr. Dinges and colleagues, participants’ mood was observed after they were confronted with “high” and “low” performance demands, following varying degrees of sleep deprivation. 15

“To our surprise, those who were sleep-deprived responded to low stressors in much the same way that people without any sleep deprivation tended to respond to high stressors,” said Dr. Dinges. “In other words, we tend to become much more sensitive emotionally and socially when we are sleep-deprived. That is what I like to call the ‘who was at my desk or who touched my coffee cup?’ phenomenon. I think we all have experienced having an extreme reaction or a very negative emotional response to a mild stressor when we have not had enough sleep.”

Aiming for the Sweet Spot

How much sleep is enough? After decades of investigation, it appears that scientists have gathered enough evidence to begin to answer that question. 16

“When duration of sleep drops below seven hours, and especially when it starts to move toward six and half hours or less, a number of different disorders begin to increase in prevalence,” says Dr. Dinges. “Most experts would agree that there is a kind of sweet spot that most people should aim for, and for the average healthy adult that zone is ideally somewhere between 7 and 7 and a half hours. That is what the consensus evaluations of more than a thousand scientific articles have yielded—the consensus of evaluations conducted by the AASM (American Academy of Sleep Medicine) and Sleep Research Society jointly.”

Numerous large U.S. surveys—beginning with a 1982 survey by the American Cancer Society—have been used to estimate the number of hours that most people spend sleeping. Many surveys have identified a worrisome prevalence of “short” sleepers (people who sleep 6 hours or less) among respondents, and a general trend toward decreasing sleep duration between 1975 and 2006. More recently, however, an analysis of the American Time Use Survey (ATUS), spearheaded by Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, at the University of Pennsylvania 17 , has suggested that there may be cause for optimism.

“The analysis shows that there is a slight but steady increase in sleep time that stretches back to about 2003 or 2004,” says Dr. Dinges. “We think this increase, which is modest—at most a minute or two more per year—is due in part to the development of the field of sleep medicine, and public and scientific reports in the media about sleep loss contributing to accidents and catastrophes, and so forth. Ever so slowly, the message that it is important not to get sleep deprived, and to get help if you have a sleep disorder, has begun to penetrate to the public.”

The analysis notes that one sign of greater interest in sleep on the part of the public has been a significant increase in Google searches containing the word “sleep” since 2004. Data from the ATUS also suggest that over time, people have been willing to trade some of their daily activities in exchange for more sleep. It is important to note, says Dr. Dinges, that self-reports of time spent sleeping are not always accurate—they can be off by a half an hour or more, usually with people tending to estimate that they slept more than they did. He also notes that there is still a fairly large population sleeping 6 hours or less.

“Although there are signs that sleep time is increasing, it is not happening at nearly the dramatic rate that most experts would like to see,” says Dr. Dinges. “This is especially true for vulnerable populations. There is concern about school start times and bus times affecting the sleep of children and adolescents, and about extracurricular activities at the end of the school day sometimes leading to a delay in bed times for teenagers. All of this is an ongoing, evolving picture, with more research results coming out all the time, and with consequent changes in recommendations, to make sure that at least our most vulnerable populations are getting adequate sleep.”

Interindividual Differences in Vulnerability to Sleep Loss

While it is well established that the effects of sleep loss accumulate over time, with repeated exposure to inadequate, fragmented, or disrupted sleep, the degree to which individuals demonstrate adverse effects of inadequate sleep can vary considerably. 18

“We have learned that there are astonishingly mysterious phenotypes, or trait-like differences, in how vulnerable people are to sleep loss,” says Dr. Dinges. “This is still a relatively new area of research, and it has only been in the past few years that scientists have begun to replicate early findings regarding these phenotypic differences in vulnerability to the negative neurobehavioral effects of sleep loss. The interindividual differences that have been observed so far raise some extremely provocative scientific questions. We may find that there is something in waking biology that can substitute for, or somehow reduce, the impact of sleep loss on waking functioning, but thus far there is no evidence as to what that might be.”

Differences among individuals exist with regard to both the effects of sleep loss and the ability to recover from the effects of sleep loss. Differences in performance also have been shown to be task-dependent, suggesting that people who are vulnerable to the effects of sleep loss in one or more cognitive or neurobehavioral domains may be resistant to the effects of sleep loss in others. To better understand interindividual variability, scientists are investigating possible genetic mechanisms that may underlie complex interactions between circadian and sleep homeostatic systems—the systems that affect our drive for sleep as well as our alertness and performance during waking hours. A current goal is to discover biomarkers that may help predict individual performance after varying degrees of sleep loss. 19 And one hope is that biomarkers—ideally in the form of a simple “roadside” test such as a breathalyzer—may eventually be used to detect sleep loss-related impairment in drivers or in individuals responsible for operating sophisticated equipment or machinery. To date, no viable candidates have been found.

Investigators also are shedding light on the role that age may play in resilience to sleep loss. The results of one recent study indicate that younger adults are more vulnerable to the adverse effects of chronic sleep loss and recurring circadian disruption than older adults. 20 Although the neurobiological basis for these age-related differences is not yet understood, such findings may help to inform new approaches to the prevention of drowsy driving and related motor-vehicle accidents among young drivers.

Dr. Dinges emphasizes that findings regarding interindividual differences in response to sleep loss and in recovery from sleep loss should not diminish the message that adequate sleep is critical for everyone.

“Research has shown us that sleep is not an optional activity,” says Dr. Dinges. “There is no question that sleep is fundamentally conserved across species and across lifespans, and that any effort to eliminate it has been unsuccessful. We must plan our lives in the time domain with a serious consideration for sleep—planning when to sleep, ensuring that we get adequate sleep, and making sure that our sleep is not disturbed by disorders or diseases, whether or not they are sleep-related.”

Addressing Sleep Disorders

As connections between sleep disruption and both disease and mortality have become more firmly established, accurate and efficient diagnosis and management of sleep disorders (see Table 1 ) have become increasingly critical. Recent directions in the field of sleep medicine include a move toward patient-centered care, greater collaboration between specialists and primary care physicians, and the incorporation of new tools—including home-based diagnostic tests and novel electronic questionnaires—in the effort to create a comprehensive yet more personalized approach to assessment and treatment.

ICSD-3 Major Diagnostic Sections *

Table courtesy of Michael J. Sateia, MD

A chief goal is to improve the diagnosis of sleep disorders. Although approximately 70 million people in the U.S. have at least one sleep disorder, experts estimate that up to 80% of sleep disorders may go undetected or undiagnosed. One major challenge that clinicians face during the initial assessment of people with sleep disorders is the process of identifying and sorting out comorbidities. Untangling the causes and effects in bidirectional comorbidities can be particularly difficult. For example, insomnia—by far the most common sleep disorder—often is complicated by the presence of another sleep disorder, such as sleep apnea or restless legs syndrome.

“Some experts have even suggested that all cases of insomnia coexist with, or are caused by, another sleep disorder, most commonly sleep apnea,” says Clete A. Kushida, MD, PhD, Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and Division Chief and Medical Director of Stanford Sleep Medicine. “I’m not sure I would go quite that far, but certainly bidirectional comorbidities among individuals who experience sleep disorders are common. For example, pain syndromes—including back pain and limb pain, especially among older patients—are common comorbidities in patients with insomnia. Mood disorders also frequently occur in patients who experience insomnia.”

Comorbidities can complicate treatment and often require sleep specialists to collaborate with not only primary care physicians but also specialists in other therapeutic areas.

“If, for example, a person with insomnia also has been diagnosed with depression by a psychiatrist,” says Dr. Kushida, “our goal is to work hand in hand with the psychiatrist to find the right medication. There are both sedating and alerting antidepressants, and a patient may need to try one medication for a couple of weeks to months, slowly increasing the dose to a therapeutic level, until the effect on both the depression and the patient’s sleep can be determined. For some individuals, an alerting antidepressant can cause poor sleep, which in turn can exacerbate the depression. The process of achieving the right dose of the right medication can be complex, and benefits from a collaboration between specialists.”

Undetected obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) in patients with chronic pain, or other serious illnesses, can result in potentially dangerous comorbidities. Opioids, for example, are known to have adverse effects on respiration, and can lead to central sleep apnea (CSA)—shallow and irregular or interrupted breathing and sustained hypoventilation—a potentially lethal condition that can intensify the consequences of OSA. These risks underscore the need to improve methods for identifying and properly diagnosing the estimated 23.5 million U.S. adults with OSA. Public education and advocacy efforts are already helping to improve detection—in part by helping to address misconceptions about OSA.

“One of the biggest misconceptions is that only people who are significantly overweight experience sleep apnea,” says Dr. Kushida. “In fact, only up to 67% of people who have OSA are overweight, the rest are of normal weight. OSA also can be caused by craniofacial dysmorphism, or a defect of the airway that occurs during development. A narrow airway caused by deficient growth of the craniofacial skeleton, particularly the jaws, can become narrower and more prone to collapse with age, leading to sleep apnea.”

Treating Insomnia: The Value of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

Insomnia, the most prevalent sleep disorder, affects approximately one third of all adults and is the most common condition that family and primary-care physicians encounter. According to the International Classification of Sleep Disorders (ICSD-3), chronic insomnia is the inability to attain sufficient sleep (despite adequate opportunity) for at least three nights per week for three months or longer, with negative daytime consequences. For most people, the disorder is transient, but for approximately 10% to 15% of those who experience insomnia (around 30 million people) it becomes chronic. Although pharmacologic treatments for insomnia ( Table 2 ) can be effective, most experts now recommend against the long-term use of pharmacotherapy.

Selected Pharmaceutical Treatments for Insomnia 21 , 27

“If a person has been diagnosed with chronic insomnia, the only treatment that has been shown to have long-term benefit is cognitive behavioral therapy, “says Dr. Kushida. “Medications really should be considered short-term treatments, because patients tend to develop dependence on, or tolerance to, hypnotic drugs. In our clinic, we commonly see that, over time, medications stop having an effect, and that means that patients may try higher doses of a medication, or keep switching to different medications. So, medications are a temporary solution—they just put a Band-Aid on the problem of insomnia, whereas cognitive behavioral therapy targets one of the pathways toward success.”

Cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which involves techniques that work in part by reducing cognitive and somatic arousal, is estimated to be effective in approximately 70% to 80% of people who experience chronic insomnia. Dr. Kushida notes that while drugs can sometimes be useful in the treatment of acute insomnia, they become problematic after acute insomnia transitions to chronic insomnia.

“A person might be an OK sleeper for several years, and then suddenly experience a traumatic event, such as the loss of a job, a divorce, or the death of a loved one, resulting in very poor sleep,” says Dr. Kushida. “Down the road, that person might obtain a better job, overcome grief, or find a new relationship, but continue to experience insomnia. We think in some cases the transition from acute insomnia to chronic insomnia occurs because the behavioral event triggers something in the person’s physiology that may lead to long-term changes. Once they are in a chronic insomnia phase, we tell patients that CBT is the only truly effective intervention.”

If a patient is already taking hypnotics, Dr. Kushida says that he will gradually wean the patient off medications while introducing CBT. He notes that often it is necessary for sleep specialists to manage the expectations of chronic sufferers.

Clete A. Kushida, MD, PhD

“We sometimes have to let patients with chronic insomnia know that we may never get them back to where they were when they had optimal sleep,” Dr. Kushida explains. “The behavioral methods we use work well, and usually we can get patients to the point where the insomnia is having less of an impact on their quality of life. Our inability to completely restore the patient’s ability to sleep well may partly be explained by as yet unidentified changes in his or her neurophysiology or neurochemistry. Some patients with chronic insomnia can begin to sleep normally again, but for the vast majority, we aim to make insomnia less of a burden on a patient’s daily life.”

Improving Clinical Research

In the field of sleep medicine, as in many other therapeutic areas, future directions in clinical trial research will place an emphasis on patient engagement and patient-centered outcomes.

“Perhaps the most important aim these days when developing and implementing any type of large-scale clinical research study is to incorporate the patient’s perspective,” says Dr. Kushida, who is currently analyzing the results of a comparative effectiveness sleep study sponsored by the Patient-Centered Outcomes Research Institute (PCORI). 22 The study, designed and conducted by a team at Stanford, introduced a new model of patient-centered, coordinated care and tested it against conventional outpatient treatment for sleep disorders.

“The patient’s perspective is so invaluable in guiding the success of a study that ideally it should be incorporated right at the inception of a research question or idea,” says Dr. Kushida. “When you are designing an especially complicated trial, for example, it is easy to incorporate a lot of tests and measures without being aware of the burden these can place on the participants. It’s critical to learn from patients whether they are overwhelmed by the number of tests, or whether travel time or the amount of time they need to take off from work may be impractical.”

Other efforts to improve clinical research include those focused on correcting for and/or eliminating several confounding variables that tend to plague sleep research. The surprising power of the placebo effect, 23 the related disconnect between objective and subjective evaluations of sleep loss and recovery from sleep loss, variable adherence to treatments, and, more recently, deceptive practices among clinical trial participants, are a few examples.

The placebo effect, which refers to any outcome that may be attributable to the expectations of clinical trial participants rather than to the drug or device being tested, can be especially problematic in experimental protocols that involve self-reports of sleep quality.

“Clinical trials involving patients with disorders such as insomnia or RLS that rely solely on subjective measures, or ratings of severity based on patient report, are particularly vulnerable to the placebo effect,” says Dr. Kushida. “It has been demonstrated that when these patients believe that they are receiving the study drug or device the likelihood of their experiencing a positive effect can increase significantly. There have been efforts to develop or introduce new objective endpoints in these studies, which may help with this problem.”

Achieving the right balance of subjective and objective measures of sleep is an important goal in both research and clinical practice. The current gold standard for objective assessment of sleep is polysomnography (PSG), which includes electrophysiological recordings of brain activity (EEG), muscle activity (EMG), and eye movements (EOG). A valuable, non-invasive method for determining sleep continuity and sleep architecture, PSG has been an indispensable objective endpoint in clinical trials, but it is expensive and not always practical. Novel approaches to objective measurement, including actigraphy, which may be used to help minimize recall bias and complement subjective measures of sleep (e.g., sleep logs or diaries), still have drawbacks. 24

“The problem with wearable devices right now,” says Dr. Kushida, “is that they tend to overestimate sleep, sometimes by as much as an hour. They also are not yet capable of accurately detecting different stages of sleep, such as non-REM and REM sleep. Because of our proximity to Silicon Valley, our laboratory tests a lot of these new devices, and often by the time we have finished testing one prototype, new ones have emerged. The product cycles are rapid, and the companies keep incorporating newer and newer technology. So, down the road, within about five to ten years, I think these devices will likely estimate sleep and detect sleep stages with precision.”

Also, objective tools are needed for addressing problems with adherence to treatment. One important current aim is to detect and correct for non-obvious factors that result in failure to adhere to treatment, whether unintended or deliberate, to ensure that trial outcomes accurately reflect the efficacy of a drug, medical device, or behavioral intervention. 25 A related problem is deliberate deception by trial participants. As part of a National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-supported study focused on detecting and correcting for adherence problems, Dr. Kushida and colleagues began to explore the prevalence of deceptive practices among clinical trial participants. 26

“We found that deception among clinical trial participants is pretty common and that there is quite a range of deceptive practices, “says Dr. Kushida. “They include underreported drug holidays, fabrication or withholding of medical histories, pill dumping, exaggerated symptoms, and falsification of current health status. It’s important that we find a way to address these deceptive practices because both the integrity of research data and the safety of participants are at risk.”

Dr. Kushida adds that newer tools, such as electronic monitoring of pill dispensing and statistical predictive adherence models, may uncover and remedy pressing problems related to adherence and deceptive practices. “It already takes about 12 years for a new drug to be approved, and about three to five years for a new device to be approved. When deceptive practices are discovered too late, it can lead to the invalidation of research findings and further delays in approving much-needed treatments.”

Enhancing clinical research in the field will require a cooperative, international effort focused on advancing knowledge about sleep, circadian rhythms, and sleep disorders worldwide. During Dr. Kushida’s tenure as inaugural president of the World Sleep Society (WSS), he led an initiative to create international sleep fellowships to prepare physicians and scientists from various countries for future leadership roles in basic and/or clinical sleep research. He also oversaw the development of an International Sleep Research Network, designed to help sleep scientists and clinicians find collaborators with similar clinical/research interests. As the WSS continues to offer new services and expand its programs, it will be with an awareness of the needs of disadvantaged populations and the importance of access to appropriate treatment.

“One initiative of the WSS involves reviewing current published guidelines in various countries, to determine whether they meet international standards,” says Dr. Kushida. “Many guidelines are region-specific and list only medications approved in specific countries or regions. As we review the guidelines, we endorse them with caveats; we may note that particular treatments for insomnia are recommended, and when these are not available we recommend acceptable substitutes. The goal is to ensure that specialists can use practice guidelines in whichever country they practice sleep medicine, and that patients are receiving the best possible treatment available.”

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Importance of Sleep Essay | Essay on Importance of Sleep for Students and Children in English

February 13, 2024 by Prasanna

Importance of Sleep Essay:  Sleep is one of the most important things you need to do for your body because it is your body’s way of recharging its batteries. When you begin to feel sleepy at night, it means that you have reached the limit that your body has, and you should sleep so that you do not over-exert yourself.

Many people don’t get enough sleep at night, mostly because so many of us have turned into night owls who love to do so many things at night instead of the daytime. These are terrible habits, and we must learn to get rid of them by paying attention to the importance of sleep. For example, a bad habit like this would be watching TV shows late at night despite knowing that we have to wake up early the next morning.

You can also find more  Essay Writing  articles on events, persons, sports, technology and many more.

Long and Short Essays on Importance of Sleep for Students and Kids in English

Let’s look at some essays of different, increasing word lengths to know and understand the importance of sleep. These ‘Importance of Sleep’ Essays can also be like your inspiration to write your essay about the same.

Short Essay on Importance of Sleep 150 Words in English

Short Essay on Importance of Computer is usually given to classes 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6.

When we sleep, the brain recharges itself and heals our bodies in whichever parts we need healing. When we sleep, our blood vessels and circulatory system heal themselves. If you have a bruise, you will notice that it has healed a little bit when you go to sleep and wake up in the morning. Sleep does the same thing for the rest of the body as well, and it is essential to allow your batteries to charge while you heal yourself.

Many of us struggle with our sleep because of the prevalence of mobile phones and other addictive screens in our lives. Some severe problems can enter our lives when we do not get enough sleep. This can range from mental health problems like depression and anxiety to even physical ailments and issues like diabetes, cardiac arrest, obesity, high blood pressure, etc. We must be careful and get a good 6-8 hours of sleep every night.

The average hours that one adult should be sleeping every night is 8 hours, or you can give or take one or two hours. The problem with all the generations in the world is that there are so many disturbances around us that can easily distract us from what is essential. One such example of this is mobile phones – it is easy to get addicted to mobile phones that contain an entire world and keep scrolling through it instead of going to sleep.

It is essential to understand the reason why sleep is vital. Getting enough sleep helps heal your bodies from any pain or injuries; it betters your immune system, cognitive memory, and thinking capacity. Furthermore, getting adequate sleep is vital for keeping our hearts and other systems clean and with a good bill of health. Without getting a good number of hours worth of sleep at night, we are putting ourselves at the risk of mental health disruptions as well as physical disorders and problems such as depression, anxiety, heart attacks, obesity (leading to various other issues), and even exhaustion which can ultimately disrupt one’s life. We must get enough sleep to look and feel fresh and healthy every day.

Introduction

Many of us do not realise the importance that a good night’s sleep holds in our lives. It is so important to sleep well at night to prevent us from getting health problems which can be disruptive for our whole lives. Let’s talk a little bit more about the importance of sleep in our lives.

Healthy Living with Good Sleep

It is essential to sleep well to live a healthy life. There are many health benefits of getting a good night’s sleep, and there are many hindrances to when you don’t get a good night’s sleep. The benefits of good sleep are that it can boost your immune system, boost your cardiovascular health, improve our abilities to think and remember things more clearly, and contain our mental health by preventing some symptoms of anxiety and depression. Sleep also helps us out with containing our exhaustion of course, the best thing to do when you are tired is to go to sleep and regain the energy you need to carry forth with your life. Most importantly, sleeping well and sleeping enough helps prevent obesity, diabetes, heart problems, and various other issues.

We must all sleep for about 8 hours in our adult lives. It can be about an hour less or an hour more, but think about it this way – you must spend about one third to one-fourth of your day recharging your batteries to get ready for the remainder of the days.

You can also read many interesting facts equipped about the importance of sleep essay furthermore in the given here, Importance of sleep essay. Never miss it!

Importance of Sleep Essay 400 Words in English

Sleep is one of the most essential and inevitable things that we have to do in our lives. Whether you eat food or drink water, sleep is inevitable because it’s what the body does naturally. Sometimes it can be tough to get a full night’s sleep, but it is imperative to try.

The Trio of Good Health

We can deny nothing about the fact that there are three things we need to improve our lives – a good diet with tonnes of nutrition, an exercise routine, and, of course, a good night’s sleep every day. These are the three things that are very imperative in our lives to inculcate and follow. Sleeping well has impressive health benefits, such as improving our cardiovascular health and preventing obesity, which even come a lot of other problems. A balanced diet filled with nutritious foods helps us remain fit and healthy, and a good exercise plan will be good for the same, too. Sleeping enough also helps us out with our strength and performance during exercise. Thus, it is a good cycle that we should create for ourselves.

Benefits of Good Sleep

There are several benefits of getting a good sleep at night. It helps you maintain your body weight so that you do not become obese and add to this; there’s also the fact that people who sleep well at night often eat less than those who don’t, which also helps with the weight. Getting adequate sleep also increases your productivity by making you feel more energetic and giving you the time you need to rest. It also helps our lives be in a good mood, and good sleep puts a person in a good mood. Sleeping enough also allows our minds to function correctly and in a better way. Thus we can think better, and we also have a better memory power upon sleeping enough.

Getting adequate sleep is incredibly vital to our mental health and physical well-being. If we do not get enough sleep, we might get burnt out and not be able to carry out our lives in the way that we should be able to. Without the ability to do this, life can become painful and full of difficulties that may become complex over time. Thus, we must all take the initiative in our own lives to sleep on time and wake up on time to prevent any mental or physical blockages and hindrances.

Long Essay on Importance of Sleep 500 Words in English

Long Essay on Importance of Computer is usually given to classes 7, 8, 9, and 10.

Sleep is one of the most essential parts of our lives; still, most of us neglect it as though there’s nothing wrong with that. It is understandable that we barely ever get any time to rest when we have a hectic life. For so many of us workaholics, sleeping can even seem like something you can do later, that there are more things you can do in the time that you could be sleeping. However, working like this may be alright for a short while, but not getting enough sleep for a long-stretched period has been found to have terrible effects on the body in the long run. We must all learn how to take care of ourselves, and this begins by forming a good routine with an adequate amount of sleep inculcated in it, alongside a good diet and regular exercise.

It is a lesser-known fact that sleeping well and sleeping a fair amount of hours when we are supposed to supplements the maintenance of our weight – this means that if you sleep better, you’re less likely to put on more weight! This is corroborated because those who sleep more need fewer calories to function in a day, as they are more refreshed and energised and thus require less food to keep them afloat throughout the day calories mean less weight.

Sleep is when our body and brains regenerate, meaning that your blood vessels and your heart and the other parts of your body heal themselves while you are sleeping. Think about it this way – you are not doing anything, your eyes are closed, and at this time, your brain has no other work because you are not conscious of doing anything in particular that the brain needs to function for. Thus, this is the best time for your body to heal itself. You’ll notice that when you wake up after getting an injury the previous day, the bruises may have already begun to heal – scabs are created in the process of healing through the night while you sleep. Thus, sleep is so crucial for healing the body.

Getting your good 7-9 hours of sleep every night is imperative for our bodies to work well the next day. Sleeping removes the tiredness from our bodies, and it rejuvenates and re-energises us for the next day. With adequate sleep, we can focus on our work better, we can do more things in our day to make it more productive, and we will be able to think, read and do everything else much better through the course of the day with good sleep.

What Happens When We Don’t Sleep Well?

Not sleeping enough is one of the worst things that a person can do to their bodies. As mentioned before, sleeping is great for rejuvenating our bodies and healing our systems inside. So, it is the complete opposite that takes place when we don’t get enough sleep.

If we do not get enough sleep at night, we will end up with terrible health. Most of us end up binge-watching television shows, movies, and even things like YouTube videos at night, and we usually do this at night because, in the daytime, we generally remain busy with other things, like school, office, other work, running errands, and stuff like that. We all think that because we do a lot of work in the daytime, the nighttime is, in a way, free time for us to do as we want. However, this is not the right way to go about life.

We need to get enough sleep because, without it, our blood vessels and heart and other organs as such will stop healing by themselves. Without adequate sleep daily, our minds will always be occupied by one thing or another, especially about how tired we all may feel, and how we want to sleep. Sadly, many us don’t even realise this, and go about their day without sleeping much without knowing how it can affect them in the long run.

Risks for all kinds of health issues, including physical and mental health go up manifold without getting a good night’s sleep every day. Depression, anxiety, stress disorders, sleep disorders, heart attacks, diabetes, obesity, etc. are just a few of the dangers that come from not sleeping well at night.

How Should I Get More Sleep?

Good sleep does not necessarily mean that you get your 8 hours a night of sleep, which is enough. No, that is not enough – it also matters that the quality of this sleep is good. If you go to sleep with your mind disturbed, you will have disturbed sleeping – maybe you will have trouble falling off to sleep in the first place, or even keep on waking up at night because of nightmares and similar things.

The best ways to get some great sleep at night would be to turn off your phone early, maybe at 10 pm or 11 pm, and only turn it back on when you wake up in the morning, possibly at 7 am to 8 am. This is the best way to get more sleep.

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127 Sleep Essay Topics and Essay Examples

🏆 best sleep topic ideas & essay examples, 👍 good sleep topics to write about, 💡 interesting sleep topics, ❓ research questions about sleep.

• Problem of Sleep Deprivation This is due to disruption of the sleep cycle. Based on the negative effects of sleep deprivation, there is need to manage this disorder among Americans.
• Cross-Cultural Sleeping Arrangements in Children The aim of this paper is to study the different sleep patterns such as solitary or co sleeping in the United States of America and different cultures around the world.
• Effects of Sleeping Disorders on Human On the other hand, Dyssomnia relates to sleep disorders that develop as a result of lack of adequate sleep. In some cases, antidepressants have been used to cure sleep disorders that are as a result […]
• Sleepwalking Through Life In this case, there is a large context of life that people can be part of which should be understood. All in all, there is a lot that can be done to ensure that people […]
• Insomnia: A Sleeping Disorder Type Causes of insomnia can be classified into two; factors contributing to acute insomnia and chronic insomnia. Chronic insomnia can be as a result of emotional stress.
• Dream and Sleep Cycle Dreams occur in any of the phases of sleep, nonetheless, the most concise, clear, vivid and memorable dreams are observed in the last phase of sleep (known as the rapid eye movement REM sleep.
• Sleeping Habits & Physical Health: Students’ Perception Using the survey as the data collection tool, the investigators state that most students do not have appropriate sleep habits, although they agree that their academic success and physical health suffer because of the lack […]
• Sleep and Meditation Can Predict an Individual’s Satisfaction With Life This aim of this study is to investigate the effects of quality sleep and mindfulness on life satisfaction. In a nutshell, life satisfaction depends on the quality of sleep and meditation.
• Sleep Stages and Disorders A more elaborate look into understanding sleep take a look at the two aspects of sleep which is the behavior observed during sleeping periods as well as the scientific explanation of the physiological processes involved […]
• Effects of Lullaby Music on Quality of Sleep in Adults With Insomnia Insomnia consists of deprivation of the duration and quality of sleep, which affects the psychological and physical condition of people. In addition, the main limitation may be the unreliability of the information provided by the […]
• Sleep and Sensory Reactivity in the School-Aged Children The interaction of these elements should be considered in therapies expressly designed to improve sleep disruptions or sensory processing difficulties in children as a possible negative determinant that may adversely affect children’s health and normal […]
• Stages of Sleep, Brain Waves, and the Neural Mechanisms of Sleep As sleep is extremely important for a person’s well-being, I believe it is essential to pay attention to the mechanisms of sleep and how they work.
• The Issue of Chronic Sleep Deprivation The quality of sleep significantly impacts the health and performance of the human body. These findings point to significant promise for the use of exercise in the treatment of sleep disorders, but a broader body […]
• Sleep-Wake, Eating, and Personality Disorders Treatment On the other hand, treatment with prazosin and mianserin was effective; for example, the drug mianserin benefits patients suffering from sleep disorders. Psychotherapy approaches like Cognitive Behavioural Therapy for Insomnia and Imaginary Rehearsal Therapy are […]
• The Effect of Sleep Quality and IQ on Memory Therefore, the major aim of sleep is to balance the energies in the body. However, the nature of the activity that an individual is exposed to determines the rate of memory capture.
• How the Modern Life Has Affected Sleep Czeisler mentioned in the DW documentary about sleep: “The electric light to which we are exposed in terms of resetting our internal clock is like light on steroids”. That is why we should affect the […]
• Water Consumption and Sleep Hygiene Practices First, I will discuss that safe and sufficient water facilitates the practice of hygiene and well-being and is a critical determining factor for health.
• Depression Associated With Sleep Disorders Y, Chang, C. Consequently, it directly affects the manifestation of obstructive sleep apnea, restless leg syndrome, and periodic limb movement disorder in people with depression.
• How Technology Affects Sleep in Adolescents The critique will focus on the various sections of the article, where the strengths and weaknesses of each are outlined and discussed. The title of the article excellently reflects the essence of the research.
• Sleep Disturbance in Children Any disorder that alters the craniofacial or pharyngeal anatomy predisposes the child to obstructive narcolepsy is considered a medical problem associated with sleep disturbances in children. Central Sleep Apnea is the repeated cessation or decrease […]
• ADHD and Problems With Sleep This is because of the activity of a person in the middle of the day and the condition around them. The downside of the study is that the study group included 52 adults with ADHD […]
• Solving the Sleep Problem through TQM Principles The initiative to address the lack of sleep among employees and consequently improve their performance and the quality of services requires teamwork optimization.
• Eat, Sleep, and Console: Narcotic Abstinence Syndrome in Infants The choice of the quantitative design is justified by the necessity to prove the superiority of the proposed solution to the one that is currently deployed as the alternative way of managing the needs of […]
• The Importance of Sleeping and Dreaming Finally, I would not take this pill since I love seeing dreams and realize that this “miracle medicine” will cause too many negative consequences.
• Hippocampus-Dependent Memories During Sleep The smell was chosen because it was not necessary to interrupt the integrity of the subjects’ sleep to introduce it into the experiment.
• The Influence of Sleep Deprivation on Human Body It contradicts living in harmony with God, as when the person is irritated and moody, it is more difficult to be virtuous and to be a source of joy for others.
• Programs in Family Sleep Institute She explained to me the sleep cycle of the child and the adult, how many hours my child is supposed to sleep, the bedtime routine, and the method that we had to adopt during the […]
• Sleep Deprivation and Insomnia: Study Sources The topic of this audio record is a variety of problems with sleep and their impact on an organism. They proved the aforementioned conclusion and also paid attention to the impact of sleep deprivation on […]
• Sleep Problems Among Student-Athletes Despite the importance of the topic under study and the conclusions reached, the work raised additional questions and had some limitations.
• Excessive Sleepiness May Be Cause of Learning, Attention, and School Problems The information in the article “Excessive Sleepiness May Be Cause of Learning, Attention, and School Problems” by Calhoun and Fernandez-Mendoza is used to show that heavy daytime sleeping may be a cause of attention, learning, […]
• Sleep Hygiene Intervention Plan for Young Adults The main goals of this plan are to develop a list of guidelines for nurses on how they can offer a kind of educational program to their patients based on which young adults can understand […]
• Neurocognitive Consequences of Sleep Deprivation The CNS consists of the brain and the spinal cord while the PNS consists of all the endings of the nerve extensions in all organs forming the web that extends throughout the entire organ.
• Sleep Apnea, the Heart and the Brain in the Elderly They should get the necessary treatment of heart diseases and neuromuscular disorders Be attentive to yourself and live a full life!
• Sleepiness Level and Degree: Research Instruments A sum ranging from 0 to 24 of the score on the eight items makes the total score of the ESS.
• Evolutionary Biology: Sleep Patterns in Mammals This synthesis addresses the question of the origin of sleep in mammals and traces this phenomenon by studying the evolution of the mammalian brain and suggesting possible external factors that affect sleep patterns.
• “Childbirth Fear and Sleep Deprivation in Pregnant Women” by Hall To further show that the information used is current, the authors have used the APA style of referencing which demand the naming of the author as well as the year of publication of the article/book […]
• African Sleeping Sickness Using the various forms of detection and diagnosis it was discovered that African sleeping sickness is a major problem in Sub-Saharan Africa.
• The Use of Sleephormone in Children With Neuro-Developmental Disorders For the better management of the data that are planned to be retrieved from the clinical trial procedures, the following list of the definitions and acronyms used in the trial process is given.
• Sleep Deprivation and Learning at University It is a widely known fact that numerous people face the problem of lack of sleep. Second, sleeping is essential for increasing the productivity of students in the context of learning.
• Communication Between Sleep, Behavior and Obesity The purpose of the study seeks to evaluate the association between nighttime media use with sleep behaviors and variation in weight status for first-semester college students.
• Obstructive Sleep Apnea and Heart Diseases In children with Down syndrome, incidence rates of hypertension and sleepiness are high, and the problem is compounded in the presence of OSA.
• Sleep is a Vital Stage of a Day Cycle in Humans During the first stage of sleep, the EEG shifts to theta waves, with a frequency of 4 7 Hz. There are numerous sleep disorders, which can affect the well-being of a person.
• “The Effect of Nursing Quality Improvement and Mobile Health Interventions on Infant Sleep Practices” by Moon The following analysis is related to the article, “The effect of nursing quality improvement and mobile health interventions on infant sleep practices” by Moon et al.
• Sleep Deprivation: Biopsychology and Health Psychology Another theory that has been proposed in relation to sleep is the Circadian theory which suggests that sleep evolved as a mechanism to fit organisms into the light dark cycle of the world.
• Study of the Sleeping Process The paper entails a comprehensive analysis of the sleeping process in addition to evaluating the factors that affect the sleeping process.
• Sleep Disorders: Sleep Deprivation of the Public Safety Officers The effects of sleep disorders and fatigue on public safety officers is a social issue that needs to be addressed with more vigor and urgency so that the key issues and factors that are salient […]
• Sleep Versus Social Demands in Students The effects of has been exhibited more greatly in animals through studies and all animals have been shown to sleep in different forms.
• Sleep Deprivation: Personal Experiment As I had been perplexed, I did not take a step of reporting the matter to the police neither did I inform my neighbors.
• Recuperative Versus Circadian Theory of Sleep The Recuperative theory of sleep is based on the premise that humans require sleep to rejuvenate and recoup spent energy during the waking period.
• Non- and Rapid Eye Movement Sleep Non REM sleep represents 75% of sleep duration and occurs in four stages and REM sleep represents stage 5 of sleep.
• Main Information about Sleeping Disorders In the introduction part the paper provides an overview of sleep and sleep disorders. This led to the conclusion that instead of being a quite and peaceful period of rest and resuscitation as everyone would […]
• Memory Consolidation and Reconsolidation After Sleep The memory consolidation of the visual skill tasks is related to the REM sleep and the short wave component of the NREM.
• Sleep Disorders: Narcolepsy, Obstructive Sleep Apnea, Insomnia An important aspect of the pathogenesis is the autoimmune lesion of the orexin neurons of the hypothalamus, which leads to a decrease in the level of hypocretin-1.
• Blue Light Effect on Human Sleep The introduction is comprised of a thesis statement and a description of the critical thoughts of the paper. At the end of the paper, recommendations on how to reduce the adversarial effect of the blue […]
• The Role of Sleep in Humans’ Well-Being Each of the speakers in the videos focuses on a different characteristic of sleep, but all of them agree that without enough sleep, one does not perform to the fullest potential.
• Sleep Helps to Repair Damaged DNA in Neurons The researchers found that the chromosomes in the fish’s neurons would often change shape while their owners slept, enabling the repair of the damage accumulated in periods of activity.
• Adolescent Sleep and the Impact of Technology Use Particularly, the authors of the study explain why there is the need to know the answer to the question by providing a profound background to the case and stating that innovative technology has a profound […]
• Coffee Effects on Sleeping Patterns: Experiment Consumption of coffee before going to bed will cause individuals to have difficulty falling asleep The amount of coffee the subjects drink before going to bed The time after going to bed that subjects fall […]
• Sleep Disruptions in Healthcare Professionals First of all, the sleep disruption may lead to a lack of coordination in the team because some members would be fatigued during the working hours, which would interfere with their functioning and concentration in […]
• Sleep May Be Nature’s Time Management Tool by Carey The author states that no one knows why sleep exists therefore setting the context for the article in which she advances the numerous theories that are advanced as to the role that sleep plays.
• Physical Activity and Sleep Health in Adults In the introduction to the analysed study, a substantial scientific background for the problem of improving physical activity and sleep in adults is presented.
• Sleep-Disordered Breathing and Acute Ischemic Stroke In this case study, the investigator focused on ischemic stroke, one of the most common types of stroke in the world.
• Insomnia and Narcolepsy: Sleeping Disorders Besides, it was established that people with insomnia are inclined to overestimate the negative effect of sleeping disorder and underestimate the total time of sleep.
• Sleep Patterns’ Impact on Academic Performance Because some university classes begin as early as 7 o’clock in the morning and finish in the evening, the only option for such students is to reduce the length of night-time sleep in order to […]
• Prevalence of Sleep Disorders among Medical Students Nightmares and dreams arise in the course of REM sleep as it is linked to desynchronized and quick brain waves, deferral of homeostasis, and failure of muscular tonus.
• Emotions Clusters and Sleep Failure Earlier critics had argued that PANAS was not suitable for children, and this led to the development of specific PANAS-C for children.
• Sleep Deprivation and Specific Emotions The purpose of this study is to develop an understanding of the relationship between sleep deprivation and emotional behaviors. The study looks to create a link between the findings of past researches on the emotional […]
• Sleep Disturbance, Depression, Anxiety Correlation The above imply that many questions are still unanswered with respect to the kinds of sleep complaints affecting undergraduates and the impact on their psychological health.
• Relationship Between Depression and Sleep Disturbance It was emphasized that persistent disturbance, its severity, and the intermittent nature of the sleep were not associated with depression and its recurrence in the following years. The sleeping disturbance is a risk factor that […]
• Sleep and Psychopathology Relationships – Psychology Generally, available evidence shows that feelings of negative emotions such as anxiety are characterized by the dysfunction in cognitive and interpersonal spheres.
• Sleep Disorder Consequences on the Immune System Consequently, the research question for this paper is: what are the consequences of sleep disorder on the immune system? The primary goal of the study is to determine the effects of sleep disorder on the […]
• Importance of Sleep – Psychology Precisely, most of the organs of the body are at rest during sleep. It is during sleep that the body encodes the information it obtains during the day into the memory.
• Changes of Sleep in the Course of One Night Furthermore, voltage generated by eye rotation in their sockets and electrical activities of the muscles all help in the study of the cycles of sleep in the course of one night.
• Sleep Deprivation Impacts on College Students Additional research in this field should involve the use of diverse categories of students to determine the effects that sleep deprivation would have on them.
• Relationship Between Sleep and Depression in Adolescence Using SPSS for data analysis, the results indicate the presence of a correlation between elements of depression and sleep duration and quality.
• Ethical Issues in Treating Obstructive Sleep Apnea with Exercise Independently The approaches should ensure that necessary preventive and curative measures are put in place to facilitate the process of eradicating the disease that is causing immense sleep related complications.
• How Sleep Deprivation Affects College Students’ Academic Performance The study seeks to confirm the position of the hypothesis that sleep deprivation leads to poor academic performance in college students.
• Underlying Issues Associated with Sleep Disorders and Stress Of fundamental importance to this research paper is the realization that the amount of sleep that an individual gets is one of the internal factors that influence his or her own capacity to handle stress.
• The Consequences of Poor Sleep Conducting a research devoted to human sleep habits in children and feeling the affect on their confidence as adults, the existing data should be evaluated and the conclusions are to be drawn in the sphere […]
• Effects of Sleep Deprivation While scientists are at a loss explaining the varying sleeping habits of different animals, they do concede that sleep is crucial and a sleeping disorder may be detrimental to the health and productivity of a […]
• The Role of Melatonin in Determining the Sleep-Wake Cycle Melatonin plays a significant role in the circadian control of sleep as well as in restraining the development of malignant cells.
• The Phantom Menace of Sleep-Deprived Doctors This is one of the problems that should be addressed by hospital administrators. Therefore, it is vital to develop strategies that can improve the work of medical institutions.
• The Biological Basis of Sleep The authors suggest that it needs more accurate measurement of sleep and wake pattern by the use of the electrooculogram, the recording of the movement of the eye, EEG and electromyogram, the recording of the […]
• Sleep and Dreams: How Do They Work? During sleep, the brain is at rest while the rest of the body system is in active state. Thus, to prevent most of the body disorders in human both psychiatrists and health experts recommend sleep.
• Sleep Disorders with Children and Adolescences This study is important in terms of understanding of the effectives of empirical and theoretical research in the field and attracting the scientist’s attention to the problem so that appropriate and effective treatment to be […]
• Psychology of Sleep: Article Study The field of sleep and sleep disorders has been an integral part of psychological investigations: a number of scientists find it necessary to contribute sleep education and offer the ideas which help people improve their […]
• Sleep and Its Implication on Animals This paper is set to synthesize the evolution sleep in animals, its benefits and the recent knowledge that is linked to this natural phenomenon of near unconsciousness.”A Third of Life” addressed what is sleep and […]
• Sleep Process Research There are said to have five sleep stages, which are divided in to two: the rapid eye movement and the non rapid eye movement during which the dreams occur.
• A Day in the Sleep Clinic: Culture and Health The third aspect of the PEN-3 Model looks at the cultural issues and health beliefs. For instance, the Sudanese family belief in superstition may not affect the health outcome in the hands of the doctor.
• Using Depressants During Sleep Time The paper also holds up the notion that, today it is important to control the sleeping patterns, to conform to the lifestyle demands. The drugs are mainly used generally to reduce the sleep delays, thus […]
• Sleep Improves Memory It is possible to replace a traumatic memory with a pleasant one then take a brief moment of sleep to reinforce the pleasant memory.
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Why Do We Need Sleep?

Contributing Writer

Lucy Bryan is a writer and editor with more than a decade of experience in higher education. She holds a B. A. in journalism from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.F.A. in creative writing from Penn State University.

Want to read more about all our experts in the field?

Dr. Brandon Peters

Sleep Physician, Sleep Psychiatry Expert

Brandon R. Peters, M.D., FAASM, is a double board-certified neurologist and sleep medicine specialist and fellow of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine who currently practices at Virginia Mason Franciscan Health in Seattle. He is a leading voice in sleep medicine who works at the cutting edge of medicine and technology to advance the field.

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Table of Contents

Why Getting Enough Sleep Is Important

The science behind why we sleep, how much sleep do i need, the effects of a lack of sleep, how to always get a good night’s sleep.

If you’ve stayed awake all night—by choice, out of necessity, or in spite of your efforts to sleep—you know just how critical sleep is to your wellbeing. Everyone needs sleep, but about one in three American adults don’t get enough of it.

The consequences of sleep deprivation are serious, so it’s worth learning why sleep matters, how it works, and how to give yourself the best chances of getting a good night’s sleep.

Sleep is an essential function that allows your body and mind to recharge, leaving you refreshed and alert when you wake up. Healthy sleep also helps the body remain healthy and stave off diseases. Without enough sleep, the brain cannot function properly, impairing your abilities to concentrate, think clearly, and process memories.

Is Your Troubled Sleep a Health Risk?

A variety of issues can cause problems sleeping. Answer three questions to understand if it’s a concern you should worry about.

Sleep serves a variety of important physical and psychological functions, including:  

• Learning and memory consolidation: Sleep helps with focus and concentration—and it allows the brain to register and organize memories —all of which are vital to learning.
• Emotional regulation: Sleep helps people regulate their emotions Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source and better manage the physical and psychological effects of stress.
• Judgment and decision making: Sleep influences a person’s ability to recognize danger and threats. Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source Healthy sleep supports sound judgment, good decision making, and other executive functions.
• Problem solving: Research shows that “sleeping on” a complex problem improves a person’s chance of solving it. Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source
• Energy conservation: Sleep allows people to conserve energy through an extended period of reduced activity.
• Growth and healing: Sleep provides the release of growth hormone necessary for the body’s tissues to grow and repair damage.
• Immunity: Sleep supports immune function , allowing the body to fight off diseases and infections.

Human beings, like all species on Earth, evolved to survive and thrive on a planet with a 24-hour cycle of day and night. According to some theories of sleep, Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source sleeping in one consolidated block at night allowed early humans to simultaneously avoid predators, conserve energy, and meet their need for rest. It also kept them from having to adapt to life in two very different conditions—daylight and darkness.

The biological patterns that help humans live according to the 24-hour day-night cycle are called circadian rhythms . These rhythms work alongside the sleep drive —a desire to sleep that grows in intensity the longer a person has been awake—to cause people to feel sleepy at night and alert in the morning. 

Circadian rhythms, including the sleep-wake cycle, operate according to environmental cues. Every evening, as darkness sets in, the body begins releasing the sleep hormone melatonin—and every morning, with the arrival of light , the body’s melatonin levels become undetectable. An evening drop and morning rise in body temperature accompanies this cycle, enhancing sleepiness and alertness at the right times.

Stages of Sleep

Our sleep architecture—that is, the way the body cycles through specific stages of sleep —enables the beneficial processes that occur during sleep, such as healing and learning. There are three non-rapid eye movement (non-REM) stages of sleep followed by rapid eye movement (REM), the final stage of sleep. Experiencing all four usually takes anywhere from 1.5 to 2 hours. Trusted Source UpToDate More than 2 million healthcare providers around the world choose UpToDate to help make appropriate care decisions and drive better health outcomes. UpToDate delivers evidence-based clinical decision support that is clear, actionable, and rich with real-world insights. View Source

• Stage N1: This is the lightest stage of sleep, and it usually only lasts a few minutes.
• Stage N2: Healthy adults usually spend about half of the night in N2 sleep. While brain activity slows, there are bursts of activity that may help with memory retention and learning.
• Stage N3: N3 sleep, also called “slow wave sleep” or “deep sleep,” helps a person wake up feeling refreshed. During this stage, blood pressure lowers, heart rate and breathing rate slow, and the body secretes growth hormone. People generally spend about 10% to 20% of the night in this stage. 
• REM Sleep: As its name suggests, people’s eyes intermittently move rapidly during this sleep stage. Most vivid dreaming takes place during REM sleep, and skeletal muscles become temporarily paralyzed to prevent a person from acting out their dreams. Memory consolidation occurs in this stage. It accounts for 20% to 25% of a typical night of sleep, with more of it occurring towards morning.

Healthy individuals cycle through all four stages of sleep multiple times a night. Regular sleep disruptions, as well as sleep disorders that affect sleep architecture like sleep apnea, can have serious consequences for physical health and mental health .

Experts generally recommend that adults get at least seven hours of sleep per night. Trusted Source National Library of Medicine, Biotech Information The National Center for Biotechnology Information advances science and health by providing access to biomedical and genomic information. View Source However, sleep needs can vary dramatically from person to person. Your activity level, your health status, and many other factors influence how much sleep you need , but the optimal number of hours typically falls within a specific range depending on your age and stage in life.

Age Group	Age Range	Recommended Amount of Sleep per Day
Infant	4-12 months	12-16 hours
Toddler	1-2 years	11-14 hours
Preschool	3-5 years	10-13 hours
School-age	6-12 years	9-12 hours
Teen	13-18 years	8-10 hours
Adult	18 years and older	7 hours or more

Not getting the amount of sleep your body needs can have serious consequences. Just one sleepless night can make it harder for you to focus and think clearly, and you might feel tired or sluggish during the day. You’re more likely to feel irritable and to exercise poor judgment when you haven’t had enough sleep. And sleep deprivation significantly elevates your risk Trusted Source UpToDate More than 2 million healthcare providers around the world choose UpToDate to help make appropriate care decisions and drive better health outcomes. UpToDate delivers evidence-based clinical decision support that is clear, actionable, and rich with real-world insights. View Source of making a mistake at work or having a car accident.

Long-term sleep deprivation carries all these risks and more. Chronic insufficient sleep may:

• Suppress your immune system, increasing your susceptibility to sickness and infection 
• Increase your risk of developing heart problems, type 2 diabetes, and high blood pressure 
• Interfere with your metabolism and elevate your risk for obesity 
• Cause your relationships to suffer at work and at home 
• Lead to depression and anxiety 

The effects of sleep debt compound quickly, so the sooner you can address sleep difficulties, the better.

The good news is that many sleep problems improve and even disappear when you take the right steps to treat them. Start by implementing healthy sleep hygiene practices at home.

• Get at least 20 minutes of exposure to natural light in the morning. 
• Commit to a regular sleep schedule.
• Adopt a relaxing bedtime routine.
• Make sure your bedroom environment is cool, dark, quiet, and comfortable.
• Avoid electronics with screens in the hour before bed.
• Exercise regularly and early in the day. 
• Avoid alcohol, nicotine, and caffeine in the hours before bed. 

If you have trouble sleeping even after taking these steps, contact your doctor. With the right treatments, you can get the sleep your body needs.

• New Research Evaluates Accuracy of Sleep Trackers
• Listening to Calming Words While Asleep Boosts Deep Sleep
• Distinct Sleep Patterns Linked to Health Outcomes
• Association Between Sleep Duration and Disturbance with Age Acceleration

About Our Editorial Team

Lucy Bryan, Contributing Writer

Medically Reviewed by

Dr. Brandon Peters, Sleep Physician, Sleep Psychiatry Expert

References 7 sources.

Vandekerckhove, M., & Wang, Y. L. (2017). Emotion, emotion regulation and sleep: An intimate relationship. AIMS neuroscience, 5(1), 1–17.

Khan, M. A., & Al-Jahdali, H. (2023). The consequences of sleep deprivation on cognitive performance. Neurosciences (Riyadh, Saudi Arabia), 28(2), 91–99.

Sio, U. N., Monaghan, P., & Ormerod, T. (2013). Sleep on it, but only if it is difficult: effects of sleep on problem solving. Memory & cognition, 41(2), 159–166.

Freiberg A. S. (2020). Why We Sleep: A Hypothesis for an Ultimate or Evolutionary Origin for Sleep and Other Physiological Rhythms. Journal of circadian rhythms, 18, 2.

Kirsch, D. (2024, March). Stages and architecture of normal sleep. In S. Harding & A.Eichler (Ed.). UpToDate.

Consensus Conference Panel, Watson, N. F., Badr, M. S., Belenky, G., Bliwise, D. L., Buxton, O. M., Buysse, D., Dinges, D. F., Gangwisch, J., Grandner, M. A., Kushida, C., Malhotra, R. K., Martin, J. L., Patel, S. R., Quan, S. F., Tasali, E., Non-Participating Observers, Twery, M., Croft, J. B., Maher, E., … Heald, J. L. (2015). Recommended amount of sleep for a healthy adult: A joint consensus statement of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine and Sleep Research Society. Journal of Clinical Sleep Medicine, 11(6), 591–592.

Maski, K. (2024, March). Insufficient sleep: Evaluation and management. In T. Scammell & A. Eichler (Ed.). UpToDate.

Learn More About How Sleep Works

Can You Learn a Language While Sleeping?

How to Become a Morning Person

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How Memory and Sleep Are Connected

What Causes Excessive Sleepiness?

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Polyphasic Sleep: Benefits and Risks

Biphasic Sleep: What It Is And How It Works

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REM Rebound: Causes and Effects

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Alpha Waves and Sleep

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Circadian Rhythm

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Sleep Debt: The Hidden Cost of Insufficient Rest

How Sleep Works: Understanding the Science of Sleep

What Makes a Good Night's Sleep

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Adenosine and Sleep: Understanding Your Sleep Drive

Oversleeping

Hypnagogic Hallucinations

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