I enjoy blogging about things that I’m interested in or things that I can relate with. Something that I really can relate with is sleep deprivation. There’s a common misconception of what the definition of sleep deprivation is. Sleep deprivation is when someone is being robbed of sleep through experiments or in real life. The inability to fall asleep is insomnia, a whole different topic. Sleep deprivation is extremely common among people my age, especially kids in either high school or college. Let’s do a little test to see how deprived of sleep you are.
In my psychology class last year, we had a chart of the seven days of the week. The recommended amount of sleep suggested for kids our age is 8 hours (this varies). That means you should be getting on average 56 hours of sleep a week. Write down the approximations of how many hours of sleep you get each day of the week (taking into consideration that weekends you typically get more sleep). What mine came out to be was that I was nearly 10 hours deprived of sleep per week. If you think that sounds like a lot, take that number and multiply it by 52. Instead of weekly sleep deprivation, you now have your yearly sleep deprivation. I’m 520 hours deprived of sleep in a year! That’s almost 22 full days! This is bad and something that to me has always been something that was difficult to fix.
Why do people get so deprived of sleep? Well there are many factors. People could be extremely stressed out and not go to bed early enough. People might have commitments that last really late, which will force them to go to sleep late. Or a lot of the times (including with myself) people trade sleep to finish work or do other things such as hang out. All these factors are key in sleep deprivation. We sometimes have it cursed upon is, or sometimes do it to ourselves. It’s not a good thing at all, nonetheless.
Some health factors that can be caused by sleep deprivation are decreased performance and alertness. Of course, if you’re tired because of a lack of sleep, you won’t be able to do things that you would normally be able to do when you have full energy. It is also said that you can impair your memory through lack of sleep. Stress levels can dramatically increase as well. For more outcomes of sleep deprivation, you can locate them here.
Finally, to show you what other college kids are feeling, a study in 2001 from Brown University was conducted to see what kind of sleep college kids were getting. It was found that only 11% of college students claimed that they had a sufficient amount of sleep nightly. 73% said that they have occasional sleep problems. 73%! So if you’re curious to see if you were a select few that had sleep problems, you are not alone. At all. Sleep deprivation isn’t good. In order to prevent sleep deprivation, you should go to sleep at a set schedule every day, don’t consume heavy meals late at night prior to your sleep, and many more ways.
Prioritize your time. I know that for a fact that this blog not only goes out to the readers, but also to the writer himself! I definitely need to prioritize my time and sleep and more appropriate hours. It’s important because sleep is good for you, and with a lack of it, I’m only hurting myself.
Sources:
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/features/important-sleep-habits
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/sleep+deprivation
http://www.brown.edu/Student_Services/Health_Services/Health_Education/common_college_health_issues/sleep.php
http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/preventing-sleep-problems
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