Everything around us, including ourselves, all involve biology in some sort of way. Sleeping is something that every person enjoys and desires because they are resting avoiding stress etc. However, some people struggle to sleep are waking up showing up to school or work so tired because they either stayed up all night or just did not get much sleep. Most of the times other people, including myself, tend to struggle on sleep for the reason being that I am stressed and want to be on top of my school work and everything else that happens in my everyday life.
There are different types of sleep deprivations or disorders sleep apnea, which is the difficulty breathing when you’re sleeping, also known as snoring,insomnia, meaning not able to sleep at all, etc., but the most common is insomnia. What I have always wanted to know is how sleep deprivation is connected to biology? Sleep deprivation means an individual who lacks sleep. When a person is restricted to sleeping they discover, weight gain, weight loss, sleepiness, and effectiveness of their self health. Teenagers and older adults are known to experience is sleep deprivation that causes them to wake up dragging themselves out of bed and go through their day because of the loss of sleep.
Adolescents also seem to experience sleep deprivation. Sleep deprivation can be experienced by many people for numerous reasons. Nonetheless, sleep deprivation tolerance has a possibility of being genetic. Overall, sleep deprivation can be treated with medications, coping skills, and forming yourself new schedules that can help sleep earlier and have lots of rest.
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In the United States, about 50 to 70 million people are diagnosed with a sleep disorder. There are 48% of the people make reports that are snoring. Also, it is known for people to be sleeping during the day, “37.9% reported unintentionally falling asleep at least once in the preceding month” (ASA). The part that people should try avoiding is falling asleep while driving, 4.7 percent of the people are reported for dozing off when driving. “Drowsy driving is responsible for 1,500 fatalities and 40,000 nonfatal injuries annually in the United States” (ASA).”
Of course the most common sleep disorder is insomnia, it is reported that approximately 30% are diagnosed with disorder and 10 percent have chronic insomnia. It is recorded that 25 million people in the United States have obstructive sleep the percent in women ranges from 9 percent to 21 percent and for men it is about 31 percent. According to the Sleep-Deprivation Statistics, 37 percent of people from ages 20 to 39 years old are reported to have short sleep duration while people aged 40 to 60 year old is recorded to 40 percent. Adults get less than 7 hours of sleep in the past 24 hours are experienced by 35 percent of people. There are records of people from different races and ethnicities who get less than 7 hours of sleep. It holds that there are 34.4 percent of whites that get less than 7 hours of sleep.
Hispanics show that 34.5 percent also get less than 7 hours of sleep. African Americans take 45.8 percent and Natives have 40 percent to 47 percent that receive a short amount of sleep. In addition, close to 46 percent get less sleep come from people with other ethnicities and multiracials. Other multiracial Babies, children, teenagers, and adults are supposed to be sleeping a certain amount of hours to wake up fully rested and not groggy or lazy. Babies and infants are supposed to sleep close to 16 hours which includes naps. Moreover as they get older they tend to start waking up earlier but still maintaining a full night’s rest. Children should be sleeping about 14 hours including their naps. Teenagers get about 10 hours of sleep and adults get 7 to 10 hours of sleep.
There are many causes of encountering sleep deprivation. For example, people stay up because they choose to stay up. However, some people do not realize that your body needs to rest.“Children and young adults are most vulnerable to the negative effects of sleep deprivation” (Davis). The people choose to stay up because they are either on the phone, reading an interesting book, and most likely binge watching a Tv show. They also choose to stay up because they are probably taking care of a sick loved one or they themselves might be sick that causes the lack of sleep.
It is common that part of the society lacks sleep because they are doing work for their jobs or even for school. Drinking caffeine comes into effect when people decide to stay up late when it comes to work. College students in particular stay up late doing papers, studying for exams, and doing homework. I am a college student and I do experience sleep deprivation and so do many more students; I go to the library sometimes and see students there late at night as well. College students lack sleep for the reason that they are stressed, working to get on the Dean’s List, or the professors warn their students on difficulty of their assignments to start reviewing.
Medications that are prescribed by doctors can cause insomnia. “Some drugs used to treat disorders such as epilepsy or attention deficit disorder (ADHD) can cause insomnia” (Better Health). Depending on where people sleep is another cause of sleep deprivation; because of their temperature set in their room, uncomfortable bed, loud neighbors, and your partner snoring. Poor sleep hygiene can lack a person’s sleep because they have stuff on their mind that stresses or worries them. One of the biggest things that bring adults to sleep deprivation is being parents; having babies and toddlers that frequently cry all night can bring parents to lose sleep.
Lacking sleep can affect people’s moods, overall performance and especially their health. Losing sleep can bring irritability, lack of motivation, anxiety, and symptoms of depression. It can bring down their performance by lacking concentration, energy, attention deficits, and forgetfulness that brings an increase on poor decisions. People everywhere can experience these poor performances in school, college and even in adult life workings, bringing down their overall GPA or loss of their jobs etc. Which will bring on their symptoms of depression along with many other things as their lack of sleep worsens. “A sleep deprived person is likely to fall asleep when forced to sit still in… a meeting or class” (Assm Fact Sheets).
People around the world that are lacking sleep can cause poor driving bringing in car accidents as well as causing injuries to themselves or others in their workplace. As for their health, lacking sleep can cause weight gain leading to obesity or the person can lose weight. According to Kathleen Davis’s article on Medical News Today, “Two hormones in the body, leptin and ghrelin, control feelings of hunger and satiety, or fullness. The levels of these hormones are affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation also causes the release of insulin, which leads to increased fat storage and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes.” It can affect vital signs which involve, blood pressure, body temperature, heart rate and breathing rate that bring on heart attacks. Sleep deprivation affects the brain as well.
There was a study about monitoring the brains of sleep deprived people as they performed basic learning tasks while using the functional magnetic fMRI. The results that the sleep deprived brains found a lot of activity in parts of the prefrontal cortex of the brain, the part of the brain that supports cognitive behavior, expression, and decision making. “The average non-sleep-deprived subject’s brain needed to exert a lot more effort than the brain of an average non-sleep deprived person… the brains of sleep-deprived people were trying to compensate for the adverse effects created by sleep deprivation”(ASA). Nonetheless, people can die due to sleep deprivation. “100,000 deaths occur each year in the U.S. Hospitals due to medical errors and sleep deprivation have been shown to make significant contribution” (ASA).
Those who have trouble sleeping can seek for assistance at a sleep disorder clinic or go to a doctor for treatments of sleep deprivation. The treatment skills for sleep deprivation do not fully fix your sleep troubles, however they can help you improve your sleeping. For example, sleeping aids, a few of them affect areas in the brain that controls alertness while others treat other sleeping disorders besides insomnia that causes drowsiness. Also, they even sell sleeping aids over the counter. A few of the counter sleeping aids are some that are used to treat allergy symptoms the medicine beings side effects such as drowsiness, nausea, dry mouth and constipation. Although people can buy sleeping aids over the counter, it is optional that you can visit a doctor and receive a prescription from a doctor.
Prescription of sleep meds involve different kinds, such as, benzodiazepines, which is a sleeping pill that targets types of receptors in the brain that promote sleep. However, benzodiazepines can be addictive so people have to take these as a caution but have a possibility of a few harsh side effects, like dizziness, muscle weakness, and nausea. CPAP Machines and CPAP Masks also assist on helping people with sleep apnea sleep better and not have themselves or also if they have a partner have full rest. These masks and machines are tratends that uses the room’s air to keep the airway open during sleeping hours.
The machine blows air through a hose that is attached to a mask that goes on the face by velcro straps and can be adjusted to different air pressures. There are different designs is the machine that performs the same effect to the person going to sleep. CPAP machines and masks are the most effective treatments for sleep apnea. Similarly, BiPAP machines perform the same as CPAP machines that help sleep apnea, and patients who have pulmonary issues too except it is more improved as well as being expensive. People who snore used mouthpieces or mouth guards that stop the snoring.
The biological factor that is included in sleep deprivation is that a genetic differentiation can make a few people possibly suffer some of the effects of sleep deprivation. In fact research was conducted and discovered that people with a specific gene would experience sleepiness and other side affects that are also experienced in people who are sleep deprived. “This gene may be a biomarker for predicting how people will respond to sleep deprivation, which has significant health consequences and affects millions of people around the world” (Warner). The specific gene is somewhat related to narcolepsy. “Narcolepsy is a neurological sleeping disorder which controls the effects of sleep and wakefulness” (WebMD).
People that have the gene run from to 62 percent to 88 percent in which they all end up diagnosed with a sleeping disorder. Furthermore, melatonin is produced as a small structure in a part of the brain which triggers a person’s sleepiness. “Research shows that in teens, the production of melatonin doesn’t usually begin until one or two hours later than it does for younger or older people”(HighSchool). In a teenager’s brain, it does take a while for melatonin to process which causes them to lose out on sleep as well as those who fight the sleep which causes them difficulty to wake up early or on time.
