89 Sleep Deprivation Essay Topic Ideas & Examples

🏆 best sleep deprivation topic ideas & essay examples, 📌 simple & easy sleep deprivation essay titles, 👍 good essay topics on sleep deprivation, ❓ sleep deprivation research questions.

  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 […]
  • 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.
  • “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 […]
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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 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.
  • 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.
  • 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 […]
  • What Are The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation For Paramedics
  • The Innate Immune System During Sleep Deprivation
  • Sleep Deprivation Negatively Influences Driving Performance
  • What Effect Does Sleep Deprivation Have on Physiological and Cognition
  • Sleep Deprivation And Its Effects On The Lives And Culture Of Different
  • The Correlation Between Sleep Deprivation And Academic Performance
  • The Importance of Sleep and the Health Impact of Sleep Deprivation in Humans
  • Effects of Sleep Deprivation on the Academic Performance of DLSL Account
  • The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation Among College Students
  • The Dangers and Effects of Sleep Deprivation Among Nurses and the Ways to Prevent the Sleep-Related Problem
  • Sleep Deprivation and its Affects on Daily Performances
  • The Body Of Knowledge Regarding Adolescent Sleep Deprivation
  • Poor Performance in School/Work as a Consequence of Sleep Deprivation
  • The Fascinating World of Sleep and the Effects of Sleep Deprivation
  • Symptoms And Treatment Of Sleep Deprivation
  • Sleep Deprivation And Aggression Among College Students
  • The Effects Of Sleep Deprivation On Academic Performance
  • Sleep Deprivation On Eating And Activity Behaviors
  • Sleep Deprivation: What Causes The Sleeplessness And How Long It Lasts
  • The Relationship Between Sleep Deprivation And The Human Body
  • Students And Chronic Sleep Deprivation: How School Start Times Can Impact This
  • What is Sleep and the Effects of Sleep Deprivation
  • Several Health and Behavioral Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation
  • Sleep Deprivation, Nightmares, And Sleepwalking
  • The Factors That Contribute to Sleep Deprivation and Its Effects on the Sleep Cycle
  • The Dangers Of Teen Sleep Deprivation: Benefits Of Adopting Later Start Times For High Schools
  • The Issue of Sleep Deprivation, Its Results and Associated Risks
  • The Negative Effects of Sleep Deprivation in Human Beings
  • The Stages of Sleep and the Effects of Sleep Deprivation
  • The Negative Effects of Sleep Deprivation to Mental and Physical Health
  • Effects Of Sleep Deprivation On One’s Performance And Function
  • How Sleep Deprivation Can Effect Weightlifting Performance
  • The Causes of Sleep Deprivation in America: a Nation of Walking Zombies
  • The Sleep Deprivation Epidemic Is Affecting Teenagers
  • Sleep Matters: The Human Condition in the Midst of Sleep Deprivation
  • Sleep Deprivation : The Brain Function And Physical Body
  • Sleep Deprivation And Reduction, Sleep Disorders, And The Drugs Used To Treat Them
  • The Effects of Total Sleep Deprivation on Bayesian Updating
  • The Negative Effects of Sleep Deprivation Among Teens and the Solutions to the Problem
  • Light Pollution, Sleep Deprivation, and Infant Health at Birth
  • The Effects Of Food And Sleep Deprivation During Civilian
  • The Study of Rechtschaffen (1983) on Sleep Deprivation
  • How Sleep Deprivation Affects Psychological Variables Related to College Students Cognitive Performance
  • Sleep Deprivation : Sleep And The Adverse Effects Of Sleep Disorders
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Psychological Health?
  • What Effect Does Sleep Deprivation Have on Physiology and Cognition?
  • How Does Lack of Sleep Affect Physical Health?
  • Does Sleep Deprivation Significantly Interfere With Driving?
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Psychological Variables Related to College Students’ Cognitive Performance?
  • Are the Brains’ Motor Function Affected by Sleep Deprivation?
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Work Performance?
  • Does Sleep Deprivation Effect College Students’ Academic Performance?
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Cognitive Functions?
  • Does Too Much Homework Cause Sleep Deprivation?
  • How Can Sleep Deprivation Effect Weightlifting Performance?
  • What Are the Effects of Sleep Deprivation for Paramedics?
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Lead to Cardiovascular Disease?
  • What Are the Symptoms of Sleep Deprivation?
  • How Does Sleep Deprivation Affect Health?
  • Can Sleep Problems in Patients With Parkinson’s Disease Be About Serotonin?
  • How Common Are Sleep Problems in Teenagers?
  • What Are the Criteria to Classify Mild, Moderate, and Severe Sleep Deprivation in Humans?
  • How to Measure Sleep and Insomnia in Adult Video Gamers?
  • What Are the Physiological and Psychological Effects on Sleep of Electronics in the Bedroom?
  • Is Bipolar Disease a Sleep Regulation Disorder?
  • What Is the Scale on Sleep Deprivation?
  • How Does Lack Sleep Affect Physical Health?
  • Does Sleep Deprivation Induce by Reward Rather Than Punishment Result in Different Effects?
  • How Does Lack of Sleep Affect the Ability to Concentrate, Think and Learn?
  • What Are the Main Types of Sleep Disorders?
  • Can a Person either Become Sick or Die After Complete Sleep Deprivation?
  • What Are Problems Can Sleep Deprivation Lead To?
  • Does Sleep Deprivation Cause Permanent Brain Damage?
  • How Long Does It Take to Reverse Sleep Deprivation?
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American Psychological Association Logo

Why sleep is important

Sleep

  • 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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How Lack of Sleep Impacts Cognitive Performance and Focus

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Eric Suni has over a decade of experience as a science writer and was previously an information specialist for the National Cancer Institute.

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Dr. Nilong Vyas

Pediatrician

Dr. Vyas is a pediatrician and founder of Sleepless in NOLA. She specializes in helping parents establish healthy sleep habits for children.

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Table of Contents

How Poor Sleep Affects the Brain

How does poor sleep affect creativity and other cognitive processes, are the cognitive impacts of poor sleep the same for everyone, can sleep disorders affect cognition, does too much sleep affect cognition, will improving sleep quality benefit cognition.

Getting enough hours of high-quality sleep fosters attention and concentration, which are prerequisites for most learning. Sleep also supports numerous other aspects of cognition, including memory, problem-solving, creativity, emotional processing, and judgment. Levels of brain activity fluctuate during each stage of sleep — including both rapid eye movement (REM) and non-REM (NREM) sleep — and evidence increasingly suggests that sleep enhances most types of cognitive function.

For people with sleep deprivation, insomnia, sleep apnea, or other conditions that prevent them from getting adequate rest, short-term daytime cognitive impairment is common. Improving sleep quality can boost cognitive performance, promote sharper thinking, and may reduce the likelihood of age-related cognitive decline.

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.

During a typical night of sleep, an individual cycles through the three stages of NREM sleep, followed by a period of REM sleep every 90 to 120 minutes, several times per night. Both the brain and body experience distinct changes during these cycles that correspond to individual stages of sleep . During each part of this process, different chemicals in the brain become activated or deactivated to coordinate rest and recovery.

Poor sleep can take many forms, including short sleep duration or fragmented sleep. Without adequate sleep, the brain struggles to function properly. Because they do not have time to recuperate, neurons in the brain become overworked and less capable of optimal performance in various types of thinking.

The short-term detriments of poor sleep on the brain and cognition can be the result of pulling an occasional all-nighter, while those with chronic sleep problems may see a continuous negative effect on day-to-day tasks. Over the long-term, poor sleep may put someone at a higher risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

What Are the Short-Term Cognitive Impacts of Poor Sleep?

Poor sleep can harm intellectual performance, academic achievement, creative pursuits, and productivity at work. The cognitive impacts of poor sleep can also create safety risks, including drowsy driving . Motor skills, keeping rhythm, and even some types of speech can decline without proper sleep. The potential short-term impacts of poor sleep are wide-ranging:

  • Excessive Sleepiness: Drowsiness and fatigue are common daytime effects of a night of poor sleep. In response to excessive fatigue, a person may inadvertently nod off for a few seconds, which is known as a microsleep .
  • Poor Attention Span: Poor sleep reduces a person’s attention, as well as their learning and processing. A lack of sleep has also been found to induce effects that are similar to being drunk 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 , which slows down thinking and reaction time . Poor sleep also diminishes placekeeping 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 , which includes the ability to carry out instructions.
  • Reduced Adaptability: Some studies have found lack of sleep to hinder cognitive flexibility, reducing the ability to adapt and thrive in uncertain or changing circumstances. A major reason this occurs is rigid thinking and “feedback blunting” Trusted Source Oxford Academic Journals (OUP) OUP publishes the highest quality journals and delivers this research to the widest possible audience. View Source , in which the capacity to learn and improve on-the-fly is diminished.
  • Reduced Emotional Capacity: Poor sleep can also alter how emotional information is understood 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 . When learning something new, analyzing a problem, or making a decision, recognizing the emotional context is often important. However, insufficient sleep impedes the ability to properly process the emotional component of information.
  • Impaired Judgment: In some cases, this dysregulated emotional response impairs judgment. People who do not get sufficient sleep are more likely to make risky choices 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 may focus on a potential reward rather than downsides. It can be difficult to learn from these mistakes, since the normal method of processing and consolidating emotional memory is compromised due to lack of sleep.

What Are the Long-Term Cognitive Impacts of Poor Sleep?

Insufficient sleep and sleep fragmentation are frequently associated with cognitive decline and dementia. Furthermore, in people already diagnosed with dementia, poor sleep has been linked to a worse disease prognosis. Some cognitive effects of poor sleep can be felt immediately, but mounting evidence shows that sleep influences your long-term risk of cognition issues:

  • Impaired Memory: Both NREM and REM sleep appear to be important for broader memory consolidation 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 , which helps reinforce information in the brain so that it can be recalled when needed. NREM sleep has been linked with declarative memory, which includes things like basic facts or statistics, and REM sleep is believed to boost procedural memory such as remembering a sequence of steps. Poor sleep impairs memory consolidation by disrupting the normal process that draws on both NREM and REM sleep for building and retaining memories. Studies have even found that people who are sleep deprived are at risk of forming false memories 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 .
  • Alzheimer’s Disease: Research shows that sleep helps the brain conduct important housekeeping, such as clearing out potentially dangerous beta amyloid proteins. In Alzheimer’s disease, beta amyloid forms in clusters, called plaques, that worsen cognitive function. Studies have found that even one night of sleep deprivation can increase the amount of beta amyloid in the brain 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 . One analysis found a considerably higher risk of Alzheimer’s disease 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 in people with sleep problems, estimating as many as 15% of cases of Alzheimer’s disease were attributable to poor sleep.

Creativity is another aspect of cognition that is hindered by sleeping problems. Connecting loosely associated ideas is a hallmark of creativity, and this ability is strengthened by good sleep. NREM sleep provides an opportunity for information to be restructured and reorganized 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 in the brain, while new ideas and links between thoughts often emerge during REM sleep. These processes enable insight, a core element of innovation and creative problem-solving.

Limited or restless sleep can also indirectly affect cognition. For example, migraine sufferers are more likely to have morning headache attacks 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 when they do not get enough sleep, and lack of sleep can increase the risk of infections 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 like the common cold. Sleep deprivation may worsen symptoms of mental health conditions like anxiety and depression. These and numerous other physical and mental health issues are shaped by sleep quality, and may affect a person’s attention and concentration.

Not everyone is affected by poor sleep in the same way. Studies have found that some individuals may be more susceptible to cognitive impairment from sleep deprivation, and this may be influenced by genetics.

Research has discovered that adults are better at overcoming the effects of sleep deprivation than younger people. Teens are considered to be at a heightened risk for detrimental effects of poor sleep on thinking, decision-making, and academic performance because of the ongoing brain development that occurs during teen years .

Some studies have also found that women are more adept at coping with the effects of sleep deprivation than men, although it is not yet clear if this is related to biological factors, social and cultural influences, or a combination of both.

Sleep disorders, like insomnia, frequently involve insufficient or fragmented sleep, so it comes as little surprise that they can be linked to cognitive impairment.

Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is among the most common sleep disorders. It occurs when the airway gets blocked, which then leads to lapses in breathing during sleep and reduced oxygen in the blood. OSA has been associated with daytime sleepiness as well as notable cognitive problems related to attention, thinking, memory, and communication. Studies have also found that people with sleep apnea have a higher risk of developing dementia .

Graphic summarizing the short-term impacts of poor sleep compared to the long-term risk of cognitive decline and dementia.

Many studies examining the effects of sleep on thinking have found that an excess of sleep can also be problematic for brain health. In many cases, research has discovered that both too little and too much 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 are associated with cognitive decline.

The explanation for this association remains unclear. It is not known if excess sleep is caused by a coexisting health condition that may also predispose someone to cognitive problems. Overall, these research findings are an important reminder to get the right amount of sleep each night.

For people with sleeping problems, improving sleep quality offers a practical way to enhance cognitive performance. Getting the recommended amount of uninterrupted sleep can help the brain recuperate and avoid many of the negative consequences of poor sleep on diverse aspects of thinking.

Researchers and public health experts increasingly view good sleep as a potential form of prevention against dementia and Alzheimer’s disease 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 . Although more studies are needed to conclusively determine sleep’s role in preventing cognitive decline, early research suggests that taking steps to improve sleep may reduce the longer-term likelihood of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

Tips To Improve Sleep and Cognitive Performance

Anyone who feels that they are experiencing cognitive impairment or excessive daytime sleepiness should first speak with their doctor. A physician can help identify or rule out any other conditions, including sleep disorders, that may be causing these symptoms. They can also discuss strategies to get better sleep.

Many approaches to improving sleep start with healthy sleep hygiene . By optimizing your bedroom environment and everyday habits and routines, you can eliminate many common barriers to sleep. Setting a regular bedtime and sleep schedule, avoiding alcohol and caffeine in the evening, and minimizing electronics in the bedroom are a few examples of sleep hygiene tips that can make it easier to rest well each night.

About Our Editorial Team

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Whitney, P., Hinson, J. M., Jackson, M. L., & Van Dongen, H. P. (2015). Feedback Blunting: Total Sleep Deprivation Impairs Decision Making that Requires Updating Based on Feedback. Sleep, 38(5), 745–754.

Killgore, W. D. (2010). Effects of sleep deprivation on cognition. Progress in Brain Research, 185, 105–129.

Van Someren, E. J., Cirelli, C., Dijk, D. J., Van Cauter, E., Schwartz, S., & Chee, M. W. (2015). Disrupted sleep: From molecules to cognition. The Journal of Neuroscience, 35(41), 13889–13895.

Maquet P. (2000). Sleep on it!. Nature neuroscience, 3(12), 1235–1236.

Lo, J. C., Chong, P. L., Ganesan, S., Leong, R. L., & Chee, M. W. (2016). Sleep deprivation increases formation of false memory. Journal of sleep research, 25(6), 673–682.

Shokri-Kojori, E., Wang, G. J., Wiers, C. E., Demiral, S. B., Guo, M., Kim, S. W., Lindgren, E., Ramirez, V., Zehra, A., Freeman, C., Miller, G., Manza, P., Srivastava, T., De Santi, S., Tomasi, D., Benveniste, H., & Volkow, N. D. (2018). β-Amyloid accumulation in the human brain after one night of sleep deprivation. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 115(17), 4483–4488.

Bubu, O. M., Brannick, M., Mortimer, J., Umasabor-Bubu, O., Sebastião, Y. V., Wen, Y., Schwartz, S., Borenstein, A. R., Wu, Y., Morgan, D., & Anderson, W. M. (2017). Sleep, Cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s disease: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Sleep, 40(1), 10.1093/sleep/zsw032.

Yordanova, J., Kolev, V., Wagner, U., & Verleger, R. (2010). Differential associations of early- and late-night sleep with functional brain states promoting insight to abstract task regularity. PloS one, 5(2), e9442.

Lin, Y. K., Lin, G. Y., Lee, J. T., Lee, M. S., Tsai, C. K., Hsu, Y. W., Lin, Y. Z., Tsai, Y. C., & Yang, F. C. (2016). Associations Between Sleep Quality and Migraine Frequency: A Cross-Sectional Case-Control Study. Medicine, 95(17), e3554.

Prather, A. A., Janicki-Deverts, D., Hall, M. H., & Cohen, S. (2015). Behaviorally Assessed Sleep and Susceptibility to the Common Cold. Sleep, 38(9), 1353–1359.

Ma, Y., Liang, L., Zheng, F., Shi, L., Zhong, B., & Xie, W. (2020). Association Between Sleep Duration and Cognitive Decline. JAMA network open, 3(9), e2013573.

Spira, A. P., Chen-Edinboro, L. P., Wu, M. N., & Yaffe, K. (2014). Impact of sleep on the risk of cognitive decline and dementia. Current Opinion in Psychiatry, 27(6):478-83.

Learn More About Sleep Deprivation

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Can a Lack of Sleep Cause Headaches?

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How Sleep Deprivation Affects Your Heart

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Interrupted Sleep: Causes & Helpful Tips

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Sleep Deprivation: Symptoms, Treatment, & Effects

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Lack of Sleep May Increase Calorie Consumption

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Understanding Sleep Deprivation and New Parenthood

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Other articles of interest, sleep solutions, sleep hygiene, sleep apnea.

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Among teens, sleep deprivation an epidemic

Sleep deprivation increases the likelihood teens will suffer myriad negative consequences, including an inability to concentrate, poor grades, drowsy-driving incidents, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide and even suicide attempts.

October 8, 2015 - By Ruthann Richter

Teen sleep illustration

The most recent national poll shows that more than 87 percent of U.S. high school students get far less than the recommended eight to 10 hours of sleep each night. Christopher Silas Neal

Carolyn Walworth, 17, often reaches a breaking point around 11 p.m., when she collapses in tears. For 10 minutes or so, she just sits at her desk and cries, overwhelmed by unrelenting school demands. She is desperately tired and longs for sleep. But she knows she must move through it, because more assignments in physics, calculus or French await her. She finally crawls into bed around midnight or 12:30 a.m.

The next morning, she fights to stay awake in her first-period U.S. history class, which begins at 8:15. She is unable to focus on what’s being taught, and her mind drifts. “You feel tired and exhausted, but you think you just need to get through the day so you can go home and sleep,” said the Palo Alto, California, teen. But that night, she will have to try to catch up on what she missed in class. And the cycle begins again.

“It’s an insane system. … The whole essence of learning is lost,” she said.

Walworth is among a generation of teens growing up chronically sleep-deprived. According to a 2006 National Sleep Foundation poll, the organization’s most recent survey of teen sleep, more than 87 percent of high school students in the United States get far less than the recommended eight to 10 hours, and the amount of time they sleep is decreasing — a serious threat to their health, safety and academic success. Sleep deprivation increases the likelihood teens will suffer myriad negative consequences, including an inability to concentrate, poor grades, drowsy-driving incidents, anxiety, depression, thoughts of suicide and even suicide attempts. It’s a problem that knows no economic boundaries.

While studies show that both adults and teens in industrialized nations are becoming more sleep deprived, the problem is most acute among teens, said Nanci Yuan , MD, director of the Stanford Children’s Health Sleep Center . In a detailed 2014 report, the American Academy of Pediatrics called the problem of tired teens a public health epidemic.

“I think high school is the real danger spot in terms of sleep deprivation,” said William Dement , MD, PhD, founder of the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic , the first of its kind in the world. “It’s a huge problem. What it means is that nobody performs at the level they could perform,” whether it’s in school, on the roadways, on the sports field or in terms of physical and emotional health.

Social and cultural factors, as well as the advent of technology, all have collided with the biology of the adolescent to prevent teens from getting enough rest. Since the early 1990s, it’s been established that teens have a biologic tendency to go to sleep later — as much as two hours later — than their younger counterparts.

Yet when they enter their high school years, they find themselves at schools that typically start the day at a relatively early hour. So their time for sleep is compressed, and many are jolted out of bed before they are physically or mentally ready. In the process, they not only lose precious hours of rest, but their natural rhythm is disrupted, as they are being robbed of the dream-rich, rapid-eye-movement stage of sleep, some of the deepest, most productive sleep time, said pediatric sleep specialist Rafael Pelayo , MD, with the Stanford Sleep Disorders Clinic.

“When teens wake up earlier, it cuts off their dreams,” said Pelayo, a clinical professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “We’re not giving them a chance to dream.”

Teen sleeping

Teens have a biologic tendency to go to sleep later, yet many high schools start the day at a relatively early hour, disrupting their natural rhythym. Monkey Business/Fotolia

Understanding teen sleep

On a sunny June afternoon, Dement maneuvered his golf cart, nicknamed the Sleep and Dreams Shuttle, through the Stanford University campus to Jerry House, a sprawling, Mediterranean-style dormitory where he and his colleagues conducted some of the early, seminal work on sleep, including teen sleep.

Beginning in 1975, the researchers recruited a few dozen local youngsters between the ages of 10 and 12 who were willing to participate in a unique sleep camp. During the day, the young volunteers would play volleyball in the backyard, which faces a now-barren Lake Lagunita, all the while sporting a nest of electrodes on their heads.

At night, they dozed in a dorm while researchers in a nearby room monitored their brain waves on 6-foot electroencephalogram machines, old-fashioned polygraphs that spit out wave patterns of their sleep.

One of Dement’s colleagues at the time was Mary Carskadon, PhD, then a graduate student at Stanford. They studied the youngsters over the course of several summers, observing their sleep habits as they entered puberty and beyond.

Dement and Carskadon had expected to find that as the participants grew older, they would need less sleep. But to their surprise, their sleep needs remained the same — roughly nine hours a night — through their teen years. “We thought, ‘Oh, wow, this is interesting,’” said Carskadon, now a professor of psychiatry and human behavior at Brown University and a nationally recognized expert on teen sleep.

Moreover, the researchers made a number of other key observations that would plant the seed for what is now accepted dogma in the sleep field. For one, they noticed that when older adolescents were restricted to just five hours of sleep a night, they would become progressively sleepier during the course of the week. The loss was cumulative, accounting for what is now commonly known as sleep debt.

“The concept of sleep debt had yet to be developed,” said Dement, the Lowell W. and Josephine Q. Berry Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences. It’s since become the basis for his ongoing campaign against drowsy driving among adults and teens. “That’s why you have these terrible accidents on the road,” he said. “People carry a large sleep debt, which they don’t understand and cannot evaluate.”

The researchers also noticed that as the kids got older, they were naturally inclined to go to bed later. By the early 1990s, Carskadon established what has become a widely recognized phenomenon — that teens experience a so-called sleep-phase delay. Their circadian rhythm — their internal biological clock — shifts to a later time, making it more difficult for them to fall asleep before 11 p.m.

Teens are also biologically disposed to a later sleep time because of a shift in the system that governs the natural sleep-wake cycle. Among older teens, the push to fall asleep builds more slowly during the day, signaling them to be more alert in the evening.

“It’s as if the brain is giving them permission, or making it easier, to stay awake longer,” Carskadon said. “So you add that to the phase delay, and it’s hard to fight against it.”

Pressures not to sleep

After an evening with four or five hours of homework, Walworth turns to her cellphone for relief. She texts or talks to friends and surfs the Web. “It’s nice to stay up and talk to your friends or watch a funny YouTube video,” she said. “There are plenty of online distractions.”

While teens are biologically programmed to stay up late, many social and cultural forces further limit their time for sleep. For one, the pressure on teens to succeed is intense, and they must compete with a growing number of peers for college slots that have largely remained constant. In high-achieving communities like Palo Alto, that translates into students who are overwhelmed by additional homework for Advanced Placement classes, outside activities such as sports or social service projects, and in some cases, part-time jobs, as well as peer, parental and community pressures to excel.

William Dement

William Dement

At the same time, today’s teens are maturing in an era of ubiquitous electronic media, and they are fervent participants. Some 92 percent of U.S. teens have smartphones, and 24 percent report being online “constantly,” according to a 2015 report by the Pew Research Center. Teens have access to multiple electronic devices they use simultaneously, often at night. Some 72 percent bring cellphones into their bedrooms and use them when they are trying to go to sleep, and 28 percent leave their phones on while sleeping, only to be awakened at night by texts, calls or emails, according to a 2011 National Sleep Foundation poll on electronic use. In addition, some 64 percent use electronic music devices, 60 percent use laptops and 23 percent play video games in the hour before they went to sleep, the poll found. More than half reported texting in the hour before they went to sleep, and these media fans were less likely to report getting a good night’s sleep and feeling refreshed in the morning. They were also more likely to drive when drowsy, the poll found.

The problem of sleep-phase delay is exacerbated when teens are exposed late at night to lit screens, which send a message via the retina to the portion of the brain that controls the body’s circadian clock. The message: It’s not nighttime yet.

Yuan, a clinical associate professor of pediatrics, said she routinely sees young patients in her clinic who fall asleep at night with cellphones in hand.

“With academic demands and extracurricular activities, the kids are going nonstop until they fall asleep exhausted at night. There is not an emphasis on the importance of sleep, as there is with nutrition and exercise,” she said. “They say they are tired, but they don’t realize they are actually sleep-deprived. And if you ask kids to remove an activity, they would rather not. They would rather give up sleep than an activity.”

The role of parents

Adolescents are also entering a period in which they are striving for autonomy and want to make their own decisions, including when to go to sleep. But studies suggest adolescents do better in terms of mood and fatigue levels if parents set the bedtime — and choose a time that is realistic for the child’s needs. According to a 2010 study published in the journal Sleep , children are more likely to be depressed and to entertain thoughts of suicide if a parent sets a late bedtime of midnight or beyond.

In families where parents set the time for sleep, the teens’ happier, better-rested state “may be a sign of an organized family life, not simply a matter of bedtime,” Carskadon said. “On the other hand, the growing child and growing teens still benefit from someone who will help set the structure for their lives. And they aren’t good at making good decisions.”

They say they are tired, but they don’t realize they are actually sleep-deprived. And if you ask kids to remove an activity, they would rather not. They would rather give up sleep than an activity.

According to the 2011 sleep poll, by the time U.S. students reach their senior year in high school, they are sleeping an average of 6.9 hours a night, down from an average of 8.4 hours in the sixth grade. The poll included teens from across the country from diverse ethnic backgrounds.

American teens aren’t the worst off when it comes to sleep, however; South Korean adolescents have that distinction, sleeping on average 4.9 hours a night, according to a 2012 study in Sleep by South Korean researchers. These Asian teens routinely begin school between 7 and 8:30 a.m., and most sign up for additional evening classes that may keep them up as late as midnight. South Korean adolescents also have relatively high suicide rates (10.7 per 100,000 a year), and the researchers speculate that chronic sleep deprivation is a contributor to this disturbing phenomenon.

By contrast, Australian teens are among those who do particularly well when it comes to sleep time, averaging about nine hours a night, possibly because schools there usually start later.

Regardless of where they live, most teens follow a pattern of sleeping less during the week and sleeping in on the weekends to compensate. But many accumulate such a backlog of sleep debt that they don’t sufficiently recover on the weekend and still wake up fatigued when Monday comes around.

Moreover, the shifting sleep patterns on the weekend — late nights with friends, followed by late mornings in bed — are out of sync with their weekday rhythm. Carskadon refers to this as “social jet lag.”

“Every day we teach our internal circadian timing system what time it is — is it day or night? — and if that message is substantially different every day, then the clock isn’t able to set things appropriately in motion,” she said. “In the last few years, we have learned there is a master clock in the brain, but there are other clocks in other organs, like liver or kidneys or lungs, so the master clock is the coxswain, trying to get everybody to work together to improve efficiency and health. So if the coxswain is changing the pace, all the crew become disorganized and don’t function well.”

This disrupted rhythm, as well as the shortage of sleep, can have far-reaching effects on adolescent health and well-being, she said.

“It certainly plays into learning and memory. It plays into appetite and metabolism and weight gain. It plays into mood and emotion, which are already heightened at that age. It also plays into risk behaviors — taking risks while driving, taking risks with substances, taking risks maybe with sexual activity. So the more we look outside, the more we’re learning about the core role that sleep plays,” Carskadon said.

Many studies show students who sleep less suffer academically, as chronic sleep loss impairs the ability to remember, concentrate, think abstractly and solve problems. In one of many studies on sleep and academic performance, Carskadon and her colleagues surveyed 3,000 high school students and found that those with higher grades reported sleeping more, going to bed earlier on school nights and sleeping in less on weekends than students who had lower grades.

Sleep is believed to reinforce learning and memory, with studies showing that people perform better on mental tasks when they are well-rested. “We hypothesize that when teens sleep, the brain is going through processes of consolidation — learning of experiences or making memories,” Yuan said. “It’s like your brain is filtering itself — consolidating the important things and filtering out those unimportant things.” When the brain is deprived of that opportunity, cognitive function suffers, along with the capacity to learn.

“It impacts academic performance. It’s harder to take tests and answer questions if you are sleep-deprived,” she said.

That’s why cramming, at the expense of sleep, is counter­productive, said Pelayo, who advises students: Don’t lose sleep to study, or you’ll lose out in the end.

The panic attack

Chloe Mauvais, 16, hit her breaking point at the end of a very challenging sophomore year when she reached “the depths of frustration and anxiety.” After months of late nights spent studying to keep up with academic demands, she suffered a panic attack one evening at home.

“I sat in the living room in our house on the ground, crying and having horrible breathing problems,” said the senior at Menlo-Atherton High School. “It was so scary. I think it was from the accumulated stress, the fear over my grades, the lack of sleep and the crushing sense of responsibility. High school is a very hard place to be.”

We hypothesize that when teens sleep, the brain is going through processes of consolidation — learning of experiences or making memories. It’s like your brain is filtering itself.

Where she once had good sleep habits, she had drifted into an unhealthy pattern of staying up late, sometimes until 3 a.m., researching and writing papers for her AP European history class and prepping for tests.

“I have difficulty remembering events of that year, and I think it’s because I didn’t get enough sleep,” she said. “The lack of sleep rendered me emotionally useless. I couldn’t address the stress because I had no coherent thoughts. I couldn’t step back and have perspective. … You could probably talk to any teen and find they reach their breaking point. You’ve pushed yourself so much and not slept enough and you just lose it.”

The experience was a kind of wake-up call, as she recognized the need to return to a more balanced life and a better sleep pattern, she said. But for some teens, this toxic mix of sleep deprivation, stress and anxiety, together with other external pressures, can tip their thinking toward dire solutions.

Research has shown that sleep problems among adolescents are a major risk factor for suicidal thoughts and death by suicide, which ranks as the third-leading cause of fatalities among 15- to 24-year-olds. And this link between sleep and suicidal thoughts remains strong, independent of whether the teen is depressed or has drug and alcohol issues, according to some studies.

“Sleep, especially deep sleep, is like a balm for the brain,” said Shashank Joshi, MD, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford. “The better your sleep, the more clearly you can think while awake, and it may enable you to seek help when a problem arises. You have your faculties with you. You may think, ‘I have 16 things to do, but I know where to start.’ Sleep deprivation can make it hard to remember what you need to do for your busy teen life. It takes away the support, the infrastructure.”

Sleep is believed to help regulate emotions, and its deprivation is an underlying component of many mood disorders, such as anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. For students who are prone to these disorders, better sleep can help serve as a buffer and help prevent a downhill slide, Joshi said.

Rebecca Bernert, PhD, who directs the Suicide Prevention Research Lab at Stanford, said sleep may affect the way in which teens process emotions. Her work with civilians and military veterans indicates that lack of sleep can make people more receptive to negative emotional information, which they might shrug off if they were fully rested, she said.

“Based on prior research, we have theorized that sleep disturbances may result in difficulty regulating emotional information, and this may lower the threshold for suicidal behaviors among at-risk individuals,” said Bernert, an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. Now she’s studying whether a brief nondrug treatment for insomnia reduces depression and risk for suicide.

Sleep deprivation also has been shown to lower inhibitions among both adults and teens. In the teen brain, the frontal lobe, which helps restrain impulsivity, isn’t fully developed, so teens are naturally prone to impulsive behavior. “When you throw into the mix sleep deprivation, which can also be disinhibiting, mood problems and the normal impulsivity of adolescence, then you have a potentially dangerous situation,” Joshi said.

Some schools shift

Given the health risks associated with sleep problems, school districts around the country have been looking at one issue over which they have some control: when school starts in the morning. The trend was set by the town of Edina, Minnesota, a well-to-do suburb of Minneapolis, which conducted a landmark experiment in student sleep in the late 1990s. It shifted the high school’s start time from 7:20 a.m. to 8:30 a.m. and then asked University of Minnesota researchers to look at the impact of the change. The researchers found some surprising results: Students reported feeling less depressed and less sleepy during the day and more empowered to succeed. There was no comparable improvement in student well-being in surrounding school districts where start times remained the same.

With these findings in hand, the entire Minneapolis Public School District shifted start times for 57,000 students at all of its schools in 1997 and found similarly positive results. Attendance rates rose, and students reported getting an hour’s more sleep each school night — or a total of five more hours of sleep a week — countering skeptics who argued that the students would respond by just going to bed later.

For the health and well-being of the nation, we should all be taking better care of our sleep, and we certainly should be taking better care of the sleep of our youth.

Other studies have reinforced the link between later start times and positive health benefits. One 2010 study at an independent high school in Rhode Island found that after delaying the start time by just 30 minutes, students slept more and showed significant improvements in alertness and mood. And a 2014 study in two counties in Virginia found that teens were much less likely to be involved in car crashes in a county where start times were later, compared with a county with an earlier start time.

Bolstered by the evidence, the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2014 issued a strong policy statement encouraging middle and high school districts across the country to start school no earlier than 8:30 a.m. to help preserve the health of the nation’s youth. Some districts have heeded the call, though the decisions have been hugely contentious, as many consider school schedules sacrosanct and cite practical issues, such as bus schedules, as obstacles.

In Fairfax County, Virginia, it took a decade of debate before the school board voted in 2014 to push back the opening school bell for its 57,000 students. And in Palo Alto, where a recent cluster of suicides has caused much communitywide soul-searching, the district superintendent issued a decision in the spring, over the strenuous objections of some teachers, students and administrators, to eliminate “zero period” for academic classes — an optional period that begins at 7:20 a.m. and is generally offered for advanced studies.

Certainly, changing school start times is only part of the solution, experts say. More widespread education about sleep and more resources for students are needed. Parents and teachers need to trim back their expectations and minimize pressures that interfere with teen sleep. And there needs to be a cultural shift, including a move to discourage late-night use of electronic devices, to help youngsters gain much-needed rest.

“At some point, we are going to have to confront this as a society,” Carskadon said. “For the health and well-being of the nation, we should all be taking better care of our sleep, and we certainly should be taking better care of the sleep of our youth.”

Ruthann Richter

About Stanford Medicine

Stanford Medicine is an integrated academic health system comprising the Stanford School of Medicine and adult and pediatric health care delivery systems. Together, they harness the full potential of biomedicine through collaborative research, education and clinical care for patients. For more information, please visit med.stanford.edu .

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Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency How Sleep Affects Your Health

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Getting enough quality sleep at the right times can help protect your mental health, physical health, quality of life, and safety.

How do I know if I’m not getting enough sleep?

Sleep deficiency can cause you to feel very tired during the day. You may not feel refreshed and alert when you wake up. Sleep deficiency also can interfere with work, school, driving, and social functioning.

How sleepy you feel during the day can help you figure out whether you're having symptoms of problem sleepiness.

You might be sleep deficient if you often feel like you could doze off while:

  • Sitting and reading or watching TV
  • Sitting still in a public place, such as a movie theater, meeting, or classroom
  • Riding in a car for an hour without stopping
  • Sitting and talking to someone
  • Sitting quietly after lunch
  • Sitting in traffic for a few minutes

Sleep deficiency can cause problems with learning, focusing, and reacting. You may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, remembering things, managing your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. You may take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes.

Symptoms in children

The symptoms of sleep deficiency may differ between children and adults. Children who are sleep deficient might be overly active and have problems paying attention. They also might misbehave, and their school performance can suffer.

Sleep-deficient children may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation.

Sleep and your health

The way you feel while you're awake depends in part on what happens while you're sleeping. During sleep, your body is working to support healthy brain function and support your physical health. In children and teens, sleep also helps support growth and development.

The damage from sleep deficiency can happen in an instant (such as a car crash), or it can harm you over time. For example, ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk of some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.

Mental health benefits

Sleep helps your brain work properly. While you're sleeping, your brain is getting ready for the next day. It's forming new pathways to help you learn and remember information.

Studies show that a good night's sleep improves learning and problem-solving skills. Sleep also helps you pay attention, make decisions, and be creative.

Studies also show that sleep deficiency changes activity in some parts of the brain. If you're sleep deficient, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency has also been linked to depression, suicide, and risk-taking behavior.

Children and teens who are sleep deficient may have problems getting along with others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation. They also may have problems paying attention, and they may get lower grades and feel stressed.

Physical health benefits

Sleep plays an important role in your physical health.

Good-quality sleep:

  • Heals and repairs your heart and blood vessels.
  • Helps support a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin): When you don't get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin goes up and your level of leptin goes down. This makes you feel hungrier than when you're well-rested.
  • Affects how your body reacts to insulin: Insulin is the hormone that controls your blood glucose (sugar) level. Sleep deficiency results in a higher-than-normal blood sugar level, which may raise your risk of diabetes.
  • Supports healthy growth and development: Deep sleep triggers the body to release the hormone that promotes normal growth in children and teens. This hormone also boosts muscle mass and helps repair cells and tissues in children, teens, and adults. Sleep also plays a role in puberty and fertility.
  • Affects your body’s ability to fight germs and sickness: Ongoing sleep deficiency can change the way your body’s natural defense against germs and sickness responds. For example, if you're sleep deficient, you may have trouble fighting common infections.
  • Decreases   your risk of health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and stroke.

Research for Your Health

NHLBI-funded research found that adults who regularly get 7-8 hours of sleep a night have a lower risk of obesity and high blood pressure. Other NHLBI-funded research found that untreated sleep disorders rase the risk for heart problems and problems during pregnancy, including high blood pressure and diabetes.

Daytime performance and safety

Getting enough quality sleep at the right times helps you function well throughout the day. People who are sleep deficient are less productive at work and school. They take longer to finish tasks, have a slower reaction time, and make more mistakes.

After several nights of losing sleep — even a loss of just 1 to 2 hours per night — your ability to function suffers as if you haven't slept at all for a day or two.

Lack of sleep also may lead to microsleep. Microsleep refers to brief moments of sleep that happen when you're normally awake.

You can't control microsleep, and you might not be aware of it. For example, have you ever driven somewhere and then not remembered part of the trip? If so, you may have experienced microsleep.

Even if you're not driving, microsleep can affect how you function. If you're listening to a lecture, for example, you might miss some of the information or feel like you don't understand the point. You may have slept through part of the lecture and not realized it.

Some people aren't aware of the risks of sleep deficiency. In fact, they may not even realize that they're sleep deficient. Even with limited or poor-quality sleep, they may still think they can function well.

For example, sleepy drivers may feel able to drive. Yet studies show that sleep deficiency harms your driving ability as much or more than being drunk. It's estimated that driver sleepiness is a factor in about 100,000 car accidents each year, resulting in about 1,500 deaths.

Drivers aren't the only ones affected by sleep deficiency. It can affect people in all lines of work, including healthcare workers, pilots, students, lawyers, mechanics, and assembly line workers.

Lung Health Basics: Sleep Fact Sheet

Lung Health Basics: Sleep

People with lung disease often have  trouble sleeping. Sleep is critical to overall health, so take the first step to sleeping better: learn these sleep terms, and find out about treatments that can help with sleep apnea.

an essay on sleep deprivation

No-sleep challenge: the dangers of sleep deprivation

an essay on sleep deprivation

Professor and Director of the Clinical Anatomy Learning Centre, Lancaster University

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Adam Taylor does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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Most of us will be all too familiar with that dopey, groggy feeling of being tired after a restless night. Some social media users have taken tiredness to the extreme, however, by taking part in what they call a “no-sleep challenge.”

One 19-year-old Youtuber, Norme, live streamed his attempt to break a world record for consecutive days without sleep. At the 250-hour mark, viewers voiced concerns about Norme’s health and wellbeing but he eventually finished with a “no sleep” time of 264 hours and 24 minutes.

Norme’s attempt earned him bans from social media platforms YouTube and Kick . But, despite his claims to have beaten the world record, his ordeal was not enough to beat the last Guinness World Record holder Robert Mcdonald, who racked up 453 hours – almost 19 days! – in 1986.

In 1997, Guinness World Records stopped monitoring the record for the longest time without sleep for safety reasons – and they were quite right. Going without sleep for extended periods of time can prove extremely dangerous.

Adults should aim for more than seven hours’ sleep per night on a regular basis. Chronic inability to get sufficient sleep is associated with increased risk of multiple conditions such as depression, diabetes, obesity, heart attack, hypertension and stroke.

Sleep is an important part of our daily routine. It enables many of our bodily systems to rest and focus on repair and recovery .

During the first three stages of sleep, the parasympathetic nervous system – which regulates rest and digestion – takes control. This reduces reduces heart rate and blood pressure .

In the final stage, the rapid eye movement (REM) stage, heart activity increases and eyes move – this stage is key to cognitive functions such as creativity, learning and memory. Alcohol or caffeine consumption prior to bed can disturb these sleep cycles.

Sleep deprivation can be acute or chronic. Acute deprivation can happen over a day or two.

While it may seem like a short period of time, 24 hours of sleep deprivation can cause a greater degree of functional impairment than being just over the drink-drive limit. Symptoms of acute sleep deprivation can include puffy eyes or dark under-eyes , irritability, cognitive decline, brain fog and food cravings .

During the second day without sleep, symptoms increase in intensity and behavioural changes occur, as well as a further decline in cognitive functions. The body’s need for sleep becomes stronger causing “microsleeps” – involuntary naps lasting around 30 seconds.

The body’s need for food increases as well as physiological responses such as systemic inflammation and impaired immune response , making us more susceptible to illness.

The third 24-hour period can trigger a desperate urge to sleep, increasing likelihood of longer microsleeps, depersonalisation – feelings of detachment from reality – and hallucinations . Once into day four of sleeplessness, all symptoms become much worse progressing to sleep deprivation psychosis where you’re unable to interpret reality and possess a painful desire to sleep.

Recovery from sleep deprivation varies from person to person, with a solid overnight sleep being enough for some to recover. For others it can take days or weeks.

However, studies have shown that recovery sleep often doesn’t reverse the metabolic changes that can cause weight gain and a decrease in insulin sensitivity, even from relatively short periods of sleep deprivation.

Shift workers can be continually sleep deprived. Night shift workers typically average one-to-four hours’ less sleep per day than people whose work time falls within daylight hours – and this can increase their risk of early death .

In fact many studies have shown too little sleep is associated with an increased risk of death . But too much sleep has also been associated with an increased risk of death .

It’s best for health, then, to avoid the social media challenges and instead opt for good sleep hygiene to get your seven-to-nine hours of quality shut-eye. Your body will thank you for it.

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Sleep Deprivation Essay Examples

What makes a good sleep deprivation essay topics.

When it comes to writing an essay on sleep deprivation, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good essay topic should be thought-provoking, engaging, and relevant to the subject matter. In order to come up with a strong essay topic on sleep deprivation, it is important to consider various factors such as the target audience, the scope of the topic, and the availability of research material. Here are some recommendations on how to brainstorm and choose an essay topic on sleep deprivation.

First, start by brainstorming ideas related to sleep deprivation. Consider the various aspects of sleep deprivation that are of interest to you and that you think would be relevant to your audience. This could include topics such as the impact of sleep deprivation on cognitive function, the relationship between sleep deprivation and mental health, or the effects of sleep deprivation on physical health.

Next, consider What Makes a Good essay topic. A good essay topic should be specific, focused, and relevant to the subject matter. It should also be unique and thought-provoking, allowing for a deep exploration of the topic. When choosing an essay topic on sleep deprivation, consider the availability of research material and the potential for new insights and perspectives.

Finally, consider the target audience for your essay. What are the interests and concerns of your readers? What topics are likely to engage and captivate them? By considering the needs and interests of your audience, you can choose a topic that will resonate with them and provide valuable insights into the subject of sleep deprivation.

In , a good essay topic on sleep deprivation should be specific, focused, and relevant to the subject matter. It should also be thought-provoking, engaging, and relevant to the target audience. By considering these factors, you can brainstorm and choose an essay topic that will captivate your readers and provide valuable insights into the topic of sleep deprivation.

Best Sleep Deprivation Essay Topics

  • The impact of sleep deprivation on academic performance
  • Sleep deprivation and its effects on mental health
  • The relationship between sleep deprivation and physical health
  • The role of technology in contributing to sleep deprivation
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on workplace productivity
  • The effects of sleep deprivation on memory and cognitive function
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on decision-making
  • The relationship between sleep deprivation and mood disorders
  • The impact of sleep deprivation on athletic performance
  • Sleep deprivation and its effects on aging
  • The role of genetics in sleep deprivation
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on obesity
  • The effects of sleep deprivation on immune function
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on driving safety
  • The relationship between sleep deprivation and chronic pain
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on creativity and innovation
  • The effects of sleep deprivation on social interactions
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on learning and memory
  • The relationship between sleep deprivation and substance abuse
  • Sleep deprivation and its impact on overall well-being

Sleep Deprivation essay topics Prompts

  • Imagine a world where sleep deprivation is non-existent. How would this impact society and individuals?
  • Write a fictional story about a character who suffers from chronic sleep deprivation and the impact it has on their life.
  • Research and analyze the impact of sleep deprivation on a specific demographic, such as teenagers or shift workers.
  • Explore the connection between sleep deprivation and societal issues such as poverty or inequality.
  • Write a persuasive essay advocating for better awareness and support for individuals suffering from sleep deprivation.

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Major Health Risks of Sleep Deprivation

Sleep & problems connected with it, impact of sleeping habits on our life, effects of poor sleep hygiene, analysis of the different ways in which sleep affects memory, sleep deprivation and disorders effects on health, why sleep is vital: the importance of a good sleep, zolpidem: the effect on sleep, call center agents and health status with sleep deprivation, miracle pill from sleep deprivation, nurses on night shifts: their lived experiences, sleep deprivation: a headache for people in the 21 century, what happens to the body when you don’t get enough sleep, sleep deprivation and its relation to metabolic syndrome, the matter of sleep deprivation in clinical settings, the effects of sleep deprivation, sleep deprivation: causes, effects, and solutions, relevant topics.

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  17. The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on College Students

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  18. Essay On Sleep Deprivation

    This essay views sleep and sleep deprivation from five different motivational perspectives in order to gain a holistic understanding of the phenomena. From evolutionary, psychodynamic, behaviourist, cognitive, and hierarchy of needs perspectives, it is inferred that the cognitive and behaviourist perspectives uphold the most merit for gaining ...

  19. Sleep Deprivation Essay

    Sleep Deprivation Essay. 2672 Words11 Pages. INTRODUCTION. Sleep is one of the most crucial functions of the human body. While a person's body sleeps, many essential processes are completed, such as the rest for one's body, the drainage of excess fluid and growth, amongst others. Regardless of the fact that sleep is such an essential ...

  20. Sleep Deprivation Essay Examples

    What Makes a Good Sleep Deprivation Essay Topics. When it comes to writing an essay on sleep deprivation, choosing the right topic is crucial. A good essay topic should be thought-provoking, engaging, and relevant to the subject matter. In order to come up with a strong essay topic on sleep deprivation, it is important to consider various ...

  21. Essay On Sleep Deprivation

    Sleep Deprivation In Nursing Essay. 942 Words | 4 Pages. 2 Sleep Deprivation in the Nursing Profession Sleep deprivation is known as a condition of not getting enough sleep that can affect the brain and cognitive functions. "It occurs when a person sleeps for fewer hours than necessary over multiple days or week" (Eanes, 2015).

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