Sleep Thieves: The Influence Of Sleep

Sleep is a big part of one’s psychological health. Without sleep, many of our essential cognitive functions would begin to deteriorate. Factors like mood, comprehension, and many more are affected by the lack of sleep in an exceptionally large way. Due to the fact that in humans, we are exceptionally vulnerable mentally as we are physically. Many of us begin to put our well-being in harm’s way by receiving a reduced amount of sleep when compared to the average needed. As illustrated in, Sleep Thieves, Stanley Coren presents an experiment conducted in 1964 by a seventeen year old named Randy Gardner who became the world’s record holder for the longest amount of time spent awake without stimulants. The book, Sleep Thieves, begins to explain
Gardner’s experiment from day one to eleven and the effects it has on Gardner’s body. At the commencement of the experiment, day two to three already began to show negative effects of sleep deprivation on Gardner’s body which came in forms of moodiness deteriorating coordination and strength, and focusing his eyes. (Coren 51-52). By day four to five, Gardner began to have memory lapse, mood swings, hallucinations, and feel strange sensations on his body, however in day six to nine, the effects began to worsen by the moment. Beginning with the inability to speak at times, it was soon followed by irritability, and uncooperativeness, muscle weakness, fragment thinking, and worsening blurred vision (Coren 53). While in the last days of his experiment, day ten to eleven, he felt large amounts of paranoia, shortened attention span, and rotary drifts in his eyes ,but recovered after a few days of full rest that began with 13 hours of deep slumber (Coren 54). In order to maintain health better overall, sleep is definitely shown as a necessary component in our every-day lives. Without sleep, we would face many mental challenges that could and would drive many insane. From healthy relationships to good life choices, sleep is a key factor in maintaining these due to the fact that sleep allows a person to revitalize themselves and help with better memory. Sleep would play a key role in preventing future disorders or addictions and boost our daily performance. Since sleep has major effects on the brain mentally, sleep would tremendously affect our learning capabilities.
With or without the average amount of sleep needed, it plays a crucial piece in a person’s daily life, impacting their performance and deciding their sleep rhythm. This can be seen in the book, Encyclopedia of Sleep and Dreaming, where it begins to explain how the effects of a full night’s sleep and an all nighter would help a student perform differently; while studying all night is good for immediate memory, those memories would soon be forgotten. However, a full night of rest would allow for permanent memories and an increase in your mental capacity for your learning material. (Carskadon 25). In addition, because all nighters are good for immediate memory, they are good for tests that require memory only ,however a full night of rest would be more beneficial for tests using combination and imagination because it affects one’s creative and spontaneous actions (Carskadon 26). While many students pull all nighters, most of the time it will be unbeneficial to the student because a large amount of the info retained late at night will be forgotten, affecting their performance on the test either way by the lack of sleep or by the reduced amount of time to study. Many students affected by sleep deprivation will also be affected in their daily life which could be seen in a student dozing during class time. If a student begins to doze during class, this would then lead
to the possibility of failing a quiz or test if the student is unable to make up/relearn the material they dozed off on. As a result, this could cause drop in grades, failing classes, and even expulsion through academic disqualification. However, while sleep can greatly impact your mental well-being, sleep can have an even deadlier impact physically.
Every year, there are many deaths from car crashes to disease/sickness.
Sleep deprivation is a factor that has also contributed to the high death total every year. While many don’t know it, sleep isn’t just mental, sleep is a factor that is also connected to our immune system. In the book Sleep Thieves, our immune system is proven to be more active while we are asleep and can be disrupted of its normal response pattern with loss of sleep (Coren 171). Also, an experiment conducted in Finland had about 10,778 adult subjects where they were followed for six years, being monitored for their health and sleep times. By the end of these six years, the scientist were able to found out that the poorer sleepers from the group was two and a half times more likely to die during that testing period (Coren 173). This is very significant due to the fact that when we are sick, we are asleep through most of the sickness because it allowed the immune system to become increasingly more active. With less sleep, it puts us at risk for disease or sickness because by losing hours of sleep would result in a decreased immunity to illnesses. In addition, a Doctor named Damien Leger was apart of the US national commision of sleep disorders. He created a report full of findings in 1988 where he obtained information of resulting incidents from sleep deprivation. For example, in Dr. Leger’s findings, there were 24,318 deaths and 2,474,430 disabilities that were caused by sleep deprivation (238). This is
very vital because the effects of sleep deprivation can potentially harm you and others around you if you’re not careful. Sleepiness or drowsiness on the wheel is a big sign that you are putting yourself and others in danger. Sleep deprivation drops effects like sleepiness, drowsiness, and deteriorating alertness onto a person. This could be very harmful because of the fact that while dozing off at the wheel, you could cause multiple car accidents ranging from car crashes to running over pedestrians. If drivers do not pay attention and are alert at all times, you can not only gravely injure yourself but loved ones as well.