The Awesomeness of Sleep

I love to sleep. There is nothing more precious than a good night’s sleep. When I was a baby my mother would have to wake me up to feed me. I rarely ever woke up in the middle of the night for anything. I would sleep anywhere at any time. Now that I am an adult it’s not quite as easy to go to sleep anywhere at any time but let me tell you how I do love my sleep. I love it. I love it. I love it.

And please, do not wake me when I am asleep. It’s an awful thing. To me there is nothing more painful than a phone ringing in the middle of the night, an alarm clocking going off, or being nudged to get up and get ready for work or school. I despise it. I delivered the morning newspapers from the age of 11-18. It was a huge chore for my mother just to get me out of the bed every morning. She would have to set her alarm an hour before she had to wake me because she knew it would take that long to get me up. She had strategies, like turning the lights on, yelling, pulling me, etc., but no matter what she tried it was still painful for her.

All through university I did everything to avoid those 8:30 AM classes. I succeeded during my undergrad degree but grad school was a little more demanding. My classmates would tease me about my ten hour a night sleeps while they were pulling all-nighters to get their work done. I would try to explain to them that the ten hour a night sleep was the reason I didn’t have to pull all-nighters. The sleep I was getting would give me the energy I needed during the day to get through my work. If I hadn’t been getting the sleep I was getting I would be sluggish, cranky, and unproductive, which would in turn require that I pull all nighters to make up for not having the energy to do my work during the day.

I never feel bad about my love for sleep, probably because I am healthy, I am a very happy person, I have a good outlook on life, I am energetic, social, outgoing, and have a great deal of ambition and motivation. I attribute most of this to my love of sleep.

For our nervous systems to work properly, sleep is needed. Experts say the amount of sleep varies from person to person. In general, most adults need about seven hours of sleep per night, while children and adolescents need around nine or ten hours each night.

Without enough sleep, problems could arise in the following areas of a person’s life:

Mental Health

• Sleep helps us maintain optimal emotional and social functioning while we are awake.
• Sleep deprivation results in mood swings
• Sleep deprivation results in stress which can upset your mental process, resulting in confusion, memory loss, irritability or emotional highs and lows
• Sleep deprivation causes emotional disturbances, which could lead to aggression, apathy, and depression
• sleep deprivation is related to psychiatric illness such as depression and phobias, as well as to addiction.
• If you already have a mental disorder, sleep deprivation may add to the problem

Physical Health

• Sleep deprivation can result in aches and pains, a decrease in body temperature, a decrease in immune system function, and an increase in heart rate variability
• Sleep plays an important part in growth. 80% of the growth hormone is being produced during the first phase of sleep. Release of growth hormone in children and young adults takes place during deep sleep.
• Without sleep, you become more susceptible to heart disease, stroke, and diabetes.
• People tend to replace reduced sleep with added calories
• People who don’t get enough sleep are less likely to cook their own meals – and more likely to rely on restaurants and fast-food outlets for some of their meals – which could lead to weight gain or other nutrition-related problems
• Study: Those who got less than four hours of sleep a night were 73% more likely to be obese than those who got the recommended seven to nine hours of rest. Those who averaged five hours of sleep had 50 % greater risk, and those who got six hours had 23% more.
• Study: Healthy young people who regularly got less than 6.5 hours of sleep a night had greater insulin resistance than people who got 7.5 to 8.5 hours of rest. Insulin resistance is the condition that often leads to Type 2 diabetes.

Ability to Function

• Children who don’t get enough sleep are more likely to have trouble academically
• A sleep deprived individual does everything twice as slow
• Sleep deprivation causes people also lose their ability to think straight and act quickly
• Sleep deprivation makes a person drowsy and unable to concentrate the next day.
• A lack of sleep leads to impairment of memory and physical performance.
• Sleep deprivation reduces a person’s ability to carry out mathematical calculations.
• People who are sleep deprived perform as poorly as or worse than people who are intoxicated.
• Driver fatigue is responsible for an estimated 100,000 motor vehicle crashes and 1500 deaths each year, according to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration