Learning Challenge - Health, Learning about Sleep

Article: "How Sleep Deprivation Decays the Mind and Body," Seth Maxon - The Atlantic

I think something most college students can agree on is that sleep is great. Especially in times like these, which are stressful in a way pretty much none of us have had to deal with before, getting enough sleep is important for our health in a variety of ways. What this article showed me, though, is how much sleep can impact our health in tangible ways.  The author, who imposed sleep deprivation on himself as an experience, ended up experiencing psychological hallucinations after staying awake for several days on end. That is obviously an extreme case, but the truth is that sleep deprivation, even minor, can still take a toll on our bodies and our minds.
What's crazy is that science still doesn't fully understand why we need to sleep. Biological processes like eating and breathing have obvious explanations, but scientists still haven't arrived at a consensus on the issue of why we sleep. Sleep deprivation is nearly as misunderstood as sleep itself, but it manifests in some pretty important ways. Aside from potential psychological effects, like "hallucinations, psychosis, and long-term memory impairment," sleep deprivation has also been linked to conditions like hypertension and diabetes. Sleep deprivation, one study found, can even affect the immune system.
We might not understand why we need sleep, but studies show that depriving of ourselves of it, intentionally or unintentionally, has risks. While I personally have never had the tenacity to pull an all-nighter in my time in college, I know people who have done it regularly. Unfortunately, in today's world, people have a never-ending list of responsibilities and pressures, and college students are not exempt from that. For a lot of us, the pressure to succeed would make depriving ourselves of sleep in order to study for a test or write a paper a viable option. Before reading this article, I didn't realize how much of an impact that can have on our health. It makes me think that the pressures that we impose on ourselves today might have a lasting, detrimental impact on the health of the human race.

How to fix some common sleep problems (Source: Buzzfeed)


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