The chart above gives us a general idea of how much sleep we need. Multiple charts differ, but this allows one to gather a relative understanding of how much is suitable. As a teenager myself, I would always say that eight hours is perfect. Even six hours would be good. Maybe even four? We'll wake up the same, right? Well, not necessarily. Even an hour difference in sleep times provides a change in performances the next day be it noticeable to you or not. However, finding how many hours of sleep you need for optical performance best determined by self evaluation. A careful analysis of how you perform one day after a recommended amount of sleep compared to one with your own set hours, such as two or four, is the key.
Personally, my sleep schedule is two to four hours per night. Four out of eight, huh? I can go through a day with just that amount of sleep? Well, yes. I assume it is because I have grown accustomed to it. I've learned to naturally deal with it to the point where I am not as tired as I should be. Now then, I know some of you may be thinking of REM sleep cycles as to my successful manipulation and you may be right even if my clocked hours don't fit so perfectly. However, I think it's weird being able to do this for as long as I have. Lately, I have gotten concerned about how my sleep is affecting my performance since I have been struggling with things I used to do with ease. These afflictions are symptoms of something know as sleep deprivation - something I'm sure we all have learned about one way or another.
Symptoms of sleep deprivation include:
- Decreased attentiveness
- Trouble with memory retention
- Loss of concentration
- Impaired motor skills
- Increased stress
- Lack of better judgement
- Increased risk of health problems
- Weight gain
- Lack of motivation
- Mental impairment
I've been experiencing a few of these for a while now due to my chronic lack of sleep. However, I only became truly aggravated when I began experiencing a decrease in the ability to retain memories or knowledge. I began to forget simple things and I realized I was forgetting them. It's not to say that it's the only symptom I've been dealing with, but it's just to let you know that only when something really prominent hits somebody does that truly enforce the person to begin to act against it.
Anyways, cheers and have a good night.
I agree with self-evaluation and deciding which sleep schedule is right for you. For some, they come home from school and do stuff till it's time for them to go to bed. They're awake with no naps then sleep straight hours (Like 4,6,8, and etc). For me, I come home at 5pm, take an hour nap at 6pm, do homework, and usually sleep at 12. Lucky for me, I get more sleep then most. Overall, I'm basically getting 7 hours of sleep just in a different order then everyone else. For those who aren't getting as much sleep, they are only hurting themselves. There's many negative effects of sleep deprivation. There could be many reasons why people aren't getting enough sleep; two being workload and time management. People tell me how they procrastinate and leave homework till late at night then they barely sleep and complain about not getting enough sleep. I think that although homework load maybe a big issue that interferes with sleep, so does time management. Fixing little things could allow people to get more sleep and keep themselves from facing the effects of lack of sleep.
ReplyDeleteI found your post very interesting and it really put into perspective how much I sleep. I liked how you caught the reader's attention by asking a question in the beginning. The chart was a great visual help also. Most people, myself included, do not focus on sleep because we are too busy focused on everything else.
ReplyDeleteI like how you organized this piece. The chart was nice and symptoms section makes a good transition. I have never really thought the amount of time I sleep, but I would say it ranges from 8 minutes to 8 hours. Sleep pulls us all in, but sometimes, we just have to escape it for other important tasks. Like the average high school student, I base sleep on what I can handle. We don't always get to sleep when we want to. With this being said, I should probably prepare for these symptoms for tomorrow. You know what I mean if you look at the time of this post.
ReplyDeleteI found your post interesting and true. It is great to have this kind of subject being written in the point of view of a high school student. Many other articles say that we need 8 to 9 hours of sleep, but the authors don't take into account the students workload or how accustomed the students have become to little to no sleep each night. Also, adding the table to show the data was very helpful and it allowed me to compare how much sleep I actually get to how much I am supposed to be getting. Lastly, it would have been interesting if you got a table of how much sleep an average student gets each night, and compared that to the table of how much sleep they are supposed to get. However, comparing the data to yourself did get the point across of how little sleep students actually get. I look forward to your next post.
ReplyDeleteEek. Please sleep more! Chronic sleep deprivation has some very serious consequences. You may "feel" accustomed to it, but that doesn't mean it's not affecting you negatively.
ReplyDelete