Effects Of Sleep Deprivation

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The most important biological activity occurring in all humans and animal species is sleep. The average person will have spent a cumulative total of between 20 and 25 years asleep by 70 years of age. Sleep affects many of behavioral and physiological functions, such as memory, cognitive ability, immune function and hormone secretion. Sleep deprivation has been found to have numerous effects on both behavioral and physiological functioning. Moreover, the effects will be cumulative, so a mild reduction in sleep per night can be after a period of time, result in significant functional deficits. There is increasing evidence that sleep deprivation has detrimental effects on the immune response, indicating that sleep should be considered a vital part of the immune system and that there is a mutual relationship between sleep and immunity. This relationship is important because over recent decades, there has been a decreasing in the mean duration and quality of sleep in the population. The concept that lack of sleep might be compromised immunity in the population has far-reaching public-health implications for both individuals and society.…show more content…
As a consequence, a lack of sleep can make the immunity weaker and increase the capability to get infection. For example, shorter sleep durations are associated with a rise in suffering from the common cold. The function of sleep in altering immune responses must be determined to understand how sleep deprivation increases the susceptibility to viral, bacterial, and parasitic infections. There are several explanations for greater susceptibility to infections after reduced sleep, such as we have been observed during partial sleep deprivation an impaired mitogenic proliferation of lymphocytes, decreased HLA-DR expression, the upregulation of CD14+, and variations in CD4+ and CD8+ T
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