Sleep Synthesis Essay

669 Words3 Pages
Sleep has an enormous effect on our daily life and health. Thousands of Americans are sleep deprived, or at a high risk of being deprived. A full night’s sleep is needed to perform well at work or school and maintain a healthy body. Many students are sleep deprived due to an overload of a combination of schoolwork, demands, part-time jobs, extracurricular activities, and late-night socializing. These combinations can cause many students to leave little time for adequate studying. In turn, students often pull “all-nighters” cramming for exams or writing papers. They begin to acquire sleep debt, which is an accumulation of many missed hours of needed sleep. Staying up all night cramming for an exam can be detrimental because it causes sleep debt, which in turn impairs memory, interferes with learning processes, and interferes with the ability to evaluate a performance during an exam. The first reason why staying up all night, cramming, is a mistake is because insufficient sleep decreases the ability to remember any new information. Studies show that the brain needs several hours of sleep to solidify the information it’s learned during the day. “Sleep serves not only a restorative function for adolescents’ bodies and brains, but it is also a key time when they process what they’ve learned during the day” (National Sleep Foundation 484). Depriving the brain of sufficient sleep can cause one to be fatigued, disoriented, and even delusional. One needs the recommended amount of sleep in order to prepare and perform well on an exam, which is the primary achievement for students. Students need to be alert and have their memory fully functioning on the day of an exam. Secondly, cramming is a mistake because sleep debt can hinder a student’s ability in learning. Teens need at least 9 hours of sleep per night. During adolescence, their circadian rhythm shifts, this
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