Reflection: Sleep

The topic that has stood out to me most in class so far is sleep. I realized how important sleep is for a healthy lifestyle. Sleeping deprivation can negatively affect so many aspects of one’s life that I was unaware of. Not getting enough sleep can harm the body in multiple ways, such as: physical disorders, mental disorders, and heart issues. There are many physical problems that come along with lack of sleep. Metabolic disorders, which causes obesity, can be caused by sleep deprivation. Concerning heart problems, lack of sleep causes cardiovascular issues like irregular heartbeat. From an example in class, Rick Ross suffered two heart attacks because of his sleep deprived lifestyle. As far as mental health goes, I learned from class that students that get sleepy during the day have 3x higher depression.

            This section on sleep really opened my eyes on how important sleep really is, especially for college students. Sleep deprivation can negatively impact school and also harm athletic performance. This really stood out to me because I have heard coaches tell me this throughout the years. I went into further research on the relationship between sleep and athletic performance. The Stanford School of Medicine did a five to seven week research study on their basketball team. Eleven teammates got ten hours of sleep a night for five to seven weeks. After the allotted time they compared the before and after. The athletes’ free throw shooting, three point shot accuracy, and reaction time improved by ten percent in each area. This goes to show that more sleep does in fact improve athletic performance.

Sleep is important to Public Health because it can negatively or positively affect every aspect of one’s health. Remaining questions I have regarding sleep: At what point does one attain these negative health affects due to lack of sleep? How long does a person go sleep deprived before noticing major health issues?