Humans and Sleep

Humans and Sleep

Why Sleep is So Important
Austin Showalter
Psychology 101

When it comes to humans there is one thing we absolutely need, sleep. There are many things that can occur that will either harm you or completely shut down your ability to do anything when lack of sleep is in place. There are many questions asked like what happens when humans don’t get enough sleep, and which stages are most important when in slumber. These questions will be explored through the next few paragraphs to help settle the minds wanderous thoughts.
When lack of sleep is set in place the following side effects occur. Studies on sleep show that working memory tasks dropped by almost fifteen percent when pulling an all-nighter. Sleep helps your brain store information, so without that recovery time, you're unable to file away important things needed to be remembered the next day. In 2007 a Canadian study showed that people that only sleep 5-6 hours a night were 69 percent more likely to be overweight, compared to those who have 7-8 hours of sleep per night. With lack of sleep comes higher percentage of getting sick. When sleep deprived people’s immune systems are 50 times weaker than a healthy immune system should be. The worst part of sleep deprivation is your risk of cancer is heightened. During sleep your body produces melatonin which is needed to sleep. When this is interrupted it can create a major problem. It has been proven in a 2007 Texas study that melatonin detoxifies harmful cancer-causing radicals and even has time to create more antioxidants. In the same study it was found that melatonin heightens the effectiveness of vitamin C.
Stage 1 is the beginning of the sleep cycle, and is a relatively light stage of sleep. Stage 1 can be considered a transition period between wakefulness and sleep. This period of sleep lasts only a brief time of about 5-10 minutes. If you awaken someone during this stage, they might report that they weren't really asleep. Stage 2 is the second stage...

Similar Essays