Literature Review
Does lack of sleep affect our health? Well according to many like Micheal J. Breus , PhD and Clinical Psychologist of sleep medicine and writer for WebMD not sleeping enough “significantly affects your health, performance, safety, and pocketbooks”. He believes that sleep deprevation which is the condition of not having proper sleep, heavily decreases your performance and alertness and that just by limiting your sleep by an hour and a half your daytime alertness can be affected by up to 32 percent. Also affecting your ability to think properely and process information. Michael Breus says that lack of sleep can also severely affect your driving abilities and that sleep deprivation is responsible for at least 100,000 car crashes, 71,000 injuries, and 1,550 deaths each year. There are serious medical illnesses that have been associated with sleep deprivation including but limited to: High blood pressure, Heart attack, Stroke, Obesity, Psychiatric problems like depression, Attention Deficit Disorder, Mental impairment, and Fetal and childhood growth retardation. According to WebMD one study showed that limiting your sleep can have a greater mortality risk than smoking, heart disease and high blood pressure. Sleep apnea is another condition closely related with lack of sleep and is on par with diabetes and asthma with over 20 million Americans estimated to have some sort of sleep apnea.
According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute nearly 40 percent of adults report falling asleep during the day without meaning at least once and it is estimated that nearly 50 to 70 million Americans have some type of ongoing sleep disorder. The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute believes “your ability to function and feel well while your awake depends on whether you’re getting enough total sleep and enough of each type of sleep”. They also believe that it’s important that children get a lot of sleep early on in life, with as much as sixteen...