informative speech

informative speech

The Importance of Sleep

1. Introduction

Sleep is the universal activity that people take part in even without following any directions from anybody. Just like people go to a restaurant without looking at the menu and take the special one. But, people should know about the menu they take and what they would get from that. The same thing goes for sleep. People should know about the importance of sleep and the consequences that they will get if they do not follow what was written. I hope that this essay will help you understand the importance of sleep and the difference in quality of sleep and quantity of sleep. Sleep plays a vital role in our life. The quality and quantity of sleep that you take will be related to your individual health itself. The brain will not remember, understand, or learn (encode the information to long-term memory) if you do not have enough sleep. People will feel disoriented, as if they have no clue about what is happening and what they are supposed to do at an event if they are not getting quality sleep. This is because sleep is essential for the nerve cells (neurons) to work optimally. Both long-term memory and short-term memory need the nerve cells and electrical connections that play a vital role in recording information to the brain. During sleep, our body cells will also produce more protein, which acts as a building block for the cells to repair damage, including the damage caused by stress and the pollution of the whole day.

2. The Effects of Sleep Deprivation

The effects of not obtaining enough sleep have been well documented in a variety of studies. Such effects include a change in neurobehavioral functions. People constantly feel the effects of their decreased alertness. Individuals often show signs of fatigue and report that they are less able to concentrate when they have not gotten enough sleep. Stimulus is also often misjudged as a meaningless task. It is well documented that the 2 major industrial accidents – the nuclear accidents at 3-mile Island and Chernobyl and also the grounding of the Exxon Valdez were in part caused by impaired judgment due to the operators’ sleep deprivation. Short-term memory is also affected, and sleep-deprived individuals often have trouble trying to remember newly learned information. Measures of vigilance and performance show that the ability to maintain optimal performance during the course of the day is compromised by the lack of sleep. This will usually result in the sleep-deprived person trying to make up for the compromised performance by working extra time, thus further depreciating their sleep patterns and creating a vicious cycle.

People’s attitudes towards sleep have always been quite cavalier. This can be widely supported by the inscriptions found on an ancient tomb stating that the individual had “lived life to the full.” It was found that this particular man had died in his thirties – most likely due to the fact that in “living life to the full,” he was depriving himself of a necessity for life – sleep. Our ancestors also found concepts such as sleep to be quite unexplainable. One such example is the theory of the “second wind.” It was believed that when an individual became tired around the late afternoon, the “second wind” would blow making the person more awake and alert. This concept was held until the 1920s due to a minority having the fortune of ideal working hours, and thus obtaining siestas. This fortunate minority were well aware of the effects of the “second wind” and its interference with their own siestas caused by their initial tiredness. It is today, however, that we are beginning to understand the full effect and importance of sleep for the human body and mind.

3. Tips for Getting Better Sleep

It is important to figure out ways to improve sleep quality. By getting better sleep, you can improve many aspects of your life. But how do you go about getting better sleep? Following these guidelines will greatly help you in figuring out how to do so. The first guideline is to try to go to bed and wake up at the same time every day. This will help regulate your body’s internal clock. With a regular schedule, eight hours of sleep will feel more refreshing than it does if you were to sleep at different times of the day. The regular schedule will also help you fall asleep quicker. Try to avoid sleeping in, even on days off. All it will do is disturb your scheduled pattern and make it more difficult to wake up on the days of the week where you do have to get up at a certain time. An effective way to figure out how much sleep you need is to see how you feel in the morning after gradually increasing the amount of sleep you get. If you wake up feeling refreshed, then you have figured out the right amount of sleep that you need. If sleepiness interferes with daily activities, then you haven’t had enough sleep. By figuring out the amount of sleep you need and creating a regular schedule, you can increase the quality of your sleep and in turn, improve all aspects of your life.

4. The Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep

There is a growing body of evidence to suggest that there is a strong relationship between sleep and learning. Put simply, the better the night of sleep, the better a person’s capacity to learn. It was once believed that sleep was a dormant state, but advances in neuroimaging and neurophysiology have shown that the brain is very active during sleep. It is now thought that sleep plays a housekeeping role in the brain, a process called memory consolidation. The brain will go over the events of the day and transfer information from short-term memory to long-term memory. There are certain stages of sleep that are particularly active in this process and it is now thought that if sleep is cut short, the person will not have the opportunity to commit the events of the day to memory. This can be very detrimental for a student or an individual learning a new task. There are several studies which now show a correlation between amount of sleep and academic performance. A recent study found that high school students who received As had significantly more sleep than those who received Bs, and the B students had significantly more sleep than the C students. Similar findings have been found in studies comparing university students who did better or worse in academic performance.

Perhaps the greatest health benefit of sleep is its restorative effect on the body. Sleep provides an opportunity for the body to repair and rejuvenate itself. In recent research on the effects of sleep deprivation, it was discovered that losing sleep for even just one night can have a profound effect on the body’s immune function. This was found in a study involving the examination of the antibody response to the Hepatitis A vaccine. Subjects who slept four hours per night produced less than half the amount of antibodies in response to the vaccine compared to those who slept eight hours. As well as affecting the antibody response, sleep deprivation has been shown to increase the levels of other inflammatory mediators. These in turn will increase the likelihood of illness and also affect the time that it takes for the body to heal itself following injury.

5. Conclusion

It is important to realize what consequences can occur due to lack of sleep, not only to the sufferer but to those surrounding. Often, the most common effects are feeling drowsy or fatigued, poor concentration, irritability, an increase in the chance of illness and accidents, and many more. Sleep is an essential part of life, and it is basic to educating those in society about the importance of sleep.

It is with sleep disorders that the most common ones are snoring, sleep apnea, and insomnia. These may cause difficulty in falling asleep, waking through the night, excessive snoring, or feeling tired after a night’s sleep. Sleep apnea, which occurs due to a blockage in the airways, may cause a person to stop breathing for short periods of time, which often wakes them up.

Unfortunately, due to increasingly busy lifestyles, many fail to realize the potential negative effects this may have on their sleep. Often, burning the candle at both ends may cause sleep to be sacrificed. There are many reasons why we can’t get to sleep, such as stress, arguments, and sleep disorders.