The last two weeks of school is coming to a final count down and finals are creeping up. And while everyone is excited for sweet summer nights and get away trips this summer, the next two weeks will soon feel like eternity when studying for exams. The library gets packed out by all students and the lack for sleeping is at an all time high. Students will order in pizza and pull all nighters, anything to guarantee a good grade on their final. While losing some sleep won’t cause that much damage to a persons health, most college students do not get the regular amount of sleep they need each night and throughout each semester, students tend to have increasingly high sleep deprivation.
Sleep deprivation causes not just short-term effects on a person’s body, but it also creates some serious long terms effects as well. Below are lists of the entire short and long term affects and consequences that people will face because of the lack of sleep they are getting.
Sleep Loss Dumbs You Down: Sleep plays a critical role in thinking and learning. Lack of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. Lack of sleep not only impairs attention, alertness as well as concentration within your body, but it also creates a lack of reasoning and problem solving. This makes it extremely difficult to learn efficiently.
Lack of Sleep Kills Sex Drive: Sleep specialists say that sleep-deprived men and women report lower libidos and less interest in sex. Depleted energy, sleepiness, and increased tension may be largely to blame.
Decreased Performance and Alertness: Lack of sleep can affect our interpretation of events. This hurts our ability to make sound judgments because we may not assess situations accurately and act on them wisely. Sleep-deprived people seem to be especially prone to poor judgment when it comes to assessing what lack of sleep is doing to them.
Memory Cognitive Impairment: Decreased alertness and excessive daytime sleepiness impair your memory and your cognitive ability. A persons ability to think and process information becomes very impaired due to a lack of sleep.
Stress Relationships: Disruption of a bed partner’s sleep due to a sleep disorder may cause significant problems for the relationship.
In the long term, the clinical consequences of untreated sleep disorders are large indeed. They are associated with numerous, serious medical illnesses, including: high blood pressure, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, obesity, mental impairment, Psychiatric problems, including depression and other mood disorders, Attention Deficit Disorder (ADD), Fetal and childhood growth retardation, injury from accidents, disruption of bed partner’s sleep quality and poor quality of life.
So from now on make sure to get an efficient amount of sleep every night because if you don’t the consequences of sleep deprivation will surely catch up with you.