sleep importance

English
Importance of sleep. Sleep is very important and beneficial part of our lives. Sleep helps us to have a better quality of life, but nowadays not sleeping well has become part of the lives of many people. The sleep needed is between 7 to 9 hours, but some people get 6 hours or less. Sleep deficiency can be presented at any time of our lives, as adult people, teenagers and even in children. Sleeping well helps us physically and mentally. It is known that sleep plays an important role and helps us to improve our memory, health, learning and metabolism. Also sleep has an big impact on our life and it can bring a lot of consequences such as, long term diseases, car accidents, memory problems, shorter life, lower grades, deficiency at work, mad mood, poor performance exercise and extra activities.
One of the consequences that lack of sleep brings is long term diseases. If we do not sleep what we need, we can increase the risk of developing cardiovascular disease and hypertension, metabolic problems such as, obesity and diabetes and emotional disorders such as, depression and bipolar disorder. When we deprive our bodies of sleep, it raises ghrelin which it is a hormone that regulates the need to eat. When we do not sleep, that hormone increases causing us want to eat more when we do not need it, so that is when obesity problems are presented. Also, sleeping decreases leptin which is another hormone that regulates the need to eat and when it decreases, we will have the need of eating more although we are already full. “A 2010 study found that C-reactive protein, which is associated with heart attack risk, was higher in people who got six or fewer hours of sleep a night” ( “11 Surprising Health Benefits of Sleep”). Sleep helps us to have a good health and prevent these physical and mental illness. Having good health, we are going to be able to keep our normal activities that we realize during the day.
Another consequence of sleepiness is the risk of suffer a car’s accident. Sleepiness is dangerous if you will drive. Nowadays car’s accidents have increase in USA, not just for alcohol abuse or speeding also, for sleepiness. “According to the NHSA (National Highway Safety Administration), falling asleep while driving is responsible for at least 100,000 crashes, 71,000 injuries and 1,550 deaths each year in the United States” (“Why sleep is important and what happened when you don’t get enough”). Some of the people that are most liable to suffer accidents while driving are people who suffer of sleep disorders, night workers, truck drivers, elder people etc. All those people do not get enough sleep during the night, but they have to keep awake all the day to follow their daily activities. Sleepiness not just can affect the person who not sleeps, it also affects 3rd persons. For example, if there is a person who slept 6 hours or less and drive the next day, he/she can crash the car of other person and cause an accident. Get enough sleep keep us aware while we drive and it help us to avoid car’s crashes.
Also, Memory’s problems are presented for not get enough sleep. How many times are you forget what did the teacher talk yesterday in class? Or what did your mom asks you to bring of the store? These memory problems are very common on people who sleep 6 hours or less. It is most common that elder people suffer memory problems because their age, but nowadays young people can present memory problems for not sleep well. When we are sleeping, our brain makes a lot of process; some of them are calling synapses and consolidation. Synapses and consolidation are important process for our memory, so if we do not get enough sleep, those processes will not be successful develop, and we won’t be able to develop long term memory which is very important to develop our daily activities at work and school. Also, long term memory is important for ours because the nice and beautiful experiences that we lived with family, friends, and partner will be healthy remembered. Having long term memories help us to remember and realizes what things we did bad, so it will help you to not repeat those conducts again although it will help you to remember good and healthy experiences that are part of the past of the person that you are.
Live a shorter and look older are another consequences of sleepiness. How many of you have heard people say; if you sleep more, you will live more. It is true. When you sleep well, you feel better, and you look fresh. If you lack your sleep, you can get dark circles on your eyes. Just take a look on people who do not sleep per days because they spend the night on internet, they take care of a newborn baby or just because they suffer sleep disorders and you will see how they deteriorate. “Also, the body's cells are more productive during deep slumber, when there is a reduced breakdown of proteins. Proteins are considered the building blocks of our bodies: They are charged with making more cells and repairing skin damage due to sun exposure and stress. This means that any recent skin damage will be repaired during this time” (Daggett, Shannon). We cannot stop getting older, but the only that we can stop is seem older when we are young.
Sleepiness affects us on focus on school. When you do not sleep, or you sleep 6 hours or less, you can see how tired you feel at school. Instead on focus what the instructor are teaching, you are just thinking on sleep and how tired you feel. You cannot concentrate on the assignments in the classroom. You do not want to participate in class because you feel tired and lazy. You have poor learning at school if you do not sleep enough. “Without adequate sleep and rest, over-worked neurons can no longer function to coordinate information properly, and we lose our ability to access previously learned information” (“Sleep Learning and Memory”). These problems are caused for do not get enough sleep. Sleepiness can affect us to realize the activities we normal do and it can lead to get lower grades.
Deficiency at work is another consequence of sleepiness. When you do not sleep, you are not going to able to develop well your duties at work. The persons most common to suffer sleep problems are night workers such as, fast food employees, nurses, truck drivers etc… These persons are more liable to suffer sleep’s problems or sleep disorders, and it can affect their performance at work. Fast food employees as nurses have a duty with the patient in the case of the nurse, and with the customer in the case of the fast food employee. Both of them have to be nice, friendly, gentle and agreeable which is difficult to achieve when you not get enough sleep. We will trying to stay awake, and we will eventually lose. Sleepiness can diminish our productivity at work and our tendency to make mistakes. For instance, if you are cashier on a fast food restaurant , or at a bank probably you manage a lot money. Sleepiness can cause you lost the focus on what you are doing and make a mistake easily which can cost you a lot of money. Sleep deprivation can also cause people loss of position at work for poor performance or negligence.
Bad mood is another effect of sleepiness. When you do not sleep what is necessary for you, It is normal that your mood changes. Your body and mind need a rest too. We can show a poor performance during the day because if we do not sleep enough. Our exhaustion for sleepiness can be showed at work, at home, at school. When we make the duties that we normally do, it can be carry with unwillingness and bad mood. Bad mood can be showed at work for example, when a fast food employee is rude with a customer. Having a bad mood for lacking sleep can cause a lot of problems at work. If you have bad mood, it will be difficult that co-workers can work with you and have a good work environment. It can cause problems with managers because of your bad mood. Another example of bad mood can be showed at home when you are looking an excuse to fight with your partner or complain with your children when there is no reason, just because you’re your bad mood.
If you exercise or do some kinds of extra activities like playing soccer, lack of sleep can affect your performance. When you exercise or do other activities like go to the gym, play soccer, basketball whatever that you activity is, you left all your energies on doing that, so you have to sleep well to get all that energies that you need in order to develop it successful. “Hitting the weights at the gym? Good sleep will bring you the results you want more quickly. The body repairs itself, including rebuilding your sore biceps, during the deepest phase of sleep. That's why a good night's sleep will not only make your workouts more productive but will also boost your immune system in general”(Humphreys). If you like doing exercise or that kind of this extra activities, sleeps helps you to not get tired faster. Sleep helps us develop better our activities.
Those are some effects of sleep deprivation that we need to know in order to be aware of the consequences of lack of sleep. Some people do not have enough time or to sleep because their busy activities during the day, their habits and lifestyle, but all can do an effort and organize our schedule during the day in order to can do it. Also, knowing the consequences, it is important to know How to sleep better and tips to accomplish it.
One thing that we need to know it is not exercising in the late evening. People have a lot of troubles with their schedule to do exercise. Some people get their children at school and then work during the day, so they do not have time to exercise during the day and they got to the gym late evening. One thing that we need to know is the better time to exercise is in the morning and late afternoon. In the late afternoon the temperature of our body highest, so it leads us performance the exercises better. “Aerobic capacity (endurance) is approximately 4 percent higher in the afternoon” (Quinn, Elizabeth). “Afternoon exercise is the best if you want to avoid injuries for many reasons. We are most alert; our body temperature is the highest so our muscles are warm and flexible; and our muscle strength is at its greatest. These three factors make it less likely that we will get injured” (Quinn, Elizabeth).
Avoid eating before bed time, and caffeine are a great step to fight with lack of sleep deprivation away of us. It is common that people who do not sleep well and is tired drink coffee to stay up awake during the day to do their daily activities. Drinking soda, eat chocolate will keep us awake too because they contain caffeine too. Eat heavy meals before bed time will cause we fill full and lose the sleep. Avoid drinking alcohol before bedtime. Once our body digested alcohol, then, our body depurate all the alcohol we drink, and it can cause awakenings during the night and poor quality sleep. As faster we drinking alcohol their functions act and get to our brain and the drug of alcohol digested rapidly depending on how much alcohol we drink. Also, a lot of people drink alcohol for sleep, and it is not recommended because it can affect sleep phases. By the other hand, although we sleep our 8 hours, after we consume alcohol, we might not feel rested during the day. Also, when we consumed alcohol it can develop sleep apnea which is a sleep disorder which the people affected have pauses in their breathing while they sleep. As consequence of this, the quality of the sleep of the person affected is poor because of we get tired during the day, and it because we have sleepiness a consequence of apnea disorder caused for consuming alcohol.
Another tip is Keep a sleep schedule. Going to sleep at the same time every day will helps us to make a routine in our bet time. If we suffer lack of sleep, is necessary that we make an effort. Change our routine radically is difficult, but we can change it a little bit each day. For example if we go to sleep 10 min earlier each day, at the end of the week it will be more than one hour per week and it can make a big change in our quality of sleep and our performance during the day. Thus, if we go to sleep earlier and sleep enough every day, we will not need an alarm to wake up in the morning. By the other hand if we set an alarm to be able to wake up in the morning is because we need more time of sleep during the night.
Take a nap during the day to make up the hours that we did not sleep during the night is another recommendation to restore our lost hours. By the other hand, we need to be careful when you take a nap, because if we get a lot of nap hours, it can be worst because it can lead insomnia. Taking a bit nap during the day also help us to feel fresh and more active during the day. “People trained to perform tasks recall them better after a night’s sleep, or even after a short nap, than after several hours awake”( Myers, David G).
Avoid smoking. Smoking has a big impact on our sleep. It causes sleep deprivation. Cigarettes or others products that have tobacco contains nicotine which is a stimulant that interrupt sleep. It vary depends of how many time people have cnsume tobacco. “Visual scoring of sleep staging showed similar results between smokers and nonsmokers. However, spectral analysis showed that smokers had a lower percentage of delta power, or deep sleep, and a higher percentage of alpha power, or light sleep. When asked about sleep quantity, 22.5 percent of smokers reported lack of restful sleep compared with 5.0 percent of nonsmokers”. (“Smoking Linked To Sleep Disturbances”)
In conclusion, having the habit of sleep deprivation comes with a heavy price tag. The consequences can be devastating. How I mentioned before the effects are, long term diseases, car accidents, memory problems, shorter life, poor deficiency at school, deficiency at work, mad mood, and poor performance exercise and extra activities. Although lack of sleep has become a normal way of living for many people because of their schedule, excess of work, bad habits and lifestyle, we still are on time to stop it. Knowing some tips of how to sleep better and what to avoid to accomplish it such as, Avoid exercise in late evening, Avoid eating before bed time, Avoid drinking alcohol before bedtime, Keep a sleep schedule, Take a nap during the day and Avoid smoking , we can improve our sleep, thus that way, improve our brain and body functions. Doing all this tips, we will have for sure a better and healthy life.

Work cited
“Smoking Linked To Sleep Disturbances”. Science Daily . Science Daily,LLC. 7 February, 2008. Web. 29 April,2014 Myers, David G. (2001). Exploring Psychology. New York, NY: Worth Publishers

“11 Surprising Health Benefits of Sleep”.Health.Health Media Ventures,Inc.Web. 21 April, 2014

Humphreys, Keith. “Stop Insomnia in 2 weeks”. SFGate. Hearst Communications, Inc. 30 August , 2007. Web. 28 April,2014

Daggett, Shannon. “How Does Sleep Impact Longevity?” Gaiam life your guide to better living. Gaiam,inc. Web. 28 April,2014

“Why sleep is important and what happened when you don’t get enough”. American Psychological Asociation. American Psychological Asociation. Web. 21 April, 2014

“Sleep Learning and Memory”. Healthy Sleep. WGBH Educational Foundation. 18 December 2007. Web. 25 April, 2014

Quinn, Elizabeth. “The Best Time of Day to Exercise”. About.com Sports medicine. About.com. April 03, 2014. Web. April 28,2014