Haley 1

Cydni Haley
Mrs. Jean Coco
English 1001
29 November 2016
Audience: People who do not understand why sleep deprivation occurs.
Preface: I think the roadblock Im facing right is how am I suppose to write this paper?
Am I doing it correctly? I understand I am giving an answer back to question I asked but,
it just seems like I am not doing it correctly. Another problem I am having is with my
magazine sources I am not sure if I cited them correctly. I think all together I am just
struggling with how to begin writing this paper. What I want to focus on mainly in this
conference is how to go about writing this essay and what type of information should be
placed in these paragraphs to tell my audience about my question.
Update: Do I have my sources correctly written? Do my information relate back to the
my inquiry question?
Sleep Deprived?
One word. Sleep. I always tend to wonder how many hours of sleep is appropriate
while also trying to get my life together. When we do not achieve the appropriate amount
of hours of sleep we start to see ourselves go down hill from that moment. It had been
discovered that sleep deprivation has been linked to serious changed in mood states and
their regulations(Louca and Short 987). When we think of sleep deprivation we think
lack of sleep over a period of time, but that has been proven wrong. It is more than that. I
mean why is it that anxiety and stress causes sleep deprivation?
Stress affects a human in many ways. In our everyday life we see stress present. It
affects us emotionally, physically, and behaviorally. There is a such thing as having a
good amount of stress and bad amount of stress. Having a bad amount of stress causing
tension and affects our sleep (Stress and Anxiety Interfere With Sleep). Anxiety and
Depression Association of America stated, seven out of ten adults have trouble sleeping

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when dealing with stress (Stress and Anxiety Interfere With Sleep). I know personally
I tend to become stressed when I know a lot of things are going on in my life, and I keep
letting them build up inside me. I start to notice my sleep starts to become inconsistent
and I began to wake up in the middle of the night. I realized that I should not stress
myself out over the top and should never let it affect my sleep because it ends up taking a
toll on me. When it comes to stress, women are significantly more affected than men are.
Women tend to become more sleep deprived because they tend to have more
responsibilities than men (Louca and Short 987). Sleep Deprivation is not just caused by
stress it also causes anxiety disorders.
Many patients who suffer from anxiety disorders complain about their sleep by
reporting difficulties in maintaining and initiating it. Having anxiety disorders affects our
REM sleep mode (Linkowski and Papadimitriou 229). When we are in REM sleep mode
our dreams start to occur. When people have anxiety disorders they tend to act out their
dreams because their body messes with REM, which paralyzes your body. When
having this disorder people tend to have panic attacks during their sleep. Linkowski and
Papadimitriou created a study where they had 44 outpatients with GAD (generalized
anxiety disorder) and 34 normal subjects. The patients presented an increase wake time
during the total sleep period and more early morning awakening decreased total sleep.
Insomniac GAD patients demonstrated decrease SE and TST and increased middle late
insomnia. These results suggest that CNS hyper vigilance is an actual symptom of GAD
that led to insomnia (Linkowski and Papadimitriou 231). But anxiety also calls upon
panic attacks especially when people are sleep deprived.

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When people start to experience panic attacks they wake up in a state of panic,
where they feel a sense of intense fear or discomfort accompanied by cognitive and
physical symptoms of arousal (Linkowski and Papadimitriou 230). Since people wake up
in a state of panic they fear of going back to sleep and dealing with it all over again.
People should not be scared of going back to sleep because panic attacks can be treated.
People can avoid caffeine, take medication and also go to cognitive therapy (Stress and
Anxiety Interfere With Sleep) to help out with these attacks. I never really thought about
this but sleep deprivation can affect someones mood greatly but I always wanted to
know why or how.
People tend to have mood deficits when they are sleep deprived, which affects a
person mental ability. In a study created by Michelle A. Short, and Mia Louca they
investigated the effects of thirty-six hours of sleep deprivation on different moods like
anger, depression, anxiety, confusion, fatigue, and vigour in healthy adults. They had
twelve healthy adolescent good sleepers ages 14-18 years who spent three consecutive
nights in the sleep laboratory where they could sleep for two nights, meaning they had 10
hours of sleep and the last night be sleep deprived (Louca and Short 987). In the study
Michelle and Mia said all moods worsen followed by one night without sleep (Louca
and Short 987). This study had provided that it is more prevalent in females, and that they
tend to have a greater vulnerability to mood deficits following sleep loss, with greater
depressed mood and anxiety.
I think we can all say that we have witnessed somebody or weve personally have
gone through mood deficits and not known what caused it. It is astonishing how by just

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not getting one day of sleep, it can worsen all your moods and can cause problems with
our mental stability.
Having your mood affected by not getting sleep really can cause damage to a
person physiologically. It ends up affecting your cognitive process (Alfarra et al.1). I
guess we never tend to realize how not getting enough sleep can cause all this damage to
our brain and body.
Sleep lost has been found to have mix results on emotion processing. In some
studies it has shown decreased emotionality after sleep loss (Alfarra et al. 1). Most of the
cognitive functions affected by sleep loss include psychomotor, cognitive motor, and
working memory. Once these functions are affected we end up producing negative stimuli
(Alfarra et al. 2-5). Sleep is needed to regenerate certain parts of the body, especially the
brain, so that it may continue to function optimally. After periods of extended
wakefulness or reduced sleep neurons it may begin to malfunction, visibly affecting a
person's behavior. Some organs, such as muscles, are able to regenerate even when a
person is not sleeping so long as they are resting. This could involve lying awake but
relaxed within a quite environment. Even though cognitive functions might not seem
necessary in this scenario the brain, especially the cerebral cortex, is not able to rest but
rather remains semi-alert in a state of "quiet readiness (Alfarra et al. 2-5). Certain stages
of sleep are needed for the regeneration of neurons within the cerebral cortex while other
stages of sleep seem to be used for forming new memories and generating new synaptic
connections.
In other words, sleep affects the brain greatly as we can tell. Being sleep deprived
can also affect language. Meaning that it can cause us to slur our words when we prolong

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our sleep because it affects our temporal lobe (Alfarra et al. 3-5). Realizing that sleep can
affect our brain is a scary thought to wrap around. In college and high school we pull all
nighters for test and quizzes and sometimes end up doing bad on them because of our
brain not being able to function the next day.
We tend to believe sleep deprivation is more common in adults but that is actually
not the case. It is said that Sleep deprived students tend to be more restless irritable, and
impulsive than other students(Esmiol, and Kristina E.). It is said that sleep deprivation
causes emotional disorders such as depression or anxiety, and emotional disorders may
cause poor-quality of sleep. Both authors explained how sleep deprivation causes
students to have lower academic achievement. They are more likely to fail a grade than
other students are, even when doing similar amount of homework (Esmiol and Kristina
E.). Sleep deprivation takes a toll on students especially when piled up with schoolwork.
Sleep deprivation decreases motivation, concentration, attention, and coherent
reasoning. It also decreases memory, self control, and speed of thinking increases the
frequency of mistake in students (Bruni A21). In most cases students do not even feel
sleepy to experience these negative effects. They tend to adapt to being sleep deprived
(Esmoil and Kristina E.).
In a study done by Kristina E. and Esmoil they tested whether sleep causes
positive outcomes. They asked parents of students in grades 4 and 6 to put their children
to bed earlier or later than usual for three nights in a row. They found that students who
went to bed an average of 30-40 minutes earlier improved in memory, motor speed,
attention, and other abilities associated with math and reading scores (Esmoil and
Kristina E.). This study concludes that temporary increase in sleep can have substantial

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effects on students in classroom functioning.
Many U.S. students of all ages do not get enough sleep, but adolescents tend to be
more sleep deprived than younger children. In fact about 85% of adolescents are reported
to be mildly sleep deprived and 10-40% may be significantly sleep deprived (Bruni A21).
This sleep deprivation is caused by several factors. One being adolescents wake up easily
during the night than younger children. Second, adolescents stay up late for sports,
homework and jobs. And lastly adolescents easily shift to a night-owl pattern (Bruni
A21). Some people say students tend to be more sleep deprived because of how weird
their sleep schedule is.
They often get less sleep on school nights and then sleep excessively on
weekends. When they go to bed later on weekends than on school nights, they experience
jet-lag effect each week, and their school achievement may suffer (Esmiol and Kristina
E.). But students have the ability to change their sleep habits at a young age.
The first thing they can do is have their schools talk to their parents about the
importance of sleep, including consistent bed times even on the weekends. When teachers
notice signs that a student might be sleep deprived they should contact the students
parents. Parents can stay in tune with their children. And students can personally
eliminate conditions that disturb their sleep like noise, stress, light, lack of exposure to
daylight, and some medicines (Esmiol and Kristina E.). As I processed the actual
meaning of sleep deprivation I never realized that I, myself, had actually really hit that
phase without even knowing.

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Works Cited
Alfarra, Ramey, Ana I. Fins, Isaac Chayo, and Jaime L. Tartar. "Changes in Attention to
an Emotional Task after Sleep Deprivation: Neurophysiological and Behavioral
Findings." Biological Psychology 104 (2015): 1-7. Web.
Bruni, Frank. Todays Exhausted Superkids. The New York Time. 29 July 2015;
A21.Print. 10 Nov. 2016.
Esmiol, and Kristina E. "Re-Imagining Educational Leadership: An Invitation to
Imaginative and Exhilarating Leadership." Florida Journal of Educational
Administration and Policy 22 Sept. 2007: n. pag. Print.
Papadimitriou, George N., and Paul Linkowski. "Sleep Disturbance in Anxiety
Disorders." International Review of Psychiatry 17.4 (2005): 229-36. Web.
Short, Michelle A., and Mia Louca. "Sleep Deprivation Leads to Mood Deficits in
Healthy Adolescents." Sleep Medicine 16.8 (2015): 987-93. Web.
"Stress and Anxiety Interfere With Sleep." Home. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Nov. 2016.