Importance of Sleep for Correct Cognitive and Bodily Functioning
I had experienced a complete flip of my circadian rhythm. I was sleeping during the day and attempting to function at night. I was experiencing the world in darkness. Going to sleep at 7 in the morning and waking up at 5 in the evening takes a toll on the body both mentally and physically. At the time my life was at a standstill. I had no obligations during the day to be awake for, I had nowhere to be and no one to see. It started when I would stay up later and later into the night, with nothing to do I didn’t mind sleeping in. It got progressively worse until I had flipped my sleep wake schedule completely around. When I was awake I was in a constant fog, everything seemed …show more content…
Most would agree that poor sleep makes for a bad day but it plays a larger role than that. Carolyn Gregoire, a senior health and wellness writer for the Huffington Post as well as a TEDx and Harvard Public Health Forum speaker, explains new research conducted from The University of California, Berkley. The research states that poor sleep impacts your ability to accurately read the emotions of others. Dr. Mathew Walker states “Recognizing the emotional expressions of someone else changes everything about whether or not you decide to interact with them, and in return, whether they interact you,” and “Should you lose the ability to read and decode facial emotions, you are placed at a profound social and psychological disadvantage. We know this from conditions such as Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, in which individuals fail to decode emotions, resulting in markedly diminished social and psychological functioning.” (Qtd. In Gregoire). In this study researchers monitored heart rates and conducted brain scans of young adults while the individuals viewed a number of images of faces with a wide array of expressions. The participants viewed the faces once after an all-nighter and again after a full night’s sleep. The fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging, brain scans showed that the areas of the brain that sense emotion could not differentiate between friendly …show more content…
Victoria Philips states, one in six fatal car crashes and over 200000 workplace accidents a year can be attributed to poor sleep. Some of the worst disasters of the 20th century could have been prevented had those individuals had a good night’s sleep. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska and spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound, the investigation determined that the ships pilot had fallen asleep at the controls after working for about 18 hours straight. On March 28, 1979, sleep-deprived workers failed to notice that the unit 2 reactor had lost coolant at Three Mile Island. By the time the accident was discovered nearly half of the nuclear reactor’s core had completely melted. 73 seconds post-launch the space shuttle Challenger exploded killing all of the seven astronauts onboard. NASA workers who had only slept two hours prior to working rejected an engineer’s recommendation to postpone the launch. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident report stated “time pressure… increased the potential for sleep loss and judgment errors,” and that working “excessive hours, while admirable, raises serious questions when it jeopardizes job performance, particularly when critical management decisions are at stake.” (Qtd. In Philips). A committee of scientists was formed to review recent reports
I had experienced a complete flip of my circadian rhythm. I was sleeping during the day and attempting to function at night. I was experiencing the world in darkness. Going to sleep at 7 in the morning and waking up at 5 in the evening takes a toll on the body both mentally and physically. At the time my life was at a standstill. I had no obligations during the day to be awake for, I had nowhere to be and no one to see. It started when I would stay up later and later into the night, with nothing to do I didn’t mind sleeping in. It got progressively worse until I had flipped my sleep wake schedule completely around. When I was awake I was in a constant fog, everything seemed …show more content…
Most would agree that poor sleep makes for a bad day but it plays a larger role than that. Carolyn Gregoire, a senior health and wellness writer for the Huffington Post as well as a TEDx and Harvard Public Health Forum speaker, explains new research conducted from The University of California, Berkley. The research states that poor sleep impacts your ability to accurately read the emotions of others. Dr. Mathew Walker states “Recognizing the emotional expressions of someone else changes everything about whether or not you decide to interact with them, and in return, whether they interact you,” and “Should you lose the ability to read and decode facial emotions, you are placed at a profound social and psychological disadvantage. We know this from conditions such as Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome, in which individuals fail to decode emotions, resulting in markedly diminished social and psychological functioning.” (Qtd. In Gregoire). In this study researchers monitored heart rates and conducted brain scans of young adults while the individuals viewed a number of images of faces with a wide array of expressions. The participants viewed the faces once after an all-nighter and again after a full night’s sleep. The fMRI, functional magnetic resonance imaging, brain scans showed that the areas of the brain that sense emotion could not differentiate between friendly …show more content…
Victoria Philips states, one in six fatal car crashes and over 200000 workplace accidents a year can be attributed to poor sleep. Some of the worst disasters of the 20th century could have been prevented had those individuals had a good night’s sleep. When the Exxon Valdez ran aground in Alaska and spilled more than 10 million gallons of crude oil into the Prince William Sound, the investigation determined that the ships pilot had fallen asleep at the controls after working for about 18 hours straight. On March 28, 1979, sleep-deprived workers failed to notice that the unit 2 reactor had lost coolant at Three Mile Island. By the time the accident was discovered nearly half of the nuclear reactor’s core had completely melted. 73 seconds post-launch the space shuttle Challenger exploded killing all of the seven astronauts onboard. NASA workers who had only slept two hours prior to working rejected an engineer’s recommendation to postpone the launch. The Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident report stated “time pressure… increased the potential for sleep loss and judgment errors,” and that working “excessive hours, while admirable, raises serious questions when it jeopardizes job performance, particularly when critical management decisions are at stake.” (Qtd. In Philips). A committee of scientists was formed to review recent reports