Adequate Sleep

When men or women sleep 6 hours or less per night, they are not as healthy as when they sleep 7 or 8 hours.  Those who sleep 9 hours or more are slightly below average in health.  Thus, 7 to 8 hours of sleep are most favorable.  As you might expect, too little sleep is more of a problem than too much.

Sleep is characterized by alternating stages.  One stage involves rapid eye movements (REM) and changes in heart rate, blood pressure, and muscle tone.  This stage may serve as a rest period for the inhibitory nerve cells of the brain.  It usually is accompanied by dreams.  If it is interrupted, we become anxious and irritable.  This REM sleep constitutes about 20 percent of the total for the night.  Deeper or quieter periods provide the rest necessary for recovery from fatigue.  If you miss some sleep one night, the body will not make any serious attempt to recover the sleep deprivation.  However, if a substantial amount of the loss is REM sleep, more REM sleep will occur on subsequent nights.  

Going without sleep seems to impair creative capabilities, which suggests that another function of sleep is to restore a cerebral cortex fatigued by consciousness.  Moderate physical activity seems to enhance the ability to fall into deep sleep without altering the time spent in REM sleep.  Too little or too much exercise appears to result in sleep disturbance, and significant sleep loss seems to suppress the immune system.  

Your Tasks: 

1. First go to this website and take the sleep IQ quiz, and keep track of your results: http://sleepfoundation.org/quiz/sleep-iq-quiz

2. Next, go to this website and take the sleepiness test, and keep track of your results: http://sleepfoundation.org/quiz/national-sleep-foundation-sleepiness-test

3. Go to this website and read (read the overview tab only): https://www.healthypeople.gov/2020/topics-objectives/topic/sleep-health

4. Go to this website and read (sleep and disease risk): http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences/sleep-and-disease-risk

5. Go to this website and read about sleep tips: sleepfoundation.org/sleep-tools-tips/healthy-sleep-tips

6. Go to this website and read about the bedroom environment (click on each of the links at the top to read about touch, see, hear, smell, and taste): sleepfoundation.org/bedroom/

7. Go to this website and read about this app (and try it out, if you want): www.businessinsider.com/runtastic-sleep-better-app-2014-11

Your Assignment:

Write a well-written response in paragraph format, answering the following:

1. How well do you sleep?  Did you feel like you get enough/too little sleep prior to reading this?  Why or why not?

2. How knowledgeable were you on sleep (answer should be based off of your questions from the two sleep quizzes as well as any new information you learned).

3. Describe how sleep affects our health (should be a significant amount on this--at least 2 paragraphs).

4. What are some changes you can make to your lifestyle to help improve your sleep?

5. What is your opinion of the Sleep Better App?  Did you try it out?  Have you ever tried out other sleep apps/devices before, such as the Fitbit?

Your entire response should be at least 1.5-2 pages.