Sleep Deprivation Essay Research Paper Cynthia Benavides101501Sleep

Sleep Deprivation Essay, Research Paper

Cynthia Benavides

10-15-01

Sleep Deprivation

Sleep deprivation consumes people all over the world on a regular basis. But what causes sleep deprivation. What are the consequences of being sleep deprived. And how can the poor tormented sleepy people all over the world get a good night.s rest. Let.s explore the exhausted world of sleep deprivation.

There are many reasons a person can be sleep deprived. They may not be able to get sleep due to their particular situation or they may have a sleep disorder. An example of a situation that may cause a person to be sleep deprived is that they are too busy to sleep. Many people have an overwhelming schedule but they do what they have to do in order to survive. Parents and college students are such people with overwhelming schedules. Then there are sleep disorders. Just a few disorders that cause sleep deprivations are dysomnias, parasomnias, and medical or psychiatric disorders.

A dysomnia is a sleep disorder that can make it difficult to sleep or stay asleep. There are also different types of dysomnias. There is intrinsic, extrinsic and circadian rhythm (Dement 511). An intrinsic sleep disorders is just one of the dysomnia classification. Intrinsic sleep disorders are caused by something within the body. An example of an intrinsic disorder is narcolepsy. Narcolepsy is a fairly well known sleep disorder. A typical narcoleptic will be inordinately sleep, have irregular REM (rapid eye movement) sleep, instantaneous muscle weakness also known a cataplexy, hallucinations and difficulty sleeping at night (Dement 512). Julia, a narcoleptic, had experienced those symptoms several times before. Once, her children were in the car. She had fallen asleep at the wheel and turned the car on its roof. Her five year old son unbuckled him self and was just frightened not injured. Her two-year-old daughter was still safe in her car seat (Caldwell 140-141). Another intrinsic sleep disorder is sleep apnea. While narcoleptics suffer from sleep .seizures,. sleep apnea patients have difficulty breathing while they sleep. Some sleep apnea patients become so relaxed it that their throat collapses and their airways close. As was the case with a man name John. John would relax and go into a deep sleep. His airway passage would close because his tongue had fallen to the back of his throat. Thus choking him and enabling his capability to breathe. Those patients are known to have obstructed airway sleep apnea (Dement 513). Then there are those who just simply don.t breathe. Those patients are known to have central sleep apnea. Those sleep apnea patients may have several episodes where their breathing just stops because their brain forgets to pull air into the lungs (Dement 513). After several losses of air episodes all sleep apnea patients have difficulty going back to sleep. Sleep apnea also causes people to snore very loudly people at the highest risk for sleep apnea is obese men.

Extrinsic sleep disorders are the opposite of intrinsic sleep disorders. Extrinsic sleep disorders are caused by factors outside the body (Dement 514). An example of an extrinsic sleep disorder is hypnotic dependent sleep disorder (Dement 515). This is the case with my uncle Allen. He cannot sleep without his pain pill. He takes it every night. He has even gone so far as to have many different doctors. So every one of them can prescribe him pain pills to help him sleep. This disorder is caused by a person.s dependency on a sleeping aid. The person may feel they need a drug so often that they either need a higher dosage to sleep or they get to the point were they can.t sleep without it, they are dependent. Sleep-onset association disorder is another type of an extrinsic sleep disorder (Dement 515). This disorder is characterized by the certain accommodations that need to be met in order to go to sleep. My mother-in-law is an example of a person with this disorder. She doesn.t fall asleep watching the television she turns it because she can.t sleep any other way. Another disorder is environmental sleep disorder (Dement 515). This disorder is caused by a person.s sensitivity to too much stimuli going on around that individual. People with this disorder are very sensitive to noise, light and temperature.

Intrinsic and extrinsic disorders are some what mix to make circadian rhythm disorders. It is not only the sleep pattern in their head but because they have something else that is going on outside their body. Circadian rhythm sleep disorders occur when the person.s sleep cycle is disrupted (Dement 516). An example of a circadian rhythm disorder is jet lag. The time change and the body.s regular sleep regimen don.t coincide (Dement 516). This is because if you go to bed according to a different place.s time your body doesn.t get as many hours of sleep as it usually gets (Lavie 200). My baby for example suffered from jet lag. When we moved from New Mexico to California she did not adjust to the time change. She had a sleep regimen and it was thrown totally off. A circadian rhythm disorder causes a person to be dreadfully tired.

Parasomnias are different from dysomnias. Dysomnias interfere with a person wake- sleep patterns while parasomnias don.t allow a person to have different sleep stages. Parasomnias are sleep disorders of partial arousal during sleep or disorders that interfere