Blog #2: Sleep Deprivation

 

"the sleep." by Moth art

Everyone says that sleeping for 8-10 hours is good for the body, anything less than eight can be harmful to the body. But what do you call these two things? They're called basal sleep need – The hours or duration of sleep needed by an individual – and sleep debt – The amount of sleep that an individual has deprived themselves of.

Basal sleep, according to Chis Adams in his article How Much Sleep Do You Need?: How Many Hours of Sleep Do You Need?, is the amount of sleep needed for an individual to be physically and mentally fit. Meeting your basal sleep need also lets you be less groggy in the morning. Furthermore, Each age group, for people, is unique where infants have a basal sleep need of 12-18 hours and become less and less as the age goes higher where adults if 18 years and above need about 7-9 hours of sleep.

Adams also says that "...having an overtly long sleep schedule has shown an association with an increase in illness, accidents, depression and death." My opinion on the matter is that this may just be a symptom than a root cause of oversleeping — sleeping more than the basal sleep need. He continues to say that "...no definitive causal relationship has been shown and some sleep researchers believe the body will not let you sleep longer than you actually need."

The amount of sleep needed for a person to be fit does depend on their lifestyle, job and current health but the basal sleep need for a person can be different for another person. Two people of the same age, gender, and job can have different basal sleep needs independent of sleep debt; as stated by the National Sleep Foundation.

Sleep debt, in Molly Webster's article Can You Catch Up on Lost Sleep?, is the difference between the amount of sleep you should be getting and the amount you actually get. Sleep debt can also be accumulated unknowingly by the person. Webster comments on a 2005 survey shows that Americans on average are losing one hour of sleep every night; experts recommend 8 hours of sleep but, according to the survey, Americans sleep for 6.9 hours.

Webster states that Sleep debt as "...a deficit that grows every time we skim some extra minutes off our nightly slumber." although it is not proven that sleep debt and basal sleep need can be accurate down to the minute or by the hour on the dot. Most articles usually measure sleep and sleep debt in hours.

And in Webster's provided situation in her introduction, she said that the individual lost sleep during the week for a project due on Friday. Work and near coming deadlines are possible causes for a person to deprive themselves from sleep. Work can be a factor on why people do not get the right amount of sleep, where the time for when people go to bed is cut and thus have less time to have a complete and good quality of sleep.