Custom «Effect of Sleep Deprivation on a Teen» Essay Paper Sample

Sleep is a state of being not awake. It is essential for the human body health and growth of the body cells. Adults need an average of seven to eight hours a day for sleep, infants approximately sixteen hours of sleep in a day and teenagers nine hours of sleep in a day. In special cases such as a pregnant woman need more additional hours for sleep in a day. It shows the importance of sleep in a human life. Moreover, most of human growth takes place at night, cultural beliefs also explain that growth takes place when someone is sleeping, it happens through a dream in human mind.

Teenage schools especially the pre-primary schools have in their timetable mostly an hour of sleep. Children have a rest at this time; in fact they sleep up to a point where they are awakened. There are a number of effects resulting from sleep deprivation in children, for example, memory problems, depression, weakening of immune system or increase in pain perception.

Brain under-development is as a result of inadequate amount of sleep. When teenage children do not get enough sleep they become temperamental, aggressive and act before they think. Teenage underdevelopment causes them to act before considering the merits and demerits of their action. Moreover, to explain the aggressiveness of teenagers an individual may refer to high school lives of the students. For example, numerous cases of fighting in learning institution might be as a result of being aggressive, you find a student punching another one on the face because the other student has called him a looser. Moreover, in school games we often have cheer leaders in a football match, most female students struggle very hard to join these teams and also such struggles may exist when perhaps there is an exchange program that enables another student to join the institution. It happens that the new female student becomes attractive to boys playing football including the team leader. Team leader will go for creating a war between the female cheer leaders supposing they were in a relationship, at the end there will be a fight because of aggression.

Teenagers having enough sleep at their earlier age seem to behave different, their way of thinking usually varies depending on the environment they are raised in. Parents who are constantly quarreling in the house at night make their children sleep for a very short time because even sleep requires a quiet environment. Moreover, that is why there are laws governing private life of a person when it comes to noise pollution. These children become more mature as they go through the adolescent stage in life. Most of them do not engage in bad behaviors like excessive consumption of alcohol, premature sex behavior and drug abuse. In comparison, the teenagers who do not sleep enough are often involved with excessive alcohol consumption, use of narcotic drugs to keep them awake and engage in unplanned and uncontrolled sexual behavior because underdeveloped brain will enable them act before they think of the consequences. Underdevelopment of the frontal cortex area of brain, where information is being processed before action, leads to immature decisions that have more demerits than merits.

Depression may be a result of inadequate sleeping in a teenager. It is a state of being in a sad mood. Every child needs happiness for healthy and comfortable growth. A teenager who is always happy often has several advantages in life because through happiness we develop hope. Though in our lives we live hoping for a better tomorrow, this can only be achieved by happiness. Furthermore, our hearts are filled with warmth and joy when we are happy. In a state of sadness, our brains are filled with negative thoughts which lower the body system. The mind is not at its state of rest, it keeps on maneuvering around, and such teenagers often seek comfort in the negative activities like drugs. They are less motivated in life having no reason to live. Depression generates numerous diseases, for example, stress. When someone is stressed emotionally it lowers the blood pressure in the body. Law blood pressure may lead to symptoms of diseases like cancer, if not detected early it may reach a state of incurable. Moreover, it may lead to a faster heart beat as the body tends to pump more blood into the body system. Faster heart beat may result into death because of an impulse created in the heart beat and reaction of the body.

Likewise, bad mood results into discomfort during sleeping. The mind is diverted to one side of thinking, we understand the power of attraction, to an extent that when we think of a negative thing several times and we might end up taking a negative action like suicide. In this state people start taking drugs to boost the system of the body but more drugs in the body result into more depression.

Weakening of a body immune system also results from inadequate sleeping. For example, inadequate sleeping leads to underdevelopment of some generic cells in the body. When a person takes certain food into the body like milk, an allergic reaction will be caused. Intestine will be damaged because the cells that are supposed to protect the walls from damages are not developed leading to a law immune system.

Enough sleep allows a uniform growth of the body organs; it gives the body a physical exercise for growth and blood flow. Normal blood flow in the body leads to quality functioning of the body system. Boosting the immune system of the body results into happiness of the mind since the individual feels active and flexible. Inadequate sleep is like taking excessive alcohol which lowers the immune system in two ways, for example, alcohol in excess consumption reduces the ability of white blood cells to kill germs and it suppresses the white blood cells from multiply, prevents white blood cells from killing the cancer cells and reduces the macrophages to produce tumor necrosis factor. Second, excessive alcohol produces nutritional deficiency, denying the body valuable immune-boosting nutrients.

Often, a person feels sick, he consults a doctor and gets drugs. He is asked to have enough sleep to enable the action of drugs become faster. This lowers the chances of increase in perception of pain. Pain is a feeling that makes a person feels uncomfortable. For instance, HIV and AIDS drugs have several pains in the body like headache. When the CD4 cells of a person goes bellow 400, he or she is subjected to ARV’S drugs to boost the body system. They feel several pains and are advised to get enough sleep; this reduces the pain and increase faster drug function. At this point the brain is diverted to control the pain because the mind concentrates at one point.

Development of the emotional part of the body is contributed by the adequate sleep. When a person lacks emotional feeling, even when expressing things that are a result of emotions, the person becomes inconsiderate. Teenagers, who experience such situations, come from families that are unstable. They do not feel emotional effect because of inadequate love that their parents showed. Without love of parents an individual becomes emotionless because he or she does not see the need of love. In the end they will develop negative feeling towards life and become stubborn in life.

In unlawful cases of teenagers taken to court because of murder, tracing back into their earlier life, the environment and people they were living with shows that they were emotionless. Label emotions assist us in laughing, when we do not develop laughing techniques even our life becomes boring. Laughing increases a person’s life by a number of years. Most people who are living for so many years often say we should laugh every second to make the mind feel relaxed and peacefulness. For instance, in Kenya, recently documented story of a eleven years old child diagnosed by cancer explained that she has the will to live because of parental love she receives. Moreover, she explained the importance of sleep among teenagers as they become more intelligent and confident in themselves when getting quality sleep.

Love is a key factor in life, referring to the bible God said “love your neighbor as you love yourself’’, it is one of the greatest commandments in the bible. In our daily life, social relationship gives teenagers hope of creating a future family. Through the corners and corridors of learning institutions we find problems with creating relationships in the area. Majority of students in this institution dedicate much of their time to engage in a relationship, we find that those who are in a steady and healthy relationship usually sleep for more hours as compared to the unsteady one.

They are usually active in class and having no fear of expressing their ideas. When a problem occurs in their relationship, they solve their problem amicably without fighting and shouting to each other. Their brains have been developed and they reason more maturely, they handle their problem in an organized manner. In contrast with those whose relationship full of war and noise often you find that they do not get enough sleep. Such teenagers spend most of their time in night clubs and pubs until the wee hours. In the morning they wake up for lessons either half way sober or too tired for concentration in class, they become more depressed all over the day feeling sleepier. To control the blinking of the eyes they resort to drugs that keep them awake like Mira. Moreover, during dusk fall they continue with the same habit. Later they get stressed especially during exam periods and hence break their relationship.

Amount of sleep determines the extent of decision making. Through dreams we are able to examine a critical situation, at some point we will develop a solution through vision. More sleep increases chances of good decision making because we have enough time to think over the situation one is subjected to. The hypothalamus of the brain is responsible for our response towards stimuli; when it is fully developed, we can quickly respond to critical situation like presence of a snake. This part of the brain matures and becomes more active during sleeping time; this is why when something touches you while sleeping you respond by changing the position of sleeping.

In conclusion, there is a need to allocate more time for teenage sleeping. This will help in brain development, good decision making, steady and healthy relationship and general fitness of the body. The immune system and pain perception of the body will be improved, more teenagers will be happy in their life as they go through the several stages in life.