Sleep deprivation impacts physical and mental productivity. It also correlates to various health issues and can even increase the chance of death. However, sleep deprivation is more complicated than simply not getting enough sleep. Sleep deprivation could also occur when a person’s sleep schedule is out of sync with the body’s circadian rhythm, or when a person does not get good quality sleep. Sleep deficiency is a very common issue in the United States amongst all age groups. However, sleep deprivation is particularly famous for being an issue in the medical field. It could be interesting to analyze whether this lack of sleep is prevalent in pre-medical students at CNU.
In order to get a better idea, I surveyed 30 freshman girls and 30 freshman boys about how much they sleep per day; the average number reported was around six hours a day. The average for the boys’ sleep was slightly higher than that of the girls. A graph for the data can be seen below. The top three reasons participants said they were losing sleep was social media, school, and spending time with friends. According to the CDC (Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), most healthy adults need at least around 7 to 9 hours of sleep per night to function at top performance. An average of six hours of sleep per night can seriously hinder pre-medical students’ performance and harm their health as well. The importance of sleep and good health needs to be emphasized to the students who will encourage these ideals in the future. Students could create schedules in order to make sure they get their work done on time and have time to sleep. In addition, students could download apps that would temporarily block distracting social media websites. Finally, students could also study in quiet places such as coffee shops or libraries to avoid the distraction of socializing with friends. These small changes could make a big difference in the amount of sleep students get and their overall health.
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