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Daengprok
Rinrada Daengprok

Dean Leonard

English 1201 2V3

21 March 2021

How Can Not Having Enough Sleep Affect Human Brain and Human Behaviors?

There are many people around the world that not having enough sleep. Later, they are

diagnosed with sleep disorders due to many factors. Sleep disorders can affect human in

several ways. This problem then leads to this question that how sleep loss can affect human

health and their routines?

In the past, most people thought that it would be acceptable to have sleep

insufficiency. There are many careers that require time and attention to finish their work. For

example, doctors spend most of their time with overload patients or military officers who are

on the mission to protect our safety. Nowadays, there are several studies provide information

and proofs that sleep insufficiency can lead to physical health and mental health. Sleep

deficiency will not only leave us feeling tired but can increase risk for a wide range of

diseases and health problems (Pacheco).

Common idea for what sleep insufficiency can affect people is by affecting their

physical health. When people lack sleep, they have more possibility to have obesity, heart

problems, abnormal insulin management, and mood swing (Pacheco). These physical

conditions can create furthermore dangerous outcome that many people do not expect.

Another idea several researchers talk about is mental health. India's study proves that

people with a lack of sleep tend to have more mental health comparing people who have

enough sleep. There is much mental health that researchers concern about, such as depression,
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anxiety, and bipolar disorder. Mental health that are mentioned above can lead to the problem

of alcohol intake. 40% of the people, male and female announce hitting the bottle of alcohol

hard when they do not have enough sleep (Khemka et al).

A study of sleep insufficiency reveals that sleep insufficiency damages attention on

simple tasks and increases distractibility (Chua et al). However, it is often important to split

one's focus between different tasks, such as when traveling or multitasking at work. When

more than one task is carried out at the same time, success on one or both tasks is normally

compromised (Veksler and Gunzelmann).

We hear a lot about brain’s damages that cause by sleep insufficiency. Experiments

have conducted show inadequate sleep can impair the brain's ability to learn complicated

memories (Begley). Another way that sleep can boost brain function is by reinforcing

synapses that store important memories. One method is to repeat the patterns of neuronal

firing in the circuits that originally laid down the memories.

Sleep insufficiency can cause many problems in several ways. It can lead people to

many diseases and health conditions. Assumably, people want to spend their time with their

love ones, their family members, and their friends. Because of those desires, we should

practice a good sleep hygiene so that we will perform good tasks and continue living our life.

There are some people whose work requires them to have small amount of sleep. This is

something that we need to investigate more in details.

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Works Cited

Begley, Sharon. “Sleep Better, Get Smarter!” Saturday Evening Post, vol. 283, no. 4, July

2011, pp. 16–21. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

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%3d#db=a9h&AN=63004359 Accessed 19 Mar. 2021.

Chua, Eric Chern-Pin, et al. "Effects of total sleep deprivation on divided attention

performance." PLoS ONE, vol. 12, no. 11, 2017, p. e0187098. Gale In Context:

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Khemka, Pransh, et al. “Causes of Sleep Deprivation and Its Effect on Performance of Students

and Their Mental Health.” Indian Journal of Health & Wellbeing, vol. 11, no. 7–9, Sept.

2020, pp. 437–442. EBSCOhost, search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?

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https://web-b-ebscohost-com.sinclair.ohionet.org/ehost/detail/detail?vid=5&sid=d1dd6e19-b842-

4285-beea-fc6b13eaf639%40sessionmgr101&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d

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Pacheco, Danielle. “Physical Health and Sleep: How Are They Connected?Danielle Pacheco.”

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Veksler, Bella Z., and Glenn Gunzelmann. “Functional Equivalence of Sleep Loss and Time

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pp. 600–632. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1111/cogs.12489. https://web-b-ebscohost-

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