Not Enough Sleep

Last night I was busy the moment I came home. I went to school, went to the doctors to check out my back, then I went home. By the time I got home it was already 5:00 PM. I still had to create a word "poster" for my English class, 3 worksheets in my chemistry class, text book questions in chem,and study for my chemistry test, vocab. quiz, & Chinese Quiz. I was stressed out. My friend and I stayed up all night trying to finish our work, but by 11:00 PM she started having a mental breakdown. She was not only stressed about her homework and tests the next day, but she was also lacking sleep.

We were a mess. I wanted to burn the edges of my poster to add effect, but that wasn't a safe idea. I started burning one of the edges and became in awe at how beautiful the fire was. I started daydreaming and before I knew it practically my entire poster was in ashes. I quickly threw it into the sink and watered it down.... It was too late; the damage was done. All that remained was a black, charcoal mess in the sink. I didn't have an efficient amount of sleep and started zoning out. I had to start ALL OVER. The next time I burned it, I was more cautious and was able to keep the poster alive. This happened mainly because I was too tired and fatigued to adequately pay attention to what was going on.

So I then realized that the affects of lack of sleep and how it changes how we think and behave. On the website http://healthysleep.med.harvard.edu/healthy/matters/consequences/sleep-performance-and-public-safety I found a lot of information and links to other websites. From the professionals, I found out that over 1 million hospital injuries and 50,000-100,000 deaths each year were preventable medical. The doctor simply was sleep deprived from working nonstop for 24 hours and sometimes 36 hours. Drowsy driving also is the cause of 20% of car accidents (1 million crashes, 500,000 injuries, and 8,000 deaths). Both drinking and driving and drowsy driving have the similar effects. 

Next blog, will be the mental effects of sleep deprivation. Based off of my own experience today, I think that some side effects will include: inability to focus for long periods of time, headaches, lower reaction timing, etc. See ya next time!

How Much Sleep Do We Need?

I never get that much sleep and I'm always up late due to procrastinating my homework while also juggle color guard(info on what guard is http://millbrookperformingarts.com/whatiscolrgurard.html) and basketball along with all my school work. This subject always got me curious as my mom is always nagging at me to get more sleep.

The source https://sleepfoundation.org/how-sleep-works/how-much-sleep-do-we-really-need seems very professional as it gives you more links to branch off of if you have any questions as of four years ago. It is also a foundation that promotes more sleep through its research for the past 25 years into this article. 

This website showed me that not only does sleep vary by age but also by individuality. Some questions to ask yourself include:

1. Are you happy, healthy, and productive on 7 hours of sleep? Or do you need 9 hours of sleep to be in high gear?
2. Do you have health issues(Ex. overweight)? Are you at risk of any disease?
3. Are you experiencing sleeping problems?
4. Do you rely on caffeine to get you through the day?
5. Do you feel sleepy while driving?
   

While these individual problems play an important role, your age is the main thing that determines the amount of sleep you need. This is a summary of the age groups supposed necessary needed amount of sleep.

• Newborns (0-3 months): 14-17 hrs a day
• Infants (4-11 months): 12-15 hrs
• Toddlers (1-2 yrs): 11-14 hrs
• Preschoolers (3-5): 10-13 hrs
• School Age Children (6-13): 9-11 hrs
• Teenagers (14-17): 8-10 hrs
• Younger Adults (18-25): 7-9 hrs
• Adults (26-64): 7-9 hrs
• Older Adults (65+): 7-8 hrs
  

I don't know about you, but I'm definitely not getting my 8-10 hours of sleep. Maybe that's why me and my friends are always complaining to each other that we're so tired. Sleep hasn't really been my top priority lately, but after reading this article I will definitely make an effort to at least get 8 hours of sleep from here on out.

Why Do We Sleep???

What makes sleeping so important? We all know what it feels like to cram some last minute homework and studying the night before the test. And eventually we start becoming more and more tired throughout the day. So what exactly is it that sleep gives us to keep from being groggy and tired.

I used the website https://sleepfoundation.org/excessivesleepiness/content/why-do-we-need-sleep as a foundation of what this topic is about. This website already had some information that you would learn in Biology, but it was a good way to refresh your memory on what goes on while your asleep.

The brain is constantly working while sleeping. It throws away any useless memories, stores memories into the long-term memory department, restore and rejuvenate, grow muscle, repair tissue, and synthesize hormones. The amount of sleep we accumulate affects our performance for the rest of the day.

My next blog will be about how many hours of sleep you need. Amount of sleep varies by age group. For example, it feels like your little baby cousin sleeps half the day while your parents probably only sleep seven hours a day. A more in depth analysis will be coming on my next blog.

?What to Choose?

There's too many topics to choose from. However, I have been doing some research as to which subject I should choose and commit to. I asked my family on their opinions on what I should do. They recommended research on stress fractures in the back(since I got one four weeks ago) and choose a college I would like to look into(since college searching season is starting). I also realized that researching something I love, dancing, would be fun.

  So I did some research into what I can possibly research in the future. The website http://orthoinfo.aaos.org/topic.cfm?topic=a00053 to get a basic understanding of what a stress fracture is. I found out that the medical term for a stress fracture is spondylolysis. I also realized that I was lucky to ask my doctor about my on and off back pains for the past 6 months to get an x-ray while it was still in the early stages. It would be interesting to see how I can improve my back.

I decided to start on a simple Cal Poly San Louise Obispo, since my father thought that it was a good school for me. Their school website http://www.calpoly.edu/ gives you a bunch of links to different colleges within the school. Their options include college of agriculture, food, & environmental science, college of architecture & design, college of engineering, college of liberal arts, college of business, and college of science & mathematics. My only problem was that there were way too many things to branch off into. Doing this topic will be like killing 2 birds with 1 stone.

Don't tell my mom, but I haven't been able to stop myself from dancing every day even though I have a stress fracture in my back restraining me. So I thought maybe the history of dancing would be fun. I realized that dancing goes very far back in history, so choosing one genre of dancing would be better. I got my first taste on a summary of dancing from  http://www.historyworld.net/wrldhis/PlainTextHistories.asp?historyid=ab82 to get a basic understanding of it. I realized how spiritual and cultural dancing was in the beginning of time, compared to modern dance. It would be interesting to see what this subject holds in the future.