Sleep

The habits we gain play a major role in the relationship between sleep and health. It is important to understand that every single little thing we do today, affects us tomorrow. The common cold and weight gain, as well as how we do our daily activities are related to how much rest we get. Studies have shown that the less we sleep the more exposed to the rhinovirus we are. When we sleep less than 7 hours, we are 2.94 times more likely to get the cold ¹. At the same time, short periods of sleeping time are related to weight gain or obesity in children and adults. When adults and kids sleep less than 5 hours, there is a greater risk of suffering from severe obesity. However, there is a slight conflict of studies. Sleeping 5 hours or less, and eight or nine hours cause obesity and short term weight gain in women ². Our efficiency to perform a well done job or class work also depends on the way we sleep. According to the "Sleep Patterns of College Students at Public University" study, college students are required to sleep at least nine hours but they only sleep 7 or 8 hours. By doing so, their academic activities are affected in a negative way ³. For this reason, many students and adults rely on coffee to keep them awake and on task. On the other hand, caffeine tends to affect sleep quality during night time ⁴. This leads us to the affect of lack of sleep and insomnia. Insomnia is a problem related to the difficulty of falling asleep, staying asleep, or quality of falling asleep. There are different types of insomnia and about 54% of adults suffer from this problem, whether it is during the night or day. Such disorder can be blamed on the interferences on a normal sleep schedule ⁵.

References

1. Sleep Habits and Susceptibility to the Common Cold.Sheldon Cohen, PhD; William J Doyle, PhD; Cuneyt M. Alper, MD; Denise Janicki-Deverts, PhD; Ronald B. Turner, MD. Archives of Internal Medicine. 2009; 169 (1) : 62-67.
2. Sleep Duration, general and abdominal obesity, and weight change among the older adult population of Spain. Esther Lopez-Garcia, Raquel Faubel, Luz Leon-Muñoz, Maria C Zuluaga, Jose R Banegas and Fernando Rodriguez-Artalejo. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.
3. Sleep Patterns of College Students at a Public University. LeAnne M. Forquer, PhD; Adrian E. Camden, BS; Krista M. Gabriau, BS; C. Merle Johnson, PhD. Journal of American College Health, Vol 56, NO. 5.
4. Caffeine or melatonin effects on sleep and sleepiness after rapid eastward transmeridian travel. M Beaumont, D. Batejat, C. Pierard, P. Van Beers, J.B. Denis, O. Coste, P. Doireau, F. Chauffard, J. French, and D. Lagarde. Journal of Apploed Physiology.
5. What Is Insomnia? http://www.webmd.com/sleep-disorders/insomnia

Introduction: Sleep.

For many years, researchers have discovered different ways, both positive and negative, of how sleep affects our daily life. Sleep is one of the most important activities for human individuals, since sleeping helps us to relax our body and mind. Being physically and mentally in shape helps us with daily activities such as work, and classes, as well as it improves health quality. I sleep for about eight or nine hours every night. When I sleep less than the normal amount of hours I usually do, I tend to be kind of moody after a while. On the other hand, sometimes when I feel tired and I would love to go to bed, I just cannot fall asleep quickly, and it gets me very irritated. Sometimes, I wake up a lot during the night, or I wake up really early and cannot fall back asleep for about three hours, All these reasons make me think that I might suffer insomnia; therefore, in this essay I will try to explain some of the clinical facts behind insomnia, and how sleeping helps health in general. On the other hand, I will also attempt to explain how the lack of good sleep is related to serious health issues such as obesity, and the common cold.

P.A. for the weekend.

So my little cousin turned 4 years old this week! How exciting, my little man is growing up. Our Plan was to arrive to their house in Pennsylvania by 11:00 am, unfortunately, the trains in the Manhattan were not working good; it was a mess! waking up really early was a waist of time, we ended up taking the 10:00 o'clock bus from the city to P.A. so we did not arrive there until almost 2:00 pm! We finally arrived to the house, it was such a relieve to me, I was so tired all I wanted to do was take a nap. Every one arrived to my cousin's house for a big celebration; the food was good and the cake! so delicious! We partied for a while, then it was time for us to come back to New York. This time the transportation was great! all the trains and the buses were on time. I had such a good time!