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Sleep Deprivation

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Sleep Deprivation, Disorders and Drugs
Jennifer Mason
PSY/240
April 04, 2013
Professor Dugan

Sleep Deprivation, Disorders and Drugs

There have been many times in my life I did not get enough sleep; in fact it is quite common for this to occur. In my life right now, I have my 3 month old granddaughter and her mother living with us as the baby was recently hospitalized due having reflux disease and is on a very strict eating regiment in order. This means we have to wake her up every two hours to feed her. I also work shifts that can be anywhere from 12-24 hours, needless to say sleep is at the bottom of the list of things to do, and I can definitely feel the effects from the lack of it.
Lack of sleep does affect moods, just as your mental state can also affect sleep. Anxiety can increases agitation, which in turn can make it hard to sleep. Stress affects the ability to fall as asleep by making the body wide awake and sensitive to things such as noise. Individuals such as me who are under constant stress or may have exaggerated responses to life stressors will often time have sleep problems. For me lack of sleep makes me cranky, irritable and unable to concentrate or focus on anything. It seems that the more I want to be able to sleep, the less I am able too. I am so focused on not getting sleep, I work myself up to a point I cannot sleep at all.
Sleep deprivation, can have significant cognitive risks that are associated with it. One may have trouble performing even the most basic of everyday task. Something as simple as driving your car can become confusing. For example, recent experiments reveal that following days of chronic sleep restriction, significant daytime cognitive dysfunction accumulates to levels comparable to that found after severe acute total sleep deprivation. Executive performance functions observed by the prefrontal cortex in

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