For most middle school-aged children, bedtime is a neglected part of the day. But what’s ironic is that 70% of about 1,200 kids surveyed by Kids Health wish they could get more sleep, and in truth, the same ratio feel tired and have trouble waking up in the morning. Such people consist of overthinkers, loaded workers, and procrastinators, all in range of the students attending our school. From a young age, we’ve been taught that sleep is beneficial, that lacking sleep has many effects, and that sleep is a priority, mostly occurring from the reinforcement of our parents. Most sources state that adolescent-aged children require nine to eleven hours of sleep per night, an average of ten hours. Although there is controversy on this topic, regarding whether or not specific amounts of sleep should be implemented and followed, my view on this topic is that sleep, regardless of who gets it or doesn’t get it, especially in the middle school, is something which cannot be disregarded altogether, and the obvious reasons that it is so mandatory, should be deeply acknowledged.
There’s no denying it, sleep is a crucial element of life. Overall, it generally benefits two important fundamentals of living, both mental and physical health. Sleep is divided into two types of sleep, Rapid Eye Movement (REM) sleep, and Non-Rapid Eye Movement (NREM) sleep. In benefiting the brain mentally, sleep, particularly REM sleep, enhances the ability to have great attention skills, enabling sharp reaction times, good productivity in daily activities, and positive vitality- the right energy humans need in life. In other words, it is the fastest portal to unlock creativity, emotion, effectiveness, and efficiency, which are only prominent under the circumstances provided by sleep- that is, only available when humans are mentally energized by it. Especially in children, this basically lets the ability to learn run free, in a sense relating to the twenty-first century competencies- being able to be self-directed and to have good interactive skills, due to the fact that children’s minds are still deepening. In benefiting the physical body, sleep, particularly NREM sleep, allows many areas of the body to relax, including blood pressure, breathing systems, body temperature, hunger hormones, and muscle work. By doing this, it simultaneously allows the body to regulate its systems, more specifically letting blood vessels repair, fixing DNA genetics, letting the immune system practice its work- filtering out the body, and letting memory consolidate- for the brain to process daily activities- all things that can be easier maintained when other parts of the body do not require much attention due to the lack of sleep. In children, this is basically the secret to growing quickly, something notable for every child to want to do. And no matter what age a person is, sleep is basically a code for one of the fastest ways to stay in shape, and in investing time for it, people permit sleep to give them great benefits back. To receive the full benefits of sleep, humans need approximately three to five cycles of both REM and NREM sleep, each of which have varying time limits per section. And although the features of both sleep types jive, these processes are some that can only occur from the phenomenon of sleep, a unique, versatile process itself, which is intended to occur within every single day’s cycle. A little bit of extra sleep at one time never hurt anybody. But the question remains: is there really a reason to not try to get enough of it?
Because sleep is so beneficial, we have to realize how negative it would be for someone to go without it. First of all, going completely without sleep in straight chronological units provides a set of obvious effects, both to the interior and exterior parts of a victim. In the 1960’s, Randy Gardner, a high school student, decided to conduct an experiment where he wouldn’t sleep for eleven days, both to record the obvious effects of doing so, and to see how well he could survive internally. In general, for most people, one night without sleep contributes to unfocused vision and loss of touch identification. After the second night of missed sleep, mood swings and incorrect body sync begin to occur. And for Randy Gardner, by the end of the tenth night, with a miss of a total 264 hours of sleep, he eventually experienced hallucinations, loss of complete concentration, hormonal imbalance, short-term memory loss, and minor illness. Surprisingly, he was able to recover from such an experience. But not everyone can live to say they’d survive such a horror. And realistically, over time, regarding those of us who pull extra hours after bedtime to avoid sleep, slight increments of due sleep add up to just as much missed sleep, with slightly tamer consequences. Sleep benefits mental and physical health, so the lack thereof, causes tolls on both life quality and safety in the long term. By not getting enough sleep periodically, little changes in daily activity begin to take place. One of these notable differences is microsleep. Microsleep is an effect where the blinks of the human eye last notably longer than the regular length. These are basically short periods of sleep that occur throughout each day, which can cause all parts of the body to pause exterior function briefly. In that brief second or two, many bad things can occur, some of which can produce huge effects, due to the fact that these are small cues of sleep deficiency. According to The National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, sleep deficiency causes thousands of car accidents per year globally. Sleep deficiency is actually a link to stress, depression, moodiness, and anxiety, a causality with not being able to feel alert each day, a result of the production of additional adenosine hormones, “junk-build-up” in the brain- supposedly cleared by sleep. In this negative process, positive thinking, reactions, learning ability, and sociality with others, become unobtainable. But the worst part yet, is that the body adjusts to this, lowering its standards of being “recharged”. Therefore, the occurrence of sleep deficiency, if not treated properly or reversed, eventually leads to a worser yet stage: sleep deprivation. Surprisingly, 66% of adolescents are regularly sleep deprived, from research done in the TEDed thread. Because of sleep deprivation, one big effect is that hormones in charge of hunger, ghrelin and leptin, are disturbed. Ghrelin controls the feeling of hunger, and leptin controls the feeling of fullness. If sleep is insufficient, ghrelin levels are raised, and leptin levels are lowered. Therefore, this causes your body to want to eat a lot, but will never feel satisfied with food, a strong contribution to obesity and inflammation. Sleep deprivation, in the worst measures, is also a cause of heart disease and eventual heart failure, stroke, diabetes, kidney disease, high blood pressure- too much blood force against the arteries, and fatigue- low energy in the body, links to cardiovascular and immune issues. Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), a learning disability, can also occur due to the loss of coordination and focus that sleep provides. All are due to the absence of mandatory functions. And, again, as these effects worsen, they are almost unnoticeable by the body, until they reach their worst peaks. Still, after seeing how bad it is to avoid sleep, it’s also hard to resist at certain levels, because sleep naturally occurs without tiredness. The human body naturally produces adenosine and melatonin hormones. Adenosine, briefly mentioned earlier, is basically the set of hormones that build up, waste from each day, that cerebrospinal sleep fluid eliminates, a symbol that you need to release information you don’t need. Melatonin, lets your body know it needs to prepare for sleep by signals such as the darkness outdoors. By resisting these hormones, your body builds more and more of them, causing you to feel uncomfortable. So pushing sleep away outside of the amount you need, also pushes your obvious health feelings, and clearly, that can’t be something appreciated by anybody at all.
Finally, because of sleep’s importance and the effects present concerning its absence, it should remain, and can easily become, priority, and reasons of its negligence are extremely unnecessary. Let’s face it, only 3% of people have genes which enable them to require only six hours of sleep per night, as listed by helpguide.org. So for the rest of the 97% of us, we have to realize that sleep is not just a luxury for us, but is something that needs to be taken as primacy. In fact, according to TEDed, less than six hours of sleep per night periodically, increases stroke risk by four and a half times. So to start off, one thing to realize is that missed sleep, known as sleep debt, is hard to pay off in the long term. As described earlier, the benefits of sleep are fully reached by getting deep into sleep, in other words having multiple sessions of both REM and NREM sleep each night. Therefore, napping, a common strategy used to assist tiredness, may provide small enhancements, but cannot touch all the positive parts of sleep. In addition, sleeping-in, common weekend boosts, provide similar slight benefits, but disturb the body’s circadian rhythm- when to fall asleep, and when to wake up, because of the irregular timing. By doing so, the body can’t always obtain the intended amount of sleep afterwards, also affecting sleep quality. The only way to avoid this worsening, and perhaps even happening in the first place, is to have a consistent and persistent sleep routine. Secondly, you’re better off spending time sleeping, rather than staying up late completing work, or in the case of a middle schooler, perhaps studying for assessments, small and large. As one may be able to figure out, sleeps boosts memory consolidation. Many sources state that our body forgets nearly half the things we learn within twenty minutes of learning them. Memory consolidation is defined as the process where short term memory is transferred to long term memory, using a part of the brain known as the hippocampus. So what you forget, part of your short term memory, becomes something you can remember in the morning- if you spend time to “sleep on it” during night. Ideally, this strategy works best if sleep occurs hours after information is stored in the brain. After realizing this, if anyone spent devotion and persistence into it, sleep would become priority, in the sense that people would plan out when sleep needs to occur- a while after studying or using electronics the way we all do. Referring back to the effect of melatonin, electronics, a somewhat important need in the modern world, disturb the body’s sense of the darkness around, making it harder to fall asleep. And, with all those reasons in mind, for students who need to study each night, that means pushing to get work done earlier, motivating children to get what they have to complete for the next school day and their extracurricular activities on time done, and to get the rest they need- a good balance. In that process, set bedtimes and routines are put into place, children realize when to quiet down their surroundings to relax, and in the long term, try to willingly expand the amount of sleep they get, the same way the once wanted to expand their studying time and electronic use at night. After seeing how easy it can really be to make sleep priority, is there really a better choice to make at all?
Whoever strictly considers themselves a person who cannot and will not try to get sleep each night certainly has something miraculous to do with their time to both feel boosted and to have fun each day. Actually, there are many mindsets that can occur within this condition, briefly mentioned earlier, for a student attending a school such as those attending our school. One, as a middle school student, you have way too much going on internally. You’re overthinking the little things, and sweating the larger life aspects even more. You sleep way later than the time you should be, and need to either formulate a reinforced schedule and bedtime to be conscientious of whether or not you are spending a decent amount of time in proportion to what you achieve, or need to learn to let things go and accept that perfection to a precise degree cannot and will not be achieved when bedtime is a priority. That balance is crucial, as mentioned earlier. Two, as a middle school student, you are not focused on what you need to do, and may do overly excessive amounts of unnecessary extra activities. You need strategy to improve your time management, and getting things done in an orderly fashion. Some things are less important to you, and should therefore occupy less of your time. Or three, you are a procrastinator. Sure, everyone has been lazy at one point or another in one way or another over their lifetime, but if your inability to convince yourself to get work and activities out of your way on a daily basis affects your long-term sleeping health, then you are not realizing that you cannot blame any force for your personal tolls on your wellbeing. Middle school and its perks are obtainable and have been conquered a nearly infinite (and counting) amount of times, so they should not be a burden of tiring daily activities. If necessary, teachers, instructional assistants, and guidance counselors are here for you each and every day, to soothe your worries, if you just need a hand for your stress! And to those other unsure people regarding their sleep, in addition to those who do not have as stubborn of a claim on neglecting sleep, they should probably take the time to note how well they live with sleep, as well as how they think they’d survive without it. Is it a value that everyone should have? In the case that sleep itself cannot register with importance to a specific person at any point in life, they themselves can try to attempt getting rid of sleep, for better or for worse. 
Works Cited
“BrainPOP – Sleep – Movie.” Sleep. Web. 19 Jul. 2016.
“How Much Sleep Do You Need?” Signs That You’re Not Getting Enough and What to Do About It. Web. 11 Jul. 2016.
“Sleep Disorders & Insufficient Sleep: Improving Health through Research – NHLBI, NIH.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Web. 27 Jul. 2016.
“What Are Sleep Deprivation and Deficiency? – NHLBI, NIH.” U.S National Library of Medicine. U.S. National Library of Medicine. Web. 10 Jul. 2016.
“What Would Happen If You Didn’t Sleep? – Claudia Aguirre.” TED-Ed. Web. 15 Jul. 2016.
“The Benefits of a Good Night’s Sleep – Shai Marcu.” TED-Ed. Web. 15 Jul. 2016.
Grover Middle School's Jagazine 