Sleep deprivation in contemporary life has become the norm rather

than the abnormal. "Mind over matter" and instances of negative

correlations with sacrificing sleep to achieve better academic status
seems to help promote this phrase especially in most countries in
East Asia where the majority of students excel in standardized
testing (Lo 2016). Whether this sleep reduction occurred due to
pathological processes, shifts in sleep periods, or wakefulness
prolonged over a day, the side effects are altogether adverse (Orzel
2010). The consequences sleep deprivation has in impairing
cognitive and physical performance are varied, diverse, and
dependent on multiple factors (Alhola 2007).
When the phrase sleep deprivation comes to mind, one would think
of long-term sleep afflicted diseases such as Insomnia but even few
lapses without the proper amount of sleep as in, chronic reduction in
sleep of two hours less of the eight recommended hours for will
impair cognitive performance equal to that of two nights of total
sleep deprivation. When participants of the chronic sleep restriction
experiment were surveyed to rate their own sense of sleepiness,
they were unaware of their actual sleepiness levels and are not
reliable in assessing themselves (Van Dongen 2003).
Forgoing seventeen up to nineteen hours of sleep, testing done on
participants showed that their performance was more or less
equivalent or worse than that at a blood alcohol concentration (BAC)
of 0.05% and after longer periods of sleep-wakefulness, participants
performance reached the same level equal to the maximum alcohol
dose of a BAC 0.1% given to subjects (Williamson 2000).
The multiple factors in regards to different reactions towards sleep
reduction would be age and to a certain degree, chronotype and
gender (Orzel 2010). Responses also differ considerably in
interindividual reactions to coping with prolonged wakefulness.
The general symptoms are a general increase of muscle tonus,
disturbance in postural control, maintaining body balance, physical
exercise capacity, exteroceptive impairments such as visual errors,
hypnagogic hallucinations; disruption in effectiveness and accuracy
of cognitive and operant processes such as concentration of
attention becomes impaired, distracted thoughts, and longer microepisodes of sleep; speech becomes slow, monotonous, stammered,
and repetitive; increased rate of systemic metabolism, increase in
food intake, an overall increase of twenty to thirty-two percent in
the number of errors occurred in the workplace, a correlation of
reduced or prolonged sleep time contributed to body mass gain,
develop high blood pressure, a strong bidirectional correlation
between intensity of manic symptoms and sleep loss, decreased
emotional intelligence, deteriorated interpersonal relations (lower
assertiveness, empathy and positive thinking) with enhanced

esoteric reasoning, increase in believing superstitions, increase in

subjective perception of affective symptoms of psychopathology
(anxiety, depression, mania, insanity), a correlation between sleep
deficiency and aggression; this is just to name a few (Orzel 2010).
In plenty of work environments ranging from clinical jobs to desk
jobs to manufacturing jobs, sleep deprivation is one of the major
factors in increasing errors in their work environment and sleep
deprived employees are a hazard to themselves and their
environment. Diagnostic reasoning error rate can increase fivefold
due to fatigue and sleep deprivation alone. (Crockery 2009)
Sleep is critical in consolidating memories subsequently, and thus,
learning. Sleep before forming those memories is equivalent to
sleeping after for the initial formation of new memories as evidence
shows that participants sleep deprived of one night caused a
significant activity deficit in the hippocampus during episodic
memory encoding which in turn results in further worsening of
retaining memories subsequently. Sleep before and after learning is
critical in preparing the human brain for next-day memory formation
- which is worrying due to societys rise of the erosion of sleep time.
(Yoo 2007)
Even after two nights of recovery sleep, students from top high
schools still have residual effects that can still be observed in
regards to their processing speed, subjective alertness, and
sustained attention. Seeing that these students are susceptible to
neurobehavioral deficits should cause policymakers, parents, and
the students themselves to reconsider if sleep should continue to be
sacrificed for the sake of academic achievement or some other
achievement of equivalence to those who arent students. (Loetal
2016)
While the underlying reasoning as to why or how sleep is important
in preserving our performance in being optimal is still unknown and
only correlations have been found attached to it that seems to
indicate that not being well-rested will hinder our optimal
performances. A well-rested person performs optimally, whereas
those who arent well rested has their performance diminished.