Sleep Diary

This assignment to keep a sleep diary made me extremely aware of my poor sleeping habits. According to my sleep diary, I get an average of 6.36 hours of sleep per night as opposed to the 9-10 hours of sleep that is recommended for teenagers. This explains why I often get extremely tired by the early afternoon, generally take a nap in the evening, and then can stay up late at night. I noticed during this exercise that I often couldn't concentrate as well during class in the morning as I could when I was doing my homework late at night. In addition, my parents complained a couple times this weekend that I was easily irritable which, as we learned in class, happens to be one of the effects of sleep deprivation. It would also explain why I've gotten sick a couple times this year already, as another effect of sleep deprivation is reduced immunity. From this exercise, I learned that I really need to start sleeping earlier and making sure I get at least 8-9 hours of sleep to ensure I don't throw off the secretion cycles of cortisol and melatonin in my body and to ensure I can be more awake and concentrated in class. This is especially important because I drive to school every morning and we learned from the reading, "The Promise of Sleep," how incredibly fast you can fall asleep when you're tired, without even knowing it.