Chapters 1-3 of the book were mainly focused on the effects of not getting an adequate amount of sleep. To review the effects of not getting enough are possible cardiovascular disease, stroke, congestive heart failure, and it demolishes your immune system which more than doubles your risk of cancer. After discussing the effects of inadequate sleep Walker then goes onto talking about sleep recovery, different species and how they sleep, as well as autism, effects of alcohol, and challenges that adolescents face.
In our group we discussed the authors points that we felt were important. From what scientists know every single species sleeps because "sleep is something that is needed in order to fix that which has been upset by wake". Although not all species sleep the same amount of time. Size is a factor, but something more important is the complexity of the nervous system. Also there are different stages of sleep because some organisms need to be able to do certain actions right away and be on alert. Regardless of the amount of recovery opportunities the brain never gets back the amount of sleep it lost. This is why sleep is very important when we are young, kids diagnosed with autism do not have normal sleep patterns and this affects them negatively. If sleep is so important while we are young then why aren't kids receiving the necessary hours? Well Walkers say that adolescents face two challenges one is a change in their circadian rhythm and second is early school start times.
However do you think that if schools had later start times kids would be sleeping 8-10 hours or would they just stay up later because school starts later? Also what do you think are other reasons for why both kids and adults aren't receiving an adequate amount of sleep?
If schools started at a later time, of course some kids will stay up later because school starts later. I believe that kids who just want to sleep, so that they can perform better the next day deserve later start times even though the others will abuse it. What I have observed is that the large amount of work keeps not only adults, but students awake longer preventing both from a good night's rest.
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