Lack of sleep really makes you sick
The number one cause of illness in my life
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JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
I am sick a 2-3 times a year. The last couple of times I've been sick the symptoms have been the same: runny nose, fever, exhaustion; just a bad cold / flu. But there is a pattern, every single time I get sick, it has occurred directly after a period of time where I was depriving myself of sleep. Last spring, I went almost 2 weeks with less than 5 hours of sleep. It resulted in me getting this flu thing. The same thing happened in the fall, and now it's happened again.
Sometimes I wonder about the consequences of depriving myself of sleep. Let's say that instead of getting 8.5 hours of sleep, I get 7. That means every week, I gain 7.5 hours onto my life. Generally I can do that without getting sick. That means at the price of feeling groggy a lot of the time, I gain an entire day of life every other week. I think that might be a worthy trade off.
But when homework is really tight, I might go to bed between 1 and 3. That means that every single week, I add 17.5 hours to my life. That is a lot of extra time to gain by just loosing some sleep. But that presents a problem. Sometimes, I will get this cold sickness when I deprive myself of sleep. It doesn't always happen. I can go to be at 3 for a couple consecutive nights and usually be fine. However, sometimes, when I do this I get sick. The gamble of getting less sleep in exchange for more time has really hurt me this time. I have the SAT's tomorrow, but right now I have a fever of 101.9. My mom says that I should just sleep in and not take the SAT. I say that's insane, since I'd have to wait until next year (the June SAT falls on the same day as graduation where I play for band). I really don't know what to do. The way I look at it is if I get up (at 7 am) and take it, the worst that would happen is that I would feel like crap for the rest of the day, and do a bad job on the SAT. On the other hand, if I don't take it, then not only have I wasted the money, but then I have very possibly thrown off the whole schedule for apply to colleges and such. Again it's a cost-benefit analysis. Am I willing to get less sleep in return for the advantages of taking the SAT? If I didn't get so little sleep, this wouldn't be such an issue, but then where would I get the time to live?
Sometimes I wonder about the consequences of depriving myself of sleep. Let's say that instead of getting 8.5 hours of sleep, I get 7. That means every week, I gain 7.5 hours onto my life. Generally I can do that without getting sick. That means at the price of feeling groggy a lot of the time, I gain an entire day of life every other week. I think that might be a worthy trade off.
But when homework is really tight, I might go to bed between 1 and 3. That means that every single week, I add 17.5 hours to my life. That is a lot of extra time to gain by just loosing some sleep. But that presents a problem. Sometimes, I will get this cold sickness when I deprive myself of sleep. It doesn't always happen. I can go to be at 3 for a couple consecutive nights and usually be fine. However, sometimes, when I do this I get sick. The gamble of getting less sleep in exchange for more time has really hurt me this time. I have the SAT's tomorrow, but right now I have a fever of 101.9. My mom says that I should just sleep in and not take the SAT. I say that's insane, since I'd have to wait until next year (the June SAT falls on the same day as graduation where I play for band). I really don't know what to do. The way I look at it is if I get up (at 7 am) and take it, the worst that would happen is that I would feel like crap for the rest of the day, and do a bad job on the SAT. On the other hand, if I don't take it, then not only have I wasted the money, but then I have very possibly thrown off the whole schedule for apply to colleges and such. Again it's a cost-benefit analysis. Am I willing to get less sleep in return for the advantages of taking the SAT? If I didn't get so little sleep, this wouldn't be such an issue, but then where would I get the time to live?