Consciousness: "Sleep and Dream Diary" - Essay Sample

Sleep is one of the most neglected components of a person's life. However, sleep is vital as it helps our bodies recover, allows body tissues to be repaired, and enables one to be fully refreshed and alert to start a new day. In addition to starting a new day afresh, getting enough sleep also helps one avoid gaining excess weight, reduce and prevent increased duration of illnesses, and prevent the risk of contracting heart disease. Sleep deprivation usually leads to increased sleep intensity, leading to increased dreaming, and a bit tired to start a new day.

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Hypothesis: Those who are sleep deprived spend more time dreaming and thus report more dreams every night.

From my five weeks of experience, this hypothesis is true. In the first week of sleep and dream diary, I spend more hours sleeping, and the number of dreams I had for that week were few. I tried to sleep for an average of eight hours, which is the time that doctors recommend for a normal person (During& Kawai, 2017). In that week, when I spend an adequate amount of time sleeping, I only had three dreams. Another important aspect of adequate sleep deprivation is that it reduces one alertness to start a new day. For instance, in the first week, when I spent an adequate amount of time sleeping, I was always felt refreshed and ready to start a new day. In the fifth week, when I increased my sleeping time to at least 8 hours, I completely experienced no dreams, and in the third week, when I reduced my sleeping time to below eight hours a night, the number of dreams coincidently increased to five dreams in the last seven-night. This clearly shows that sleep deprivation leads to increased dreaming and reduced freshness and readiness to start a new day.

In most days of the weeks, when I had very few hours of sleep, I experienced vivid dreams. This week, I spent the fewest hours sleeping, three of the dreams that I experienced, two included being chased by a lion, and one included falling from a roof. However, when I get enough sleep like in the first week, the dreams that I experienced were all good. This further indicates that sleep deprivation is usually associated with bad dreams.

Researchers have opined that sleeping problems that lead to lack of sleep of a person such as narcolepsy and insomnia can increase the risk of vivid dreams (During& Kawai, 2017). Changes sleeping schedules and also getting less sleep than usual also increases the risk of experiencing vivid dreams. Therefore, lack of sleep is really bad for our general health, and the vivid dreams that a person deprived of sleep is an indication that their body functioning is not as expected. My “Sleep and Dream Diary” has clearly shown me that getting enough sleeping time is important as it reduces the chance of experiencing vivid dreams and makes a person fresh and ready to start a new day.

In conclusion, sleeping is part and parcel of people's lives, and therefore, people should ensure that they have enough sleep to reduce the number of vivid dreams they experience every night. According to my “Sleep and Dream Diary," sleep deprivation leads to an increased number of vivid dreams, and when one has enough sleep, the number of dreams reduces, and even if they take place, they are good dreams. Therefore, my hypothesis from this experiment is that those who spend fewer hours sleeping experience more dreams and thus can report more vivid dreams.

References

During E. H., & Kawai, M. (2017). The Functions of Sleep and the Effects of Sleep Deprivation. In Sleep and Neurologic Disease (pp. 55-72). Academic Press. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/B9780128040744000030.