Can sleeping be one of our essential aspects of life?

Since my childhood, I have been listening the basic essential things in human lives in order to survive is food, water and shelter. I agree with these things where human body is designed in such a way these where these items are important. However, the least concerned and most important aspect of the human life could be sleeping. Many people, regardless of age, are not treating sleeping as a basic need, which should be considered the most important aspect of our lives.

Now there are more recommendations and suggestion on how much time an individual should sleep. I am not going into the numbers but I think it has to be checked by the individual itself. Nevertheless, the most important concern these days is the sleep deprivation among teenagers. Teenagers due to several reasons are not taking this aspect as important. These juveniles spend lots of time on screens, which causes vulnerable to sleep deprivation.

Researchers found that about 40 percent of adolescents in 2015 slept less than 7 hours a night, which is 58 percent more than in 1991 and 17 percent more than in 2009. They further learned that the more time young people reported spending online, the less sleep they got. Teens who spent 5 hours a day online were 50 percent more likely to not sleep enough than their peers who only spent an hour online each day. Source

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There are many disadvantages that we already know when a person is not sleeping enough. But there are evidences that lack of sleep everyday could make you overweight and even obese. That in turn results in many devastating effects. Overweight should be controlled and one of the ways of that can be sleeping tight.

Shorter sleep was also linked to reduced levels of HDL cholesterol in the participants' blood-another factor that can cause health problems. HDL cholesterol is 'good' cholesterol that helps remove 'bad' fat from the circulation. In doing so, high HDL cholesterol levels protect against conditions such as heart disease. Source

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So, to get good night sleep, you can follow many traditional tips such as don’t want screens before bed, don’t have coffee late nights and don’t take more hours nap during day time and don’t reverse schedule during weekends, eat healthy food, do exercise. Everything is interrelated. If you keep your body well, your body will help you in difficult situations.