CMU School of Drama


Tuesday, March 26, 2013

sleep is more important than food

The Energy Project: Let's cut to the chase.
Say you decide to go on a fast, and so you effectively starve yourself for a week. At the end of seven days, how would you be feeling? You'd probably be hungry, perhaps a little weak, and almost certainly somewhat thinner. But basically you'd be fine.
Now let's say you deprive yourself of sleep for a week. Not so good. After several days, you'd be almost completely unable to function. That's why Amnesty International lists sleep deprivation as a form of torture.

5 comments:

K G said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
april said...

I am not really sure how I feel about this article. On the one hand I feel inclined to agree that sleep is the most important, but i think that is only true if we are only concerned with mental wellbeing. Ive only done it maybe three times in my life, but on nights where I dont sleep I feel absolutely sick until I do get enough sleep, but from watching my class mates do the same on more than one occasion they do not appear to be as negatively effected as I would be. I have also gone with out food for a while for medical reasons and while im not really sure if thats better than no sleep it is much easier to adapt too. If you deny yourself sleep you body will fight back until you give in but with food your body will just give in to you. I think the safe thing to say here would be that humans are much more adaptable when it comes to a change in eating patterns verses a change in sleeping patterns.

Unknown said...

Well, I guess we're all going to kill ourselves from sleep-deprivation. I'm not going to say that this is not a serious problem. It is. Especially at CMU. This semester has been pretty tough on me, and one of the reasons is sleep deprivation. Even if every student at CMU read this article, however, I don't things will change. Everyone wants to have a successful future, and that means we need to do our schoolwork. And so, our school work has become more important then our bodies. I know I stopped caring about what happens to me a long time ago. People just put their heads down and deal with the lack of sleep. I absolutely think sleep is important. It rests the mind and relaxes the body. I am also saying that no one will listen to this article, and I think it is because of the fear of sleeping too much, being late for class, and failing out of college because of rest.

Brian Alderman said...

I like everything in this article, and think it makes a good case for why sleep is so important. However, I am very confused by the title regarding food. Sure, he discusses food deprivation, but does not explore how proper food intake and sleep deprivation are connected. I remember freshman year in one of the Pino classes talking about how glucose and caffeine work in coordinate with the right amount of sleep, so I wish the author had touched on that as well.

JamilaCobham said...

I agree with this article but I don't agree with it. Yes it is true that you can't function to the best of your ability if your tired but at the same time neither can you if your hungry; they both go hand in hand but i still believe that sleep takes the edge on it. As Lindsay explicitly highlighted at CMU sleep is one that we don't often get due to the high demands of work loads of a graduate students studying Stage and Production management I hardly get any sleep due to the rigorous rehearsals schedule. As much as sleep is important we also run the risk of not keeping up with our schedule. Imagine if I were to take heed of what this article is saying and chose to get my 8 hours of sleep after getting home from rehearsals at 1:00 am in the morning and then have to send emails on the rehearsal report to every and then worry about assignments for the next day which would put me at about 4-5 ish in the morning and then decide I need to get my 8 hours of sleep when I have 10:30 class in the morning to which I have to be up by at least 8:00 am for then I would be compromising my grade to which would not end up good for me. As much the article has many truths it is unrealistic for some people especially students.