Sleep is one of the most important things a person does each day. It allows the body to rest and to replenish itself so that it is better able to serve its function of living. Yet many people who don't have enough hours in the day to do everything have to cut out sleep before any other activity. This is especially true for teenagers, who most nights are frantically trying to finish writing essays and completing worksheets before the clock strikes twelve, or are busy participating in after school sports that leave them weary and return them home late. Most adolescents need at least eight hours of sleep each night. But the National Sleep Foundation estimates that only 15 percent of teenagers get that much, with 25 percent of teens getting …show more content…

When one spends a lot of time in their bed doing homework, watching television, and other such activities, it is hard for the body to understand that it is supposed to feel sleepy when it is time for the person to actually sleep.

As a result, pinpointing the habits or lifestyle choices you make that affect your sleep can help you identify what you need to work on or alter. A solution to the problem of spending too much time in bed is to simply do activities like homework elsewhere, such as at a desk. The bed should be reserved only for sleeping. Another suggestion doctors have is to keep a sleep diary in which you record the details of each instance of good and bad sleep. Sleep diaries generally include the date, what you ate that day (and the times you ate), whether or not you exercised, the day’s stresses, etc.

A sleep diary sounds like it would probably be a good idea for me to keep. A bad habit that I have is eating right before I go to sleep, which may affect how I feel the next morning. Exercise probably plays a role too, especially when it’s not baseball season and I spend a lot of time sitting around watching television. I could also try spending less time on my bed doing homework and do it at my desk instead.

A somewhat controversial solution to insomnia, one of the common causes of sleep deprivaion, is medication. These common drugs (one popular