一个晚上的睡眠不足可能会影响健康（中高等水平）
Just One Night of Sleep Loss May Affect Well-Being
We all know that we need to get enough sleep to stay healthy. But now a study from the University of South Florida has found that it only takes one night of sleep loss to affect our mental and physical well-being.
The study, which was published in the Annals of Behavioral Medicine, looked at sleep data from almost 2,000 middle-aged Americans. The participants recorded their sleep times and behavior for eight consecutive days.
Researchers looked at how consecutive nights of sleep loss — or nights with fewer than six hours of sleep — affected the participants. It was found that even one night of sleep loss negatively affected mental and physical well-being.
The participants said they experienced an increase in negative emotions, such as feeling angry, annoyed and irritable. They also said they experienced an increase in physical symptoms such as aches, digestive problems and upper respiratory issues.
As participants had more consecutive nights of sleep loss, they said their mental and physical problems got worse and worse until day three, when their bodies got used to the lack of sleep. On day six, however, participants reported that the physical symptoms of sleep loss were at their worst.
Participants continued to feel these negative effects until they got a night of more than six hours of sleep.
"Many of us think that we can pay our sleep debt on weekends and be more productive on weekdays," said the study's lead author, Soomi Lee. "However, results from this study show that having just one night of sleep loss can significantly impair your daily functioning."
Lee said that once sleeping for fewer than six hours a night becomes a habit, it gets increasingly difficult for a person's body to fully recover, causing well-being to get worse and worse.
Her advice is to try to get enough sleep every night — which is seven to nine hours for most adults, according to America's National Sleep Foundation.
Discussion
1.What are your thoughts on the findings of the study?
2.Do you find it surprising that one night of sleep loss impacts our mental and physical well-being?
3.Do you typically get more than six hours of sleep per night?
4.How do you usually feel during the day when you don't get enough sleep?
5.Do you like to sleep in on weekends? What's the latest you ever sleep in?
