Treatment Intervention to Improve Sleeping Habits

Treatment Intervention to Improve Sleeping Habits Individual Assignment: Bad Sleeping Habits Koh Ke Mian Bad Sleeping Habits According to Carskadon and Dement (2011), sleep is both combinations of physiologic and behavioral processes. When sleeping, the awareness to environment stimuli will decrease (Carskadon Dement). On the other hand, National Institutes of Health (2011) had stated that sleep is just for your brain and body to shut down. People always think sleep is merely their â€Å"down time† due to their brains will shut off when sleeping. Therefore, people will always stay up late because they will think sleeping is not important and it is wasting their time. Moreover, the researchers found that how much you rested depends on the total sleep, timing of the sleep stages, and how much sleep you get each night (National Institutes of Health). Besides, Kashmir Monitor (2012) had stated that health problems are caused by the sleeping patterns. In this globalization and urbanization, bad sleeping habit has become common and more and more young people stay up late to make sure their work is done o n the day. In addition, people will also sacrifice their sleep to do other things, such as rushing assignment which due on the next day, watch movies, play games, or chit chatting. According to Sleep Health Foundation (2011), bad sleeping habits is defined as poor sleep hygiene. Bad sleeping habits can be refer as erratically bedtime routine, which is not enough sleep for each day and sleeping very late. Bad sleeping habits may bring a lot of consequences to us which may influence our life. There are consequences that will be affected by bad sleeping habits. According to Harvard Health Publications (2007), there are connection between sleep and heart disease. They had stated that bad sleeping habits may cause heart disease and heart disease will affect the quality of sleep (Harvard Health Publications). On the other hand, the researchers had also mentioned that bad sleep habits brings a lot of consequences, such as high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, diabetes, and obesity (Harvard Health Publications). According to Harvard Health Publications, there will be higher risk of getting heart attack due to the bad sleeping habits. Furthermore, the researcher had also stated that bad sleeping habits causes higher risk of getting mood disorder such as major depression (Oster, 2012). Other than that, the researcher had found that students who have bad sleeping habits will negatively affect their academic performance (Park 2009). In addition, bad sleeping habits may also affect the performance and difficulty concentrating in class (Park). National Institutes of Health (2011) had stated that people who suffer from lack of sleep will slower down the thinking processes, harder to focus or pay attention on something, may cause confusion easier, make the wrong decision and risk taking, and slower down the reaction time. People who do something which need quick reaction may be dangerous if they suffer from lack of sleep. According to Cain (2012), the intervention of school will be effective in increasing the knowledge of sleep to adolescents. However, there are no significantly improvements of changing bad sleeping habits (Cain). On the other hand, students had stated that there were no motivations for them to change their habits in order to get more sleep (Cain). According to Cain, he had stated that people who have bad sleeping habits have the trend to avoid the morning bright light. Other than that, the researchers had mentioned that changing a behavior may require the willingness of an individual (Miller Rollnick, 2002, p.10, as cited in Cain). To change the bad sleeping habits, the individuals should have the willingness to change and believe on their own ability which they can change the habits. Motivating me is the way that I can change this habit and knowing more about the effect that cause by the bad sleeping habits may force me to change it. I will change this habit due to the consequences that could bring me. According to Harvard Health Publications (2007), lack of sleep will cause high blood pressure, atherosclerosis, heart attack, heart failure, stroke, diabetes and obesity. Lack of sleep may also affect an individual difficult to focus, decrease reaction time, and faulty decision making (National Institutes of Health, 2011). In addition, the tools that I will use to help me change my bad sleeping habits are avoid to take caffeinated drink at least four hours before going to sleep, not to take nap in the evening because it may make it harder to sleep at night, not taking meals when going to bed but not feel hungry, try to go to bed at same times, and not spending too much of time with bed while not sleeping (Sleep Health Foundation, 2011). According to LeBourgeois, Gi annotti, Cortesi, Wolfson, and Harsh (2005), as cited in Marhefka (2011), avoid taking nap in the late-afternoon or taking nap more than an hour during daytime, and not taking alcohol, caffeine, and tobacco before going to bed may have good sleeping habits. Method To make sure that I change the behavior, the behavior that I measure is the bad sleeping habits. In the baseline phase, I have used a mobile app which called sleepbot (Refer to Appendix F) to help me record my sleeping time and wake up time. This app help to record people’s sleep pattern and it can also track motion. It can help people know what are the problems that make them cannot sleep well and they can change their sleeping pattern through understanding this. Moreover, through recording my sleeping time and wake up time, I can know the amount of my sleeping time that I slept in a day and mostly what time I go to bed. Moreover, in treatment phase, I had set alarm clock for myself which remind me to sleep and wake up on time. Besides, sleepbot is the app that could help me calculate my amount of sleep and how much I debt to my sleep. I had set up the hours that I have to sleep which is eight hours a day and I set the alarm clock by using this app as well. Through using this sleepbot application, it reminds me the time I have to sleep everyday which may help me change my bad sleeping habits. On the other hand, this app may also allow me to record my daily sleeping quality. I will choose this app to help me change my bad sleeping habits because this app has a lot of functions which I can use it and no need to download so many apps that help me record my sleep quality. Furthermore, I will choose this app to help me change my behaviour because the first things that I will do when I open my eyes is check my smartphone. This app has the alarm clock system, so I will turn off it when it ring and it records my wake up time together, and I think it is very convenience. Results In the baseline phase, there are 54.4 hours of sleep time from 29th January 2015 to 5th February 2015 (Refer to Appendix A). The average daily sleep in these seven days is 9.1 hours. There is only a day which I did not sleep for eight hours. However, the earliest sleep time for me is at 12.14am and the latest sleep time is at 1.39am (Refer to Appendix B). Other than that, my earliest wake up time in the baseline phase was at 7.15am, and the latest wake up time was at 11.06am. Even though the total average sleep for me was 9.1 hours, but I do not have a healthy life style (Refer to Appendix A). Therefore, I would like to change it and make me be healthier. The treatment phase started from 12th February 2015 to 19th March 2015. In this treatment phase, I had found that the earliest sleeping time for me was at 11.15pm, but the latest sleep time was at 2.57am (Refer to Appendix D). This has showed that the behaviour that I would like to change had failed. Furthermore, my average sleep ti me in this treatment phase is 8.8 hours per day (Refer to Appendix C). It showed I slept more than eight hours a day, but my sleeping time and wake up time are not the same every day. On the other hand, the researcher had stated that if a person want to have good sleeping habits, they should go to bed at the same time (Sleep Health Foundation, 2011). According to Appendix E, the longest time I slept was about 12 hours, and the shortest time I slept was about four hours. My consumption of sleep dramatically changes every day. Furthermore, the results had showed that I did not change my sleep behaviour throughout the time and it had showed that I had slept latest in the treatment phase than baseline phase. Discussions This treatment programme did not work for me. This is because Lunar New Year was in my treatment phase, and I went to travel on that time. I could not sleep on time because I was not in the hotel on that time. Furthermore, this treatment programme failed because the treament period was the assignment weeks and I had to sacrifice my sleeping time to finish my assignment on time. In addition, I think procrastination is the important effect that I have to sacrifice my sleeping time to do my assignment. On the other hand, I think the app was useful, however, it could not motivate me to sleep earlier. Moreover, I think the weakness of this app was that I have to open the app myself while I want to record my sleep time and it is not convenient for me when I was feeling sleepy. It caused me lost my drowsiness when I started to set my sleeping time. This is because I have to think where my app is which caused me to regain consciousness. I think this app had contributed to me 60 percent out o f 100 percent. This is because it does not provide any other functions such as tips which help for sleeping, or music which makes people relaxes. Furthermore, I always switch off my smartphone when I am sleeping. However, this app needs to on my phone all the time and it drain my phone battery whole night. The difficulties that I had faced in this treatment phase were I did not have any motivation which helps me to sleep earlier. In addition, there were a lot of others factors which caused me to sleep late, such as rushing assignment, watch drama, or chit chatting. Procrastinating could affect my sleeping time. Furthermore, I think that because of nobody urge me to sleep earlier which makes me do not care on it. Besides, I had influenced by other people (e.g. family and housemates) that they all sleep very late and it makes me to sleep late also. According to Voke (2002), environment encourages exploration will encourage the child’s natural motivation. The motivation will come from the encouragement of environment. Other than that, according to Saul (2014), he stated that procrastinating could affect ability to sleep, and also affect general health and well-being. I think the app could add some music in which could help people to relax when they are stress out and could not sleep due to the stressful environment. In addition, I think the app may provide some functions which calculate the intake of caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol in a day. This is because the amount of taking caffeine, tobacco, and alcohol may also affect the quality of sleep. Other than that, I think this app should change their system which allows their user to switch off their phone while they are sleeping. It not only helps the users sleep better, it also helps the users to save the battery of their phone. Besides, I think I should ask someone to urge me to done my work earlier and also go to sleep before 12am. I think it could be effective if someone urging me. Moreover, stay with the people who sleep early could motivate me sleep earlier. In addition, I may also require my family to sleep earlier which help to motivate me.