Peer Review/Essay Draft

The average American life has three staple things: Sleep, Work, Eat and then repeat. If all three factors go smoothly, the average American will live a happy, fulfilled life. An often overlooked piece of one’s life that can affect all three of these factors is stress. Stress can have a significant effect on a person’s mental and physical health, ranging from diseases to disorders. Stress has been proven to cause mental health issues, sleep deprivation and loneliness in youth and adults. We ought to take a careful look at our lives and what causes this bad stress to occur. There are definitive stressors in our lives and put upon us by society, a few of them being working, going to school/studying, keeping up with romantic and platonic relationships, religion and many more we can’t count on our ten fingers. Once we pinpoint the cause of our stress, though, we can work to combat it and improve our well-being one step at a time. This is especially important to those of us working late-shift jobs whether it be hospital workers, truck/taxi drivers, convenience store workers etc. It’s important to take care of your health and not over-stress yourself because as you’ll find out, it’s not worth the negative effects it’ll have on your life in the long run. So to whoever gets mailed this letter or happens to come across it, and you deal with copious amounts of stress, you ought to give this a read and mail me back with any insight on the matter.

To begin, I’d like to touch on the topic of sleep deprivation, which is a condition caused by not getting enough sleep time and time again. I mentioned earlier that late-shift workers are prone to more stress, and this has been directly inked to the problem of sleep deprivation. Job stress has been directly linked to sleep deprivation and this leads to a number of complications and diseases. As follows, Late-shift workers tend to not get enough sleep, especially truck drivers and medical students, who can work upwards of 12+ hours. This is apart from the demands of daily life like kids, relationships, house duties, and various other tasks that need to be completed. This pile up of stress can be directly linked to only sleeping a few hours a night because humans need upwards of 8 hours of sleep to function properly each day. The stress of not getting enough sleep can also be a side effect. According to health Journalist Marcia Clemmit, notable populations that are sleep-deprived include students, late-shift workers, medical residents, and truck drivers. All of these are occupations that pressure the person to put all of their energy and time towards their job, which causes direct stress of doing their job correctly, following deadlines and keeping up with the demands of the workforce. In turn, sleep deprivation occurs on a nightly basis and can be life-long is left untreated. Researches have found negative impacts of only getting a few hours of sleep which is as follows,  “Sleep deprivation greatly increases the risk of obesity and illnesses such as cardiovascular disease and diabetes; makes it harder to learn physical skills, remember facts and control one’s emotions, and may even raise one’s risk of developing a mental illness like depression or post-traumatic-stress disorder (PTSD).” Reading the list above, I’m sure it sparked something in you if you’re already dealing with one of these illnesses, or you are a person that Clemmit described as being at risk. Also, David F. Dinges, chief of the Division of Sleep and Chronobiology at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine in Philadelphia said, “While individuals‘ sleep needs to vary, “we’re biologically built to go to sleep around sunset and get up at sunrise,”. This line really stuck with me because I often find myself staying up copious amounts during the night catching up on work or working on something around the house and brushing it off because I’ll just catch up on sleep in the afternoon, and turns out biologically we should be going to sleep around sunset and sunrise. I’m sure many of us can relate to this, the stress of a big exam or deadline or a situation that’s making you anxious, can often keep us up at night for multiple nights when we should be getting the right amount of sleep. This is just one of the side effects of stress.

Are you spooked off yet? I wouldn’t leave just yet, the next topic is an issue you could be dealing with and can actually lead to high-levels of stress. The issue at hand is loneliness and social isolation. This is something that can affect people of all ages.  In the height of the pandemic and society turning more and more introverted, a woman found herself indulging in stress-inducing activities to feel less lonely. The woman’s name is Paula Dutton and after moving cross-country, losing both her parents and several close friends, she said, “I worked myself into a fever pitch in my loneliness,” After that, she experienced a panic attack and had to be hospitalized. Afterward, she joined a church group to help combat what she went through. Many psychologists are pointing to the stressors of society, society leading people to be single, live alone, move far from family and essentially promoting social isolation. With no release from the pressure of working, keeping up with chores, or keeping up with relationships, many find themselves dealing with a great amount of stress. We are also seeing an uprise with remote jobs. A quick callback to the topic of job-stress, remote jobs are not only lonely, but the work-load is much heavier considering everything is done online, and you are constantly being tracked by the computer. This can lead to you sitting in front of a computer for multiple hours of the day, not leaving your room until you have to eat or use the bathroom. This is what we call social isolation, the act of keeping yourself away from social interactions to get something done or stressing yourself to a pulp where you have no energy left to socially interact with someone. I’m guilty of this and it’s okay if you’re guilty of this too.

Now, we’ve covered different common stressors in most of our everyday lives and the effects they have in our everyday lives. We’ve talked about Job stress, loneliness, social isolation, and the different conditions and illnesses that can come from these high-levels of stress. All of them have been shocking to say the least, and the links stress have to our future is nothing but fearful. It’s something we should take into consideration now, or as soon as you read this thoughtful letter, but some researches things to say on the contrary.  Researches at UC Berkeley claim that stress can promote optimal alertness, behavioral and cognitive performance. Specifically, acute stress, which is small amounts of stress in periods of time that has shown to push you in the right direction with your deadlines and personal goals. While this may be factual, this claim of acute stress is actually not probable for many Americans who work long shifts, may work multiple jobs, and have multiple goals they want to achieve at once. Stress can come from many different factors and acute stress may only be probable to those working and studying part-time, youth who may have free times on their hands or those who are unemployed.

In conclusion, stress can have a significant effect on a person’s mental and physical health. It can lead to depression, different cardiovascular diseases, sleep deprivation, loneliness and more. This is a crisis at hand that every American has to deal with at one point or another because we are a country of hard workers and with hard work comes stress. This stress can be managed, though, with the right amount of support, management and leisure. We don’t have to work ourselves to a pulp to succeed, it’s important to take time out of your week for self-care, family, and friends because happiness and liberty just might be able to combat stress after all.