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Running Start/HEA150 - Health/Week 3/Discussion Response Week 3.md

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+1. On average, I get about 9 hours of sleep per day. Based on the NHLBI's website, they recommend that I get 8-10 hours of sleep per day so I am getting a good amount of sleep each night. Getting enough sleep helps with growth an development especially with children and teens, and also helps to form long-term memories. By getting enough sleep, my body is better able to recover each day and I have more energy in the morning. Not getting enough sleep can lead to decreased immune system effectiveness as well as increasing the risk of chronic disease.
+2. After taking the Epworth Sleepiness Scale quiz, I got a score of 1 and a category of "Normal Sleepiness." I think that this aligns pretty well with how I feel throughout the week, since I don't have many problems with feeling tired throughout the day. For me, I think that the sleep tip of waking up at the same time each day would be helpful since although I wake up at the same time on weekdays, I usually sleep in on the weekends. This is likely harming my body's ability to get used to a consistent sleep schedule, and it is something that I will look into changing going forward. Some of the tips that are not a helpful for me are the ones about limiting alcohol and caffeine consumption since I don't drink either of those and don't have to worry about them effecting the quality of my sleep.
+3. I looked into the effect of a healthy sleep schedule on the risk of getting dementia. The resource that I found is a paper from 2025 titled "Associations of adherence to a healthy sleep pattern with the dementia risk in the UK biobank" from the journal "Alzheimer's Research & Therapy." This paper explored data from the UK Biobank which included about half a million participants who filled out a survey and later, 40,000 of which underwent MRI scans. The study took the data from a survey given to all of the participants and grouped sleep habits into 5 categories of healthy sleep. These categories included sleeping 7-8 hours a day, being a morning person, not having frequent insomnia, no snoring and no frequent daytime sleepiness. For each of these traits that a participant demonstrated, a point was given on a five point scale. The study found that for each increase of one point on this scale, there was a 7% decrease in the risk of dementia. This is likely because healthier sleeping habits help to maintain brain structure leading to less of a risk of dementia. This shows the importance of maintaining healthy sleeping habits to reduce the risk of diseases later in life.