Staying up Late Will Cost Your Life (Final Version)

    The doctor says 11 p.m. to 3 a.m. is the beauty of time, which is the body’s meridians run to the gallbladder, the liver breaks. If we overwork these two organs, it will result in the imbalance of our body and mental disorder. The human body needs sleep to perform important regenerative functions. Recently, scientists have believed that an average individual needs at least eight hours of uninterrupted sleep a night to be at their best. In a new study, researchers Christina Schmidt and Philippe Peigneux, they asked 25 early birds and 26 night owls to spend a week following their natural sleep schedules. Subjects underwent cognitive testing twice daily while in a functional magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scanner. After being awake for 10 hours, early birds had grown more alert, performing better on a reaction-time task requiring sustained attention and showing increased activity in brain areas linked to attention. As a result, staying up late as night owls could be harmful to your body.
    Have you ever wondered that what do people do in such a midnight? A domestic website called “stay up all night” is organized spontaneously by a group of “night owls”. The major members of this website are the students whose average age is 20 or so and the white-collar workers. They may stay up late for completing their work or, for students, to finish their homework and prepare for the tests. But also, people become night owls not for their work but for some leisure activities. More and more people choose to go to pubs to meet their friends or for other reasons. If you don’t like to go out, don’t worry, you can still find companions. Due to the well-developed technology, people can surf on the Internet to find some news, buy something you want or chat with your friends. Moreover, some people always stay up late for playing computer games. Nowadays, more and more companies release a lot of computer games. This may make people be addicted to playing these games and become night owls. As a result, there are a lot of reasons for people to stay up late.
    The disadvantages caused by staying up late can be divided into three categories. The first one is the physical problems. Sufficient sleeping is important, if our bodies don’t gain enough rest, the immune system will be destroyed which makes it easy to cause disease, such as getting cold, intestines and stomach disorder and being allergic. Also, because bad sleeping quality will damage our brain cells, it often accompanies drowsiness, dizziness, headache and difficulty with concentration. In addition, sleeping late retards blood circulation which will reflect on our appearance, such as black eyes, bloodshot eyes and pimples on face.
    The second one is the mental problems. Irregular sleeping also damages our mental health, because lacking of sleep harms the area in our brains which controls emotional reaction. We feel gloomy, depressed, furious or stressful. As our emotional intelligence is decreased, we tend to be impetuous and unreasonable. We can’t judge things correctly when encountering frustrations or pressures. According to the Columbia University Medical Center, staying up late may increase the risk of melancholia and idea of committing suicide. In a research, some Turkish scientists investigated the sleeping habit of 264 university students by measuring the frequency of having nightmares. And they found out that subjects who always stay up late have higher average anxiety index than subjects who sleep early. Besides, scientists also investigated 4000 people on line and found out that within 20-year-old female, staying up late relates to nightmares.
    Finally the last one is the invisible risks. Since staying up late weakens our physical and mental abilities, if we keep this bad habit over a long time, it will lead to serious problems that are difficult to be detected. For instance, chronic diseases, such as unusual liver function and bad blood circulation that makes us unable to remove toxic substance from our bodies. They cause skin, hormone and excretive problems that age our bodies, largely increase the risk of getting cancer and even cause infecundity. Also, our brains will secrete the endocrine which makes us hungry and eager to eat more than usual. In the long run, we gain unnecessary fats and are out of shape. In addition, the damaged brain cells and unhealthy emotion may bring about clouded memories and poor crisis management which lead to wrong decisions and accidents by carelessness.
    Above all, people nowadays tend to stay up late for a lot of things. Students may stay up late for doing their papers or studying for their exams. Some people like to go to pubs for fun; someone surfs on the Internet for chatting with their friends, playing on-line games or shopping. All of these actions for staying up late may cause the physical problems like getting sick easily, retarding blood circulation and having black eyes. In addition to physical problems, staying up late will cause mental problems too, for instance, feel depressed, cannot judge things correctly and increase the risk of melancholia. And there are some invisible risks like unusual liver function and making incorrect decisions. Therefore, if people want to live longer, have a healthy life, and look younger, they should try to sleep earlier for achieving a better quality of life.