According to scientists, over 70 million Americans, 25% are children; suffer from some kind of sleeping disorder. Sleeping pill prescriptions filled in 1997 totaled $14 million, over the counter pills totaled $33 million in grocery stores alone. The number of sleep clinics has also risen from three in 1977 to 337 in 1997. Such tendencies worry many doctors and pharmacists about the sleeping habits of Americans and the effects of sleep loss as a result. There is four main effects of sleep loss: sleepiness, motivational aspects of tiredness, emotional changes, and alterations in attention and performance. These symptoms are often misdiagnosed in adolescents as chemical imbalances, leading them overmedicated, scared, and not helped by many doctors who treat them. The effects of sleep loss and stress in adolescents can create these symptoms during and after puberty, even effecting their neurological development. Adolescents suffer from much stress causing sleep deprivation.
             Despite the many symptoms of sleep deprivation, the most important sign of sleep loss is its influences on the effort of individual activities. Many Americans drink coffee to get that early morning energy needed to start work, but are actually covering up the
             universal symptom of sleep deprivation induced through the social pressures to work harder and longer while sleeping even less. "Americans are cheating themselves at least one hour of sleep per day," says Dr. Alex Clerk, director of the Sleep Disorders Clinic at Stanford University in Stanford, CA. He also adds, "Lack of sleep can interfere with a person's natural immune system, making overworked or under slept individuals more likely to catch colds and other sicknesses." "Our society and economy encourage a 24-hour existence. We're biologically stretched," says Gary Zammit author of Good Nights, a book on sleep deprivation. He also adds, "People don't realize th...