Stress Vs. Amount of Sleep (okay... and BE STILL)

This topic submitted by Becky, Liz, Matt, Sarah (singsora@muohio.edu) at 1:35 am on 10/5/01. Additions were last made on Friday, April 19, 2002. Section: Wagner

Introduction

The purpose of this lab is to determine whether sleep has any affect on stress level, assuming blood pressure is an accurate measure of stress. We intend to study whether there are any differences between stress levels of Architecture students and Western students. We hypothesize that a person who has little sleep (probably due to heavy work load) will be more stressed, and therefore have higher blood pressure than those who get more sleep. We also believe that architecture students probably have a higher stress level and therefore higher blood pressure than western majors because of a more demanding curriculum. To accomplish this we will measure the blood pressure of the same group of four architecture students and four Western students on randomly selected days of the week. We understand that each individual has a different “normal blood pressure.” To address this, we are going to analyze each specific person’s fluctuations in blood pressure as compared to the amount of sleep the person received.
In doing this lab, we hope to gain a better understanding of the relationship between stress level and the amount of sleep a person gets.
This project is very relevant because being students, we are in the situation and we are the variables being tested. We see examples of this everyday and are looking for conclusive research to prove what we hypothesize. This research should be interesting because we have noticed that architecture students seem to have a heavier workload, and we have noted on many occasions that architecture students have very high levels of stress due to their workload.

Relevance
After extensive research, we were unable to find any studies done on the relationship between sleep and stress. However, we were able to find a direct correlation between blood pressure and stress levels.
According to a stress management study done by Indiana University, increased blood pressure and changes in sleep pattern are indicators that one may be experiencing stress. Many other sources say that stress has been shown to lead to high blood pressure. Also, when recommending how to treat hypertension, researchers say learning to manage stress is a major help. Two studies confirm that people under a lot of stress at work have higher blood pressure, but their blood pressure returns to normal levels once away from the office. This is applicable to our project because being on a job is equivalent to being in the architecture studio. People with more demanding jobs showed higher blood pressure when at work, which is what we predict will happen with architecture students, who have more demanding work than the Western majors.
While researching blood pressure and stress, we found that there is a difference between physical stress and emotional stress. Our project is strictly working with emotional stress.
While everyone’s blood pressure is specific to the individual, there are distinct norms. Blood pressure is measured with two numbers, one called systolic pressure and the other is called diastolic pressure. Systolic pressure is high levels of pressure of blood being pumped through the veins by contractions of the heart. This is when the heart relaxes between beats and blood pressure decreases.
The normal level for systolic pressure (the top number in a blood pressure reading) is up to 140 mmHg (millimeters of mercury). The normal for diastolic pressure (the bottom number in a blood pressure reading) is up to 90 mmHg. Borderline hypertension is a systolic pressure between 140 and 160 or a diastolic pressure between 90 and 95. Hypertensive blood pressure is anything above 160 mmHg systolic pressure and 95 mmHg diastolic pressure.

Materials and Methods
In order to achieve a set of data, we plan to take the blood pressure of a consistent group of 8 people 10 times, each time on a random day during the course of three weeks. Four of these students will be Architecture majors, and four will be Western majors. We will use an electronic blood pressure monitor to measure both the systolic and diastolic blood pressures. While we take the blood pressure, we will also ask those being tested how many hours of sleep they had gotten the previous night. We will take the different amounts of sleep and put them into three categories: zero to four hours of sleep, four to nine hours of sleep, and nine or more. This will help us to better organize the information since quality of sleep varies as well as people’s memories. When this data is obtained, we will plot all 10 of an individual’s systolic blood pressure on the vertical axis of a graph against the amount of sleep on the horizontal axis. We will also make another graph for the individual’s diastolic blood pressure and amount of sleep on vellum paper, and lay this graph on top of the other. This will allow us to generalize the slope of the two graphs into one, since blood pressure consists of two different numbers. Doing this for each person will allow us to see the fluctuation in the graph (to prove or disprove our hypothesis), as each individual has a “normal” range for blood pressure. As we plot these points on the graph, we will also analyze them with the “Graphical Analysis” program to see if there is a line of best fit and whether the correlation allows it to be significant. After we have made conclusions about each individual, we will separate the graphs into two groups: Architecture majors and Western majors. We will then compare the two different groups to see of there is any difference.
When we present our lab to the class, we will have the students serve as our “control” group, since there are a mix of Architecture and Western majors. We will take the blood pressure of everyone in the class for one day only, and see if the class follows the predicted trend that people with less sleep will have higher blood pressure. The class will plot the blood pressures as well as amount of sleep on one set of two (systolic and diastolic) graphs, using the same strategy as specified above. We will then ask the class to compare these graphs with the designated “Architecture” and “Western” groups.

Timeline
9/24/01- Took Blood pressure of 10 people
9/27/01- " " " " " "
10/1/01- " " " " " "
10/2/01- " " " " " "
10/3/01- " " " " " "
Day 6
Day 7
Day 8
Day 9
Day 10
Day unknown- take blood pressure of entire NS class

Works Cited

Anderson, Robert. Stress Power! New York: Human Sciences Press, 1978.

Bieliauskas, Linas. Stress and It’s Relationship to Health and Illness. Boulder,
Colorado: Westview Press, 1982.

Instruction Manual: Automatic Blood Pressure Monitor. [Vernon Hills, Illinois]: Omron
Healthcare, Inc., 1998.

Maigruppo: Forskare/Experter. Online. Internet. 15 Sept. 2001. Available ftp
http://www.safari.gu.se/pages/115.html

Stress Increases Blood Pressure, Causes Stroke. Online. Internet. 25 Sept. 2001.
Available ftp http://www.bloodpressure.com/whatsnew/FeaturedArticles.

Stress Management. Online. Internet. 25 Sept. 2001. Available ftp
http://www.indiana.edu/~health/stres.html

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