The Effects of Sleep Deprivation On Your Body

The human body needs sleep just as it needs oxygen, water and food to function at optimal level. Sleep deprivation has become an unrecognized epidemic as most people tend to experience some level of regular sleep disruption. We usually feel grumpy and foggy after a sleep deprived night but sleep deprivation affects almost everything about you - ability to lose weight, memory, health, looks, sex life etc. Sleep deprivation kills your productivity and dumbs you down. A person who doesn't sleep enough is constantly sleepy, yawns too much, and is always irritable and tired during the day.

According to Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine, sleep deprivation has severe effects on mental functioning. They said,"Not getting enough sleep - whether for just one night or over the course of weeks to months - has a significant effect on our ability to function. Sleep deprivation negatively impacts our mood, our ability to focus, and our ability to attain higher cognitive functions." Sleep deprivation really makes you worse at pretty much everything. The role played by sleep in thinking and learning is a critical one. When you don't sleep well, your attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning and problem solving are impaired, making learning less efficient and more difficult.

Sleep enables the formation of pathways between neurons in your brain that help you remember newly learnt information. When you do not sleep well, your brain is exhausted and can't perform well. As a result, your coordination skills are decreased, increasing tour risk for accidents. Also, you will find it difficult concentrating, and you'll be slow at learning new things.

Extended sleep deprivation could result in hallucinations. There are other psychological risks like: paranoia, depression, impulsive behavior, and sucidal thoughts. Microsleep episodes become recurrent in a sleep-deprived person. You'll find yourself sleeping off for a few seconds or minutes without realizing it. You could easily injure yourself by tripping or falling. Microsleep episodes could be very dangerous when driving. 

Your emotional state is also negatively affected. You will be more prone to mood swings. Sleep deprivation could also dampen creativity. 

Your respiratory system is also affected by sleep deprivation, these two share a two-way relationship. One exacerbates the other. Existing respiratory diseases are worsened by sleep deprivation. Obstructive Sleep Apnea (OSA) which is a nighttime breathing disorder is known to interrupt and lower the quality of sleepm which could reslt in sleep deprivation. 

The effects of sleep deprivation on the immune system are quite severe. Sleep deprivation interferes with the production of cytokines - protective, infection-fighting substances. Cytokines fight foreign invaders like viruses and bacteria. When you don't sleep well, your body doesn't produce enough cytokines, making it difficult to fight foreign invasion. You'll also take longer to recover from illness. Your risk for chronic diseases like diabetes and heart disease also increase. People who sleep little are more prone to getting cardiovascular disease. 

How you sleep affects your digestive system. Sleep deprivation is a risk factor for becoming overweight. Lack of sleep makes you feel too tired to exercise, which could lead to weight gain. Sleep affects the levels of hormones that control feelings of hunger and fullness. These are leptin and ghrelin. Ghrelin is an appetite stimulant, while leptin tells your brain that you have had enough to eat. When you don't sleep enough, your brain produces less leptin and more ghrelin. A rush of these hormones explain the tendency for sleep-deprived persons to overeat at night, or to over-indulge in snacks at night. Sleep loss stimulates cravings for high-fat and high-carbohydrate foods.

The endocrine system is also affected by sleep deprivation given that hormone production is dependent on sleep. Three hours of uninterrupted sleep are required for testosterone production. The growth hormone is also produced when you sleep. The pituitary gland releases growth hormones continuously but sleep and exercise further induce the release of these hormones. When you wake up a lot in the night, you disturb the hormone production process. Interrupted sleep can be very detrimental to children and adolescents as the growth hormones helps build muscle mass and repair cells and tissues. 

Lack of sleep also kills sex drive. Sleep-deprived men and women report little interest in sex and have lower libidos. Sleep deprivation leaves major, long-lasting effects on hormone levels. A study published in the American Medical Association revealed that men who get less than five hours of sleep a night for over a week or longer have far less levels of testosterone than those who get enough sleep.

Lack of sleep further aggravates depression. Studies have revealed that people who suffer from insomnia are five times as likely to develop depression. Also, depressed people are more likely to sleep less than six hours at night. 

Sleep deprivation ages your skin. Chronic sleep loss can cause fine lines on the skin, dark circles under the eyes, and lackluster skin. When sleep is insufficient, more of the stress hormone, cortisol is released. Excessive amounts of cortisol break down skin collagen. Collagen is the protein that keeps skin elastic and smooth. 

Sleep deprivation increases risk of death. British researchers carried out a study, called the "Whitehall II Study" on how sleep patterns affected the mortality of over 10,000 British civil servants over two decades. The results of the study were published in 2007. They revealed that those who had cut their sleep from seven to five hours or fewer a night nearly doubled their risk of death from all causes, particularly cardiovascular disease. 

Over time, sleep-deprived persons who get say 6 hours of sleep, instead of 8 begin to feel that they have adapted to sleep deprivation, but they haven't. They just get used to the pattern, like we do when following routines. In reality, their mental alertness and performance keep going downhill. There's a point in sleep deprivation when we lose touch with how impaired we are. Do yourself justice - get some sound sleep.