February 22, 2021

What Does Lack of Sleep Do to Your Body?

A good night’s sleep feels perfect, while not having the right hours of sleep will make you feel like you’ve slept on the wrong side of the bed... When getting a bad night's sleep, you'll wake up feeling tired, cranky, and disoriented. Those feelings do more than make you feel grumpy and groggy! There are lack of sleep side effects that can pose harm to your long-term health - this should make you want to rethink your sleep health.

girl sleeping in bed

Here are some of the effects of lack of sleep or sleep deprivation on your body:

Lack of sleep can lead to long term health problems

Sleep disorders and chronic sleep loss have long term effects that no one wants to experience, some of which include:

  •       Heart failure
  •       Stroke
  •       Heart attack
  •       Heart disease
  •       High blood pressure
  •       Irregular heartbeat
  •       Diabetes 

Sleepiness causes accidents

If you have stayed awake for the day and you're thinking about driving, experts would advise you not to. Sleep deprivation effects pose a public safety hazard on the road since people who experience this may experience slow reaction time that is equivalent to driving drunk.

According to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, fatigue has caused 1,550 crash-related deaths a year and 100,000 auto crashes in the U.S. This issue is said to be more prevalent among people below 25 years old.

Sleep loss makes your brain slower

Our brain takes over learning and thinking activities... If our brain does not have the correct amount of sleep, then it causes the brain to slow down leading to slower learning and a hard time retaining information. Having all-nighters are also not recommended since lack of sleep renders the previous night useless. Why? Because the brain did not have the time to rest and store the information from the previous day. Not having sleep impairs attention, concentration, reasoning, and problem-solving. So you might want to rethink having that all-nighter schedule for your upcoming tests. 

Sleepiness can cause depression

When lack of sleep is a part of your everyday routine, it may turn into a sleeping disorder that has adverse effects on your health... Not just physically, but also mentally. Over time, it will contribute to symptoms of depression. In fact, insomnia is the most common sleep disorder that has the strongest connection with depression. 10,000 people that have insomnia were five times more likely to develop mental health issues such as depression and lack of sleep anxiety than those without, according to a2007 study. People who have been clinically diagnosed with insomnia were more likely to sleep less than six hours at night. Insomnia, lack of sleep, and depression come hand in hand and having not enough sleep often makes the symptoms worse and more difficult to fall asleep. Having a better sleep routine and sleep health would definitely help alleviate the symptoms help restore better mental health

Faster skin aging

Having puffy eyes is often correlated with not having enough sleep in the evening. Most people experience this after missing a few nights of not enough sleep. Not only that, but it also causes hormonal imbalance which results to more acne, fine lines, and dark circles under the eyes. The reason for that is because your body is releasing more of the stress hormone called cortisol as the consequence of lack of sleep. The more cortisol you have, the more it would break down skin collagen which is the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.

Sleep loss also impedes the release of growth hormones. So there’s a good reason why children should not miss sleeping times and should have the appropriate amount of sleep in order to grow. According to Phil Gehrman, Ph.D., during deep sleep or slow-wave sleep, growth hormone is released. It is also a part of tissue repair that patches up the wear and tear of the day.

Sleep loss makes you forgetful

In 2009, researchers discovered that sharp-wave ripples were responsible for combining memory. These ripples carry the learned information from the hippocampus to the part of the brain that stores long-term memory called the Neocortex. These ripples happen during the deepest levels of sleep. 

Gaining weight? It must be lack of sleep

Lack of sleep can contribute to many mental and health problems and may cause hunger that may lead to obesity. A study has shown that people who lack sleep were almost 30 percent more likely to become obese than those who get the appropriate amounts of sleep

The bottom line is that lack of sleep stimulates the appetite causing cravings for junk foods that are high in fat and carbohydrates. This goes to show that a big step to losing weight is to correct your lifestyle, and as much as possible, get the appropriate amount of sleep.

Risk of death will be increased

The adverse effects of long-term lack of sleep will cause an individual’s risk of death to become higher. It may double the risk of death from having cardiovascular disease.

Loss of judgment

With our brains not functioning at the optimal state with lack of sleep, our interpretation of events would be also affected by it. It hinders our ability to make sound judgments because our brains cannot think clearly and make accurate decisions. People who are sleep deprived are more likely to have poor judgment when assessing the consequences of lack of sleep. In today’s age, people are wanting to be more productive and finish more tasks in a day, but studies have shown that exchanging productivity oversleep is not the best way to live - especially if the work you are doing needs a higher level of functioning.

Lack of sleep effects cannot be recovered from if the consequences of it are not known and understood because people usually downplay it! It's extremely important for us to be knowledgeable of what our sleeping habits are doing to our bodies with lack of sleep.

Conclusion of What Does Lack of Sleep Do to Your Body?

Hopefully, we were able to give you some insight on what happens when you don't sleep enough! How many hours a night do you think you get? Let us know by commenting down below!

If you want a good night's sleep, or in our case, a great night's sleep, then check out our comfortable products from Warm Things! From comforters, to pillows, to slippers, we have everything needed for a cozy night in. Thank you for reading nd happy shopping!


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