What Happens When You Don’t Sleep Well

Why would you suffer health issues due to those hours of sleep you denied yourself? C’mon! Don’t tell me you need some additional period to your daily 24 hours; if machines are rested just to make them more efficient, then you must rest even more. Not getting up to 7 hours of sleep regularly can result in health consequences that affect your entire body system.

In this write-up, you’ll understand the negative effects of sleeplessness. After reading the points below, you ought to understand the importance of sleep to your health.

Losing Sleep Can Cause You to Be Obese

Lack of sleep seems to be linked with a rise in hunger and appetite, and possibly obesity. From a 2004 study discovery, folks who sleep but 6 hours every day had a more significant possibility of becoming overweight than those who slept 7 to 9 hours. The likelihood of this happening was about thirty percent.

Sleep affects the levels of two hormones ghrelin and leptin, which control feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin signals your brain that you’ve had enough to eat. Without sufficient sleep, your brain increases ghrelin (an appetite stimulant) and decreases leptin. This is often the explanation why you overeat at night.

Sleeplessness Makes You Forgetful

Your central system, the nervous system, is the leading information highway of your body. Sleep is vital to keep it functional, but insomnia can disrupt how your body sends and processes information.

You may also find it so hard to concentrate on when learning new things. The signals your body sends may equally be delayed, thus decreasing your coordination and elevates your risk for accidents. Sleeplessness also has its negative effects on your mental abilities and spirit. You will feel more impatient or vulnerable to mood swings. It may make up your ability to make decisions and be creative.

Sleeplessness Ages Your Skin

When you don’t get enough sleep, more strain hormone cortisol is released in your body system. Cortisol in excess amounts can break down collagen (the protein present in your skin) responsible for keeping skin elastic.

Sleep loss also makes the body release a little human hormone. When we’re tender and young, the human somatotropin hormone improves growth. As we age, the hormone aids in the increase of muscle mass, strengthening of the bones, and thickening of the skin.

According to Phil Gehrman, PhD., “It’s during deep sleep (slow-wave sleep) that hormone is released.” It is apparently a part of a normal tissue repair mechanism, amending the day’s damaged tissues.

Causes Accident

Accidents have always been misconceived to occur only on highways, don’t ever forget that accident could happen anywhere. Imagine someone while in the kitchen cut one’s own finger while dicing some carrots all because one was feeling drowsy. For a surety, such wouldn’t have happened if one had slept well. Sleep loss is additionally an enormous public safety complication daily on the road. Drowsiness can slow your impulse as much as driving drunk does. Studies also revealed that sleep loss and poor-quality sleep also cause accidents and injuries on duty posts.

Questions Immunity

Sleep deprivation unarms your immune system from playing its actual role in defending your entire body system. If you don’t get sufficient sleep, your body might not be ready to attack invaders (antibodies), thus making you vulnerable to numerous health complications and delays of the healing mechanism. Long-term sleep deprivation will elevate your risk for chronic conditions, like heart conditions and diabetes.

Decreases Sex Drive

From discoveries, women and men who don’t get enough sound sleep have significantly lower libidos and lack of interest in sex. Men suffering from sleep apnoea (a disorder in which breathing complications lead to interrupted sleep) also have lower testosterone levels, which may lower libido.

Facilitates Heart Disease

Prolonged sleep deprivation seems to be connected with increased blood pressure, increased heart rate, and higher levels of inflammation-induced chemicals, which may further strain your heart.

Sleep Deprivation Decreases Fertility and Chances of Conceiving

A lot of couples, both young and old, are yet to have any child. This is not because of any severe complication on their reproductive systems, but because of those sleepless nights, and the sleep they deprived themselves. YES! Your sleeplessness has a leading effect on your reproduction.

Researchers have proved that reproductive hormones (testosterone, progesterone, etc.) are effectively secreted during hours of sleep and that sleep duration varies directly as the levels of those hormones. The more you put your body to rest, the more productive you’d become and vice versa.

Sleeplessness Predisposes the Body to Diabetes

Sounds strange?  Diabetes is a nutritional disorder attributed to high blood sugar (hyperglycemia). Blood sugar level goes high when the secretion of insulin (glucose to metabolizing energy-converting hormone) is low.

This is how your sleep deprivation could expose you to diabetes: the more you do away with sleep, the more your body loses count on insulin level (i.e., more glucose will remain unconverted). Persistent sleeplessness may lead to insulin resistance.

Poor Athletic Performance

According to the presentation by the National Sleep foundation for adults, average sleep is 8 hours a night, athletes benefit more from as many as 10 hours. One of the significant challenges of sleeplessness an athlete would face is a prolonged healing process. Other challenges may include;

• Poor performance intensity
• Poor coordination
• Slower speed
• Poor mental functioning
• Low energy

Reduced Emotional and Social Intelligence

Sleep has connections to people’s emotional and social intelligence. Someone who does not get enough sleep is much more likely to have complications recognizing other peoples’ emotions and expressions.

For example, some researchers concluded in the Journal of Sleep Research after their studies on peoples’ responses to emotional stimuli; that a person’s emotional empathy is reduced when they don’t get enough sleep.

Causes Depression

The connection between mental health and sleep has been the principal subject of research studies for decades. One common inference in all is that there is a connection between sleep deprivation and depression.

A JAMA Psychiatry’s study examined patterns of death through suicide for over ten years. It concluded that lack of sleep is a huge contributing factor to most of the deaths.

Another Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry study suggests that people with sleep disorders (e.g., insomnia) are likely to exhibit depression signs.

Sleep Deprivation Causes Inflammatory Bowel Diseases

A secure link exists between sleeplessness and inflammation in the gastrointestinal tract (GIT).

For example, a World Journal of Gastroenterology study suggests a relationship between sleep deprivation and bowel inflammatory diseases that affect peoples’ enteral tract. Thus, it was discovered that sleep loss can contribute to these diseases and that these diseases, in turn, can contribute to sleep loss.

Sleeplessness leads to Excess Consumption of Calories

You become accustomed to overeating if you don’t get enough sleep and thus more likely to become obese. That is the findings of researchers presented during the Physical Activity and Metabolism 2012 Scientific Sessions at the American Heart Association’s Epidemiology and Prevention/Nutrition.

They tested whether lack of sleep does interfere with the levels of hormones; leptin and ghrelin raised the number of food people consumed and affected their energy metabolism through activities. The researchers studied seventeen (17) normal, healthy young women and men for eight (8) nights, with half of the participants sleeping usually and the other half sleeping only two-thirds (²/₃) their regular time. Participants ate as much as they could during the study.

Researchers’ findings;

The sleep-deprived group, who slept each day just for one hour and twenty minutes (80 minutes.) less than the individuals of the control group consumed an average of 549 additional calories on a daily basis.

The amount of energy used for activity didn’t change significantly among the groups, suggesting that those who slept less didn’t burn additional calories.

Lack of sleep was, therefore, associated with an increase in leptin levels and decrease ghrelin.