Lack
of sleep can make you grumpy, foggy, ruin your sex life, memory,
health, looks, and even the ability to lose weight. Here are 11
serious., though not the only, effects of sleep loss.1. Sleepiness Causes Accidents
Sleep deprivation was a major
factor in the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island, and the
massive Exxon Valdez oil spill, as well as the 1986 nuclear meltdown at
Chernobyl, and others. Sleep deprivation is a public safety hazard
every day on the road. Drowsiness slows reaction time as much as drunk
driving. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates
that fatigue and sleep loss is a cause in 100,000 auto crashes and 1,550
crash-related deaths a year in the U.S. and this problem is greatest
among people under 25 years old.
Sleep loss and poor-quality sleep
also lead to accidents and injuries in the work place. Workers who
suffer daytime sleepiness have significantly more work accidents,
particularly repeated work accidents.
2. Sleep Loss Dulls Cognitive Processes
Sleep
plays a critical role in the thinking and learning processes.
Deprivation of sleep hurts these cognitive processes in many ways. It
seriously impairs attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and
problem solving, making it more difficult to learn efficiently.
More
important, during the night, various sleep cycles play a role in
sorting, filing, and consolidating memories in the mind. If you don’t
get sufficient sleep, you won’t be able to recall what you learned and
experienced during the day.
3. Sleep Deprivation May Lead To Very Serious Health Problems
Chronic sleep loss can put you at risk for:
Heart disease
Heart attack
Heart failure
Irregular heartbeat
High blood pressure
Stroke
Diabetes
It is estimated that 90% of people with insomnia usually also have other serious health conditions.
4. Lack of Sleep Kills Sex Drive
Sleep-deprived
men and women report lower libidos and thus less interest in sex.
Depleted energy, sleepiness, and increased tension and depression caused
by sleep loss may increase sexual dysfunctions. Furthermore, a study
published in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism in
2002 suggests that many men with sleep apnea also have low testosterone
levels. In the study, nearly half of the men who suffered from severe
sleep apnea also secreted abnormally low levels of testosterone
5. Sleepiness Can Cause Severe Depression
The sleep disorder,
insomnia, has the strong link to depression. In a 2007 study of 10,000
people, those with insomnia were five times more likely to develop
depression as those without. Also, insomnia is frequently the first
symptom of depression.
6. Lack of Sleep Ages You And Your Skin
Most
people have experienced sallow skin and puffy eyes after just a few
nights of missed sleep, but chronic sleep loss can lead to lackluster
skin, fine lines, and more permanent dark circles under the eyes.
Furthermore when you don’t get enough sleep, your body releases more of
the stress hormone cortisol, which in excess amounts can break down skin
collagen, the protein that keeps skin smooth and elastic.
Serious
sleep loss also causes the body to release too little human growth
hormone, which promotes growth when we’re young. In adults as we age,
it helps increase muscle mass, thicken skin, and strengthen bones. It
is an important part of normal tissue repair rejuvenating the wear and
tear of the day on our bodies.
7. Sleep Deprivation Makes You Forgetful
If
you’re trying to keep your memory sharp, best try getting plenty of
sleep. Brain events called “sharp wave ripples” are responsible for
consolidating memory. These ripples also transfer learned information
from the hippocampus to the neocortex of the brain, where long-term
memories are stored. These ripples occur mostly during the deepest
levels of sleep.
8. Losing Sleep Can Make You Gain Weight
Chronic
lack of sleep seems to be related to increased hunger and appetite, and
can lead to obesity. According to a 2004 study, people who sleep less
than six hours a day were up to 30 percent more likely to become obese
than those who slept seven or more hours. Ghrelin stimulates hunger and
leptin signals satiety to the brain suppressing appetite, and shortened
sleep time is associated with decreases in leptin and an elevations in
ghrelin.
Not only does sleep loss appear to stimulate appetite, it also stimulates cravings for high-fat, high-carbohydrate foods.
9. Lack of Sleep May Increase Risk of Death
British researchers
looked at how sleep patterns affected the mortality of more than 10,000
British civil servants over two decades. The results showed that those
who had cut their sleep from seven to five hours or less a night nearly
doubled their risk of death from all causes, and in particular, lack of
sleep doubled the risk of death from cardiovascular disease.
10. Sleep Loss Impairs Judgment
Lack of sleep can affect our
interpretation of events, reducing our ability to make sound judgments.
We may not assess situations accurately and thus not act on them
wisely. Sleep-deprived people seem to be especially poor in judgment
when assessing what lack of sleep is doing to them. Sleep studies show
if you think you’re doing fine on less sleep, you’re probably wrong.
Over time, people who are getting six hours of sleep, instead of seven
or eight, begin to feel that they’ve adapted to that sleep deprivation,
but if you look at how they do on tests of mental alertness and
performance, they rapidly go downhill. There’s a point in sleep
deprivation when we lose contact with how impaired we are.
11. Sleep Deprivation Impairs Our Body’s Ability To Repair Itself
It
is during sleep that our bodies rejuvenate and repair the damages of
the day or sickness. Impaired sleep can cause prolonged healing time
and even prevent complete recovery.
It is extremely important that the ailing body gets sufficient and sound sleep.
Roca Labs makes the "Non Surgical Gastric Bypass" (which one expert says is mostly industrial food thickeners) with terms-of-sale that prohibit complaining if you get sick, or don't like the product, or feel like you were ripped off.
One two-letter
word in English has more meanings than any other two-letter word, and
that word is ‘UP.’ It is listed in the dictionary as an [adv],
[prep], [adj], [n] or [v].
