Why is Sleep So Important For Your Health

You already know that sleep is important. Without adequate amounts, you feel sleepy. You may also experience other obvious signs and symptoms such as crankiness, headaches, and/or trouble concentrating. However, there are even more serious consequences of not getting enough shut-eye.

These are explained in what follows:

Your Physical Health –

1. Increased Risk of Obesity due to the following factors –

a.) No energy – If you do not get adequate sleep at night, you may delay getting out of bed in the morning, because you are too sleepy. As a result, now you do not have enough time to make a healthy breakfast and pack a healthy lunch. You rush out of the house, and you pick up a coffee and donut on the way to work. If you packed a lunch, you eat whatever you threw together at the last minute in the morning, or you buy whatever is on the menu at the cafeteria that day. On your way home, you are tired and you do not feel like spending an hour in the kitchen preparing something, so you decide to get take-out pizza. You decide to skip the gym that night, because you are just too tired.
You can see how this becomes a vicious cycle and can result in weight gain.

b.) Your body’s use of glucose is impaired – Normally, when you eat, your body’s cells are supposed to use the energy (glucose). However, when you are sleep deprived, your body is not as efficient at doing this. This makes you feel more tired, hungrier so you eat more, and it also increases your chance of diabetes.

c.) Your hormones are thrown out-of-whack – A hormone called, cortisol, is produced by your adrenal glands. It is commonly referred to as one of the “stress hormones.” Cortisol increases with lack of sleep, and it also makes it harder to sleep. Normally, your cortisol levels should be highest in the morning so that it is easy to wake up, and lowest in the evenings when your body prepares for sleep and as it sleeps. High levels of cortisol, when it should be low in your body, is linked to weight gain, obesity, and diabetes.

A couple other important hormones that are affected by lack of sleep include grehlin and leptin.

Grehlin is the hormone that tells you when you are hungry, and that it is time to eat. In contrast, leptin is a hormone that tells you when you are full, and that it is time to stop eating. Unfortunately, when you don’t get enough sleep, grehlin increases and leptin decreases, putting you at risk of weight gain.

2. Increased Risk of Diseases – As already mentioned above, lack of sleep increases potential for weight gain and unstable blood sugars, which then increases your risk of diabetes.

Heart disease is also higher if you are chronically sleep deprived. According to the National Sleep Foundation, despite exercise, age, weight, and smoking habits, your risk of heart disease goes up if you do not get enough sleep.

Although the exact causes are not known, lack of sleep is linked to high blood pressure, high cholesterol, and increased inflammation in the body. All sleep-deprived individuals are at risk of this, but people with sleep apnea tend to have even higher rates of heart disease than those without the medical problem.

3. Lowered Immune System Functioning – Your immune system is what protects your body from germs. When your body encounters germs, your body goes to work to fight off the invaders. However, when you don’t get enough sleep, your immune system does not function as well, increasing your susceptibility to colds, flu, and other ailments.

The simple explanation is that your immune system cannot produce the germ-fighting cells that it needs when you aren’t getting enough sleep. Your body is effective at restoring these fighter cells when you sleep.

4. Your Sex Life Suffers – This actually could have been included in the topic of hormone disruption above. This is because the sex hormone, testosterone, is reduced in men and women who are leading sleep-deprived lives.

This, in turn, results in a decreased interest in sex for both genders, erectile dysfunction in males, and reduced vaginal lubrication in females.

5. Increased Risk of Injuries and Accidents – When you are tired, your concentration and focus is poor. Therefore, this puts you at increased risk of workplace injuries and car accidents.

Your Cognitive, Mental, & Emotional Health –

Pulling all-nighters is not only a bad idea for your physical health, it also negatively impacts your mental, cognitive, and emotional health. More people are recognizing that the days of bragging about being able to function with only a few hours of sleep, is really a health hazard and not something with which to mess around.

Here are 7 ways that sleep deprivation affects these areas of your health:

1. Altered Mood – You already know that you feel irritable and short-tempered when you don’t get enough sleep. Chronic lack of sleep, however, also increases your chances of depression and anxiety.

2. Decreased Ability to Handle Stress – Stressful situations are difficult enough to handle when you have gotten a good sleep. When you get less than ideal amounts of sleep, and you are dealing with stress, your ability to do this well, deteriorates significantly. You may get angry, yell, cry, or do things that you normally wouldn’t do if you had gotten a good night of sleep.

3. Decreased Ability to Think & Learn – Your ability to concentrate and focus on tasks, make decisions, and carry through with them, is hampered a great deal with lack of sleep.

In addition, your ability to learn new things is also reduced.

Sleep is known to help with new learning, and it is probably the reason why babies and young children sleep so much as they are constantly learning and adapting to their environments. New learning does not end with childhood, so adequate sleep continues to play an important role in adults. In addition, your brain assimilates information as you sleep, helping you to retain information.

4. Reduced Judgment Skills – Although this also falls under the inability to think, it deserves its own bullet point. If your judgment and insight is lacking due to poor sleep, your decision-making skills will be affected. You may make more impulsive decisions, or do things that are potentially unsafe while driving, for example. Your ability to assess situations accurately decreases.

5. Negatively Impacts Relationships – Because of your reduced ability to handle stress and your increased irritability, it makes sense that your personal and work relationships will suffer. This may also take a toll on your self-esteem as friendships and relationships are ruined, and you find that you have no one with which to talk.

6. Poor Memory – Again, this goes back to the inability to concentrate and focus on what is happening around you. If you do not register things in your short-term memory, it is impossible for the brain to convert memories to long term ones.

7. Slowed Reaction Time – Sleepiness when driving, has been described as being as dangerous as driving under the influence of alcohol. If you mix lack of sleep and alcohol, it makes you even more dangerous behind the wheel.

Not only is driving dangerous when you lack sleep, working in certain industries or professions, when sleep-deprived, can be extremely dangerous. For example, construction workers and police officers are two of many professions that require alertness and the ability to react quickly.