Getting adequate, high-quality rest is vital for health and well-being. However, a surprisingly large number of people do not receive sufficient sleep on a regular basis. In fact, sleep deprivation has become an epidemic issue with both mental and physical consequences.
Lacking just an hour of the recommended nightly sleep over an extended period can significantly impact how someone feels and functions during waking hours. Symptoms like mood swings, difficulties concentrating, changes in appetite, and impaired cognitive performance are common complaints resulting from poor sleeping patterns.
Chronic sleep loss also takes a long-term toll on overall health by increasing risks for chronic diseases such as heart disease, diabetes, obesity and depression. From a metabolic perspective, sleep helps regulate hormonal processes involved in appetite, metabolism and more.
Given how essential sleep is to daily functioning and longevity, it’s concerning how many accept low-quality or insufficient rest as normal. Prioritizing sleep through behavioral changes and a conducive nighttime environment is worthwhile for both short and long-term wellness. With improved awareness about specific impacts of poor sleep, more may be motivated to optimize this fundamental pillar of health.
Behavior
When you fail to get enough sleep this begins to affect the way you act such as decision making, concentration, coordination, etc. Studies show that a good night’s sleep improves learning and problem-solving skills. Sleep also helps you pay attention, make decisions, and be creative, therefore when one is running off no sleep they tend to work and act at a lower performance.
Body Weight
Your sleep schedule often affects either how much or less you eat in a day. For example if you are sleeping the majority of the day you tend to not eat as much as you would if you were awake most of the day. Rather than if you are up during the day you eat on a regular schedule. Studies also show that lack of sleep causes cravings for unhealthy foods, Sleep deprivation causes an increase in appetite, often for unhealthy food choices, and decreases a person’s metabolism, which means an increase in fat storage and weight gain.
Emotions
When running off of low sleep one may grow to feel tired, overwhelmed, annoyed, etc. This causes their emotions to be heightened compared to how they would feel if they were to get enough sleep. Sleep loss can affect your mood, and your mood can affect how much and how well you sleep, when one is well rested you tend to feel motivated, happy, and ready for the day.
Focusing
When one does not get enough sleep their brain struggles to gain focus making it more difficult for one to comprehend simple tasks. The brain will begin to feel foggy and process what is happening in real time at a slower pace, It’s more difficult to focus and pay attention, so you’re more easily confused. This hampers your ability to perform tasks that require logical reasoning or complex thought. This then affects one’s ability to perform tasks, it may take longer to get things done or the lack of effort will show.
Immune System
Lack of sleep has been linked to a weakened immune system and the way your body fights off sickness. Yes, lack of sleep can affect your immune system. Studies show that people who don’t get quality sleep or enough sleep are more likely to get sick after being exposed to a virus, such as a common cold virus. Lack of sleep can also affect how fast you recover if you do get sick, this then begins to affect your health long term if poor sleeping patterns continue.
Memory
Your ability to memorize things when you are sleep deprived are poor due to your neurons not being able to work as fast. When you are sleep-deprived, those neurons are overworked and no longer function properly, affecting the way you process information and your ability to remember or learn, when trying to memorize something off low sleep your brain has a harder time recalling and processing information, this then begins to affect one’s work or school performance.
Mood
Sleep deprivation affects your mood due to your body and brain not being well rested. Studies show people who are sleep deprived report increases in negative moods (anger, frustration, irritability, sadness) and decreases in positive moods, it was found that lack of sleep is one of the leading factors of mood disorders.
The link between sleep and mood is strongly tied to how sleep impacts the brain and body. Insufficient sleep reduces the activity of neurons that produce neurotransmitters like serotonin, which regulate mood. Low serotonin levels are associated with feelings of sadness, anger, and depression.
Sleep deprivation also causes disruptions to the body’s stress response systems. Chief among these is cortisol, a hormone that helps the body cope with stress and regulates glucose metabolism. Normal sleep allows cortisol levels to fall at night, but deprivation causes levels to remain elevated longer. Sustained high cortisol leads to increased inflammation and stress response, wearing down the body and mind over time.
The effects of poor sleep quality on mental health are so strong that a meta-analysis of over 25,000 adults found those who slept less than 6 hours per night were twice as likely to develop depression. Additionally, people with pre-existing mood disorders like bipolar disorder and depression often experience exacerbation of symptoms when sleep is disrupted. Getting sufficient, restorative sleep is therefore vital not only for mood, but preventing and managing many mental illnesses.
Reaction Time
Sleep deprivation affects your reaction time due to one’s lack of alertness of what is going on around them, this causes your reaction time to be longer than usual since the brain is moving at a slower pace. These competing drives interfere with their attention from moment to moment, leading to cognitive impairment and an increased reaction time, lack of sleep leaves your brain to work poorer causing you to have trouble concentrating and responding.
The effects of sleep deprivation on reaction time are largely due to changes in the prefrontal cortex region of the brain. This area is important for focus, task-switching abilities, risk assessment, and reacting to external stimuli. MRI studies show that after nights with insufficient sleep, prefrontal cortex activity is diminished.
This reduces our capacity for what’s called executive functioning. Namely, the ability to maintain attention on a goal, ignore distractions, and react flexibly to what’s happening around us. Like cognitive impairment from alcohol, sleep deprivation makes it harder to multitask, process multiple streams of information simultaneously, and respond quickly in dangerous or high-pressure situations.
The reaction time effects also stem from changes in neurotransmitter and hormone levels with sleep loss. Low glutamate and GABA allow neural signals to fire more slowly. Reduced growth hormone meant for tissue repair impacts response speed. Altogether, these biological consequences of impaired sleep greatly hinder one’s reflexes, coordination, and decision making under time constraints. It’s no surprise that drowsy driving is as dangerous as driving drunk.
Stress
Studies show that lack of sleep puts the body into distress, A lack of sleep can cause the body to react as if it’s in distress, releasing more of the stress hormone, cortisol. Cortisol is responsible for your fight or flight reaction to danger, increasing your heart rate in anticipation of a fight. When running off low sleep you then begin to grow stressed especially if it is an important day or even just a regular work/school day.
The release of cortisol from sleep deprivation effectively puts the body into a prolonged fight-or-flight state. While acute stress responses are useful in emergency situations, long-term elevation of cortisol is very unhealthy. It can increase blood pressure and heart rate, suppress the immune system, inhibit digestion, and spike blood sugar levels.
Chronically high cortisol also causes damage to areas of the brain involved in memory, mood regulation, and cognition. Over time, this constant stress response raises risks for metabolic syndrome, cardiovascular disease, ulcers, mental health issues like anxiety and depression, and even some cancers.
Cortisol interacts negatively with other stress hormones like adrenaline as well. The combined hormonal imbalance stresses all major organ systems beyond their capacity. Poor sleep leaves the body in a state of toxic vigilance where it activates responses meant for rare, acute threats as a new baseline functioning mode. No one is meant to sustain such elevated stress indefinitely without consequences to health and longevity. Addressing underlying causes of sleep deprivation is therefore crucial for well-being.
Social Functioning
When running off low sleep, this begins to affect how fast your brain is able to process what other people are saying and affects how properly you communicate. For example when going to work, school, or an event on low sleep your brain will act as it is lagging and you will not be as alert compared to if you got enough sleep. The less sleep you get, the less you want to socially interact. In turn, other people perceive you as more socially repulsive, further increasing the grave social-isolation impact of sleep loss, studies show how lack of sleep affects your social life and skills due to not having enough energy to have the need to communicate and socialize.
