April 2009
M	T	W	T	F	S	S
		May »
	1	2	3	4	5
6	7	8	9	10	11	12
13	14	15	16	17	18	19
20	21	22	23	24	25	26
27	28	29	30

Sleep News Blog

Prescription Sleep Medicine

Physical Effects of Sleep Deprivation

Posted by sleepyguy in Prescription Sleep Medicine, Sleep Disorder on April 16th, 2009

Sleep deprivation is incredibly common in today’s high stress world. And while most of us know that a lack of sleep makes you feel tired and sleepy, most people don’t understand the extent to which we are affected. There are many physical effects of sleep deprivation that can have significant consequences for your life, and it’s best that you understand them.

Not getting enough sleep doesn’t only make us feel sleepy, it also reduces our brain’s ability to function properly. Your ability to concentrate can be severely diminished, and your memory is weakened. If you’ve missed a significant amount of sleep, you may be walking around in a sort of daze, where everything seems foggy and your ability to think clearly and communicate effectively are drastically reduced. If you are experiencing these symptoms in your daily life on a regular basis, then insomnia or lack of rest may be a problem that you need to take steps to fix.

The above sleep deprivation effects may ruin your day, but there are also effects that can cause damage to your relationships or have longterm health effects. Lack of sleep makes us much less capable of managing stress, so all of life’s little annoyances start to seem like big problems and cause you to overreact. Nobody likes to be around an irritable person, so the people around you may start to resent you. Similarly, paranoia and self-doubt are common emotional effects of a lack of sleep. Again, nobody likes to be around a negative person who sees the world as predatorial. Don’t let a lack of sleep destroy your relationships with people you care about!

Longterm sleep deprivation can cause serious depression, heart disease, and hypertension. Weight gain may also occur as a result of hormonal imbalances. Without proper sleep, your immune system does not function properly and you are left open to a variety of infections. In fact, it has been proven through testing on animals that without sleep we will die! Insomniacs rarely reach the point of death of course, but it’s a good indication of how serious the physical effects of insufficient sleep are.