Not getting enough sleep can decrease your immune system, cause thinking problems, and lead to weight gain.
When you don’t get enough sleep, it can also increase your risk of certain cancers, diabetes, and even car accidents.
If you find yourself part of this no-sleep category, you are not the only one. About 1 in 3 American adults don’t get enough sleep, according to the Trusted Source of the American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM).
Here are the details of what happens to your body when it doesn’t record enough hours under the covers.
Side Effect Of Not Enough Sleep
7. You Get Sick
Losing sleep can affect your body’s ability to fight disease. This makes it easier to get sick.
The researchers even found a reciprocal relationship between sleep and the immune system. You can lose additional sleep while your body fights off a bug if you get sick and haven’t had enough shut-eye.
6. Your Heart Suffers
According to an analysis published in the European Heart Journal, both short sleep duration (less than 5 hours per night) and long sleep durations (9 or more hours per night) were shown to have a negative impact on heart health.
In particular, your chances of developing coronary heart disease or stroke are greatly increased with less sleep.
5. Your Cancer Risk Increases
Shortened sleep is associated with higher rates of breast cancer, colorectal cancer, and prostate cancer, according to the AASM sleep statement.
Night shift workers may suffer from this load. The good news is that men and women who slept 7 hours or more a night had the best mortality rates in the group.
4. You Can’t Think
Even a lack of a night’s sleep can lead to some major problems with cognition (thinking) issues.
In a study published by Experimental Brain Research, a group of 18 men was given the task to complete. The first task was completed after a full night’s sleep. The next task was completed after skipping a night’s sleep.
Brain functions, including memory, decision making, reasoning, and problem solving, have worsened, along with reaction time and attention.
3. You Forget Things
Not only can miss sleep make you forget more, but there is more and more research indicating that sleep affects learning and memory.
The researchers suggest that sleep is central to the process of consolidating the things we learn in the brain. In other words, we need adequate rest to block new information and send it to memory.
2. You Gain Weight
Lack of sleep can cause you to gain pounds. One study examined the relationship between sleep and weight in 21,469 adults over the age of 20.
People who slept less than 5 hours a night during the three years of the study were more likely to gain weight and eventually become obese.
Those who slept 7 to 8 hours fared better on the scale.
1. Your Risk Of Diabetes Increases
Along with a bigger waist, people who don’t get enough sleep (or who get too much sleep) increase the risk of developing diabetes in adults.
The researchers examined 10 separate studies, focused on sleep and diabetes. Their findings found that 7 to 8 hours of rest is the ideal range to avoid insulin problems that can lead to diabetes.
Getting enough sleep is not just for your vanity. You can save your life.
Take the time to consider everything you’re risking before continuing the television marathon into the wee hours of the night. Then turn off the lights and enjoy 7 to 8 hours of beauty and healthy rest.
