The Effects of Insufficient Sleep

Sleep deprivation has affected everyone at one time or another. Work, school, family and society in general are all contributing factors of how well you sleep at night. Insufficient sleep, however, can immediately have physical and emotional consequences. If left untreated or worse yet, unacknowledged, debilitating effects can begin to occur. Your brain needs sleep to regenerate your body from the day's activity and can only do so when the body is at total rest. When insufficient sleep becomes chronic, then your body and your personality will suffer.

Diabetes

• Diabetes requires constantly checking your glucose level.

  Diabetes can be strongly influenced by irregular sleep patterns. Poor sleeping habits are linked to an increase in insulin secretion which then cannot properly regulate glucose and will lead to weight gain, a debilitating factor that inhibits diabetes. Glucose, which processes fat storage, is regulated by insulin. Specifically, sleep deprivation may lead to type 2 diabetes. Your body's ability to produce glucose, which your body uses for fuel, is severely hampered with an average sleep time of 5 hours or less instead of the recommended 8 hours.

Obesity

• Obesity is a national epidemic

  While in REM, or deep sleep, your body produces hormones that help suppress appetite, control functions of your metabolism and control glucose production. With consistent amounts of little sleep, the balance of these systems and other hormones becomes fluctuated. Cortisol and leptin, for example, are hormones that are directly affected by sleep deficiency which in turn affect eating habits. Cortisol is a stress hormone that increases in production with sleep deprivation and lower levels of leptin decrease the brain's ability to know when to stop eating. Adding the fact that you may be too tired to burn off any excess calories, insufficient sleep also causes cravings for sweet foods for a quick energy boost.

Mood Disorders

• Mood disorders can lead to social isolation.

  Stress, anger, exhaustion and overall negative social interaction are proven factors of insufficient sleep. You may feel like you have woken up irritable with one night of bad sleep, but if the situation becomes chronic, feelings of restlessness and anxiety may lead to long-term mental disorders. Depression is often a key sign of a mood disorder, often caused by mental fatigue. Inadequate sleep does not allow the brain enough time to repair and process the day's activities, thus the stress of constant weariness is transpired to the personality.

Heart Disease

• A healthy heart is crucial to longevity.

  Insufficient sleep can be directly linked to heart disease. Cardiovascular disease, which affects the blood vessels, is a significantly higher risk with the average sleep time of 6 hours or less. This does not mean that if your quality of sleep is bad you are automatically susceptible. It directly correlates to the quantity, in hours, of solid sleep you maintain. Those who have conditions in which they exhibit both poor sleep standards alongside significantly lower amounts of consistent sleep time, have a substantially larger risk of developing both cardiovascular and heart disease.