25 Horrible Things That Happen If You Don't Get Enough Sleep

LAUREN F FRIEDMAN

Feb. 7, 2014

viviandnguyen / Flickr

In our 24/7 culture, sleep loss is a major problem. Back in 1942, we

averaged almost 8 hours of sleep a night now that's down to 6.8. (Seven to 9 hours per night are what's generally recommended.)

Almost 40% of Americans get less than 7 hours of sleep a night, a recent

Gallup poll found, and an estimated 70 million Americans have a sleep

disorder.

Everyone knows that it's important to get enough sleep but you may not realize just how many things can go wrong when you don't.

Here are 25 unfortunate risks of partial and total sleep

deprivation, some more common than others.

1. Irritability "Complaints of irritability and [emotional] volatility following sleepless

nights" are common, a team of Israeli researchers observed. They put

those complaints to the test by following a group of underslept medical

residents. The study found that the negative emotional effect of

disruptive events things like being interrupted while in the middle of doing something were amplified by sleep loss.

Source: Sleep, 2005

2. Headaches Scientists don't yet know exactly why sleep deprivation leads to

headaches but it's a connection doctors have noticed for more than a century. Migraines can be triggered by sleepless nights, and 36 to 58% of

people with sleep apnea wake up with "nondescript morning headaches."

Source: Headache, 2003; Headache, 2005

3. Inability to learn Sleepiness has long been an issue among adolescents. One study of

middle school students found that "delaying school start times by one

hour, from roughly 7:30 to 8:30, increases standardized test scores by at

least 2 percentile points in math and 1 percentile point in reading."

But it's not just kids. Short-term memory is a crucial component of

learning, and sleep deprivation significantly impaired the ability of adult

volunteers to remember words they'd been shown the day before. In

another study, researchers found that while people tend to improve on a

task when they do it more than once, this isn't true if they are kept awake

after they try it the first time even if they sleep again before doing it again.

Source: Nature, 1999; Nature Neuroscience, 2000; Education Next,

2012

4. Weight gain People who are underslept seem to have hormone imbalances that are

tied to increased appetite, more cravings for high-calorie foods, a greater

response to indulgent treats, and a dampened ability to control their

impulses a very dangerous combination. It's true that you burn more calories when awake, but not nearly enough to cancel out the many

excess calories you consume when exhausted.

Source: Journal of Clinical Endocrinology & Metabolism, 2012; PLOS

Medicine, 2004; Nature Communications, 2013; PNAS, 2013

5. Poor vision Sleep deprivation is associated with tunnel vision, double vision, and

dimness. The longer you are awake, the more visual errors you'll

encounter, and the more likely you are to experience outright

hallucinations.

Source: International Journal of Occupational Medicine and

Environmental Health, 2010

6. Heart disease When researchers kept people awake for 88 hours, their blood pressure

went up no big surprise there. But even subjects who were allowed to sleep for 4 hours a night had an elevated heart rate when compared to

those getting 8 hours. Concentrations of C-reactive protein, a marker of

heart disease risk, increased in those fully and partially deprived of sleep.

Source: Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 2004; PLOS

ONE, 2009; Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2012

7. Slowness Your reaction time is severely impeded when you don't get enough sleep.

When researchers gave West Point cadets two tests that require quick

decision-making, some were allowed to sleep between the tests, while

others were not. Those who had slept did better the second time those who had not did worse, and their reactions slowed down. A study in

college athletes found similar results.

Source: Sleep, 2009; Asian Journal of Sports Medicine, 2012

8. Infection You know that great thing your immune system does, where when you

get an open wound of some kind it doesn't always get infected

immediately? Prolonged sleep deprivation and even one night of

sleeplessness can impede your body's natural defenses against

microorganisms.

Source: American Journal of Physiology, 1993; The FASEB Journal,

1996

9. Economic risk-taking Planning to make some changes to your portfolio? You might want to

make sure you're well-rested. "A single night of sleep deprivation evoked

a strategy shift during risky decision making such that healthy human

volunteers moved from defending against losses to seeking increased

gains," researchers concluded.

Source: The Journal of Neuroscience, 2011

10. Overproduction of urine When people sleep, the body slows down its normal urine production.

This is why most people don't have to pee in the night as much as they do

during the day. But when someone is sleep deprived, this normal

slowdown doesn't happen, leading to what researchers call "excess

nocturnal urine production." This condition may be linked to bed wetting

in children and, in adults, it's tied to what's called nocturia the need to use the bathroom many times during the night.

Source: American Journal of Physiology, 2010; American Journal of

Physiology, 2012

11. Distractedness Having trouble paying attention to what you're reading or listening to?

Struggling with anything that requires you to truly focus? "Attention

tasks appear to be particularly sensitive to sleep loss," researchers have

noted. If you want to stay alert and attentive, sleep is a requirement.

Otherwise, you enter "an unstable state that fluctuates within seconds

and that cannot be characterized as either fully awake or asleep,"

and your ability to pay attention is variable at best.

Source: Archives of Italian Biology, 2001; Seminars in Neurology, 2009

12. Less effective vaccines Vaccines work by spurring your body to create antibodies against a

specific virus. But when you don't sleep, your immune system is

compromised, and this doesn't work quite as well. In one small study, 19

people were vaccinated against Hepatitis A. Ten of them got 8 hours of

sleep the following night, while the rest pulled an all-nighter. Four weeks

later, those who had slept normally had levels of Hepatitis A antibodies

almost twice as high as those who'd been kept awake.

Another study found that a sleepless night did not have a long-term

effect on immunity after a flu vaccine, it concludes that the effect might

be specific to certain diseases. "Sleep should be considered an essential

factor contributing to the success of vaccination," the Hep A researchers

wrote.

Source: Psychosomatic Medicine, 2003; Journal of Immunology,

2011; BMC Immunology, 2012

13. Impaired speech Severe sleep deprivation might make you sound like a bumbling idiot much like having way too much to drink. "Volunteers kept awake for 36

hours showed a tendency to use word repetitions and clichs; they spoke

monotonously, slowly, [and] indistinctly," one study noted. "They were

not able to properly express and verbalize their thoughts."

Source: Sleep, 1997; International Journal of Occupational Medicine

and Environmental Health, 2010

14. Colds If you're wondering why you're sick all the time and seem to pick up

every bug that travels around the office, it's probably because you're not

getting enough sleep. When a group of 153 people were exposed to a

common cold, those who had gotten less than 7 hours of sleep in the two

weeks prior were almost 3 times more likely to get sick than those who'd

had 8 or more hours of sleep. How well you sleep is also a factor those who had spent 92% of their time in bed actually asleep were 5.5 times

more likely to catch a cold than those who had been peacefully

slumbering 98-100% of the time they were in bed.

Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009

15. Gastrointestinal problems One in 250 Americans suffer from Inflammatory Bowel Disease (IBD),

and sleep deficiencies make its symptoms much worse. Regular sleep

loss also makes you more likely to develop both IBD and inflammatory

bowel syndrome, which affects an estimated 10-15% of people in the U.S.

And patients with Crohn's disease were twice as likely to experience a

relapse when they weren't getting enough sleep.

Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology, 2013

16. Car accidents Drowsy driving is often compared to drunk driving: You really shouldn't

do either. "Motor vehicle accidents related to fatigue, drowsy driving,

and falling asleep at the wheel are particularly common, but often

underestimated," one review concluded. Pilots, truck drivers, medical

residents, and others required to stay awake for long periods of time

"show an increased risk of crashes or near misses due to sleep

deprivation."

Source: Seminars in Neurology, 2009

17. Depleted sex drive Testosterone is an important component of sexual drive and desire in

both women and men. Sleeping increases testosterone levels, while being

awake decreases them. Sleep deprivation and disturbed sleep,

consequently, are associated with reduced libido and sexual dysfunction,

and people suffering from sleep apnea are at particular risk.

Source: American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology,

2007; Behavioral Brain Research, 2009; Journal of Sexual Medicine,

2009; Sleep Medicine, 2010; Brain Research, 2011

18. Pain People in pain especially those suffering from chronic pain tend not to get enough sleep. This makes sense: Pain can wake you up in the night

and make it hard to fall asleep in the first place. But recently, researchers

have begun to suspect that sleep deprivation may actually cause pain or

at least increase people's sensitivity to pain. One study found that after

research subjects were kept awake all night, their pain threshold the amount of painful stimulus they were able to endure was lower.

Source: Journal of Sleep Research, 2001; Sleep Medicine Reviews,

2006

19. Diabetes Being awake when your body wants you to be asleep messes with your

metabolism, which in turn increases your risk for insulin resistance

(often called "pre-diabetes") and type 2 diabetes. "Interventions to

extend sleep duration may reduce diabetes risk," one study in

adolescents concluded. And four large studies in adults found a strong

association though not a cause-effect relationship between regular sleep loss and the risk of developing diabetes, even after controlling for

other habits that might be relevant.

Source: Journal of Applied Physiology, 2005; Sleep, 2012; Annals of

Internal Medicine, 2012

20. Sloppiness Most people notice that when they're sleepy, they're not at the top of

their game. One study found that one sleepless night contributed to a 20-

32% increase in the number of errors made by surgeons. People playing

sports that require precision shooting, sailing, cycling, etc. also make more mistakes when they've been awake for extended periods of

time.

Source: The Lancet, 1998; Physiology & Behavior, 2007

21. Cancer Scientists are just beginning to investigate the relationship between sleep

and cancer, and different kinds of cancer behave differently. But since

disrupted circadian rhythm and reduced immunity are direct results of

sleep deprivation, it's no surprise that preliminary research seems to

indicate that people who don't get enough sleep are at increased risk for

developing certain kinds of cancer, most notably colon and breast

cancers.

Source: Journal of the National Cancer Institute, 2003; Pathologie-

biologie, 2003; Cancer, 2011; AAOHN Journal, 2011

22. Memory problems Sleep disruptions in the elderly can lead to structural changes in the

brain that are associated with impaired long-term memory and sleep-related memory deficits have been observed in the general adult

population as well. As early as 1924, researchers noticed that people who

slept more forgot less. Poor sleep and not enough of it have also been

linked to higher levels of -Amyloid, a biomarker for Alzheimer's.

Source: Cell Signal, 2012; Nature Neuroscience, 2013; JAMA

Neurology, 2013

23. Genetic disruption A 2013 study shed some light on why sleep is tied to so many different

aspects of our health and wellness. Poor sleep actually disrupts normal

genetic activity. After one week of sleeping less than 6 hours per night,

researchers found that more than 700 genes were not behaving

normally, including some that help govern immune and stress responses.

Some genes that typically cycle according to a daily (circadian) pattern

stopped doing so, while others that don't normally follow a daily pattern

began doing so. What does this mean? Just one week of less-than-ideal

sleep is enough to make some of your genetic activity go haywire.

Source: Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013

24. Unhappiness and depression In a classic study led by Nobel Prize-winning psychologist Daniel

Kahneman, a group of 909 working women kept detailed logs of their

moods and day-to-day activities. While differences in income up to

$60,000 had little effect on happiness, a poor night's sleep was one of

two factors that could ruin the following day's mood. (The other was

tight deadlines at work.)

Another study reported higher marital happiness among women with

more peaceful sleep, although it's hard to say whether happy people

sleep better, better sleep makes people happier, or most likely some combination of the two. Insomniacs are also twice as likely to develop

depression, and preliminary research suggests that treating sleep

problems may successfully treat depressive symptoms.

Source: Science, 2004; Behavioral Sleep Medicine, 2009; Journal of

Affective Disorders, 2011

25. Death Many health problems are associated with sleep deprivation and poor

sleep, but here's the big one: People who consistently do not get 7-8

hours of sleep are more likely to die during a given time period. Put more

simply: We all die eventually, but sleeping too little or even too much is associated with a higher risk of dying sooner than you otherwise might.

Source: Sleep, 2010; Sleep Medicine Reviews, 2010