Frederick Jace
You know the feeling of not getting enough sleep: grogginess that often comes with a desire to destroy your alarm clock. However, starving your body of sleep is more taxing on you than you think.
What Is Sleep Deprivation?
Sleep deprivation describes the physical and mental state you’re in when you don’t get enough good sleep. Quality of sleep is just as important as quantity. Sleep deprivation can appear from getting a full night’s worth of poor, interrupted sleep.
Causes of Sleep Deprivation
Sleep deprivation can occur due to a variety of reasons, sometimes working together. A disorder such as sleep apnea, insomnia, or narcolepsy is enough to take a toll on your health.
Illness can cause short bouts of sleep deprivation as well as long-term problems, depending on the root cause. Mental illnesses such as depression or schizophrenia can cause sleep deprivation. If you suffer from serious conditions like cancer, stroke, chronic pain syndrome or Alzheimer’s, your sleep will almost certainly suffer.
However, you don’t have to be suffering from a debilitating disease to experience sleep deprivation. Everyday life can produce enough stress to keep you from getting adequate sleep. A tough period in your life is enough to cause a chain of events that leads to prolonged problems in your rest.
Let’s look at what sleep deprivation does to you so that you can spot its effects and get on the road to remedying the situation.
Accelerates Aging
A person that consistently lacks the rest they need starts to look older. One of the first things you’ll notice in a chronically sleep-deprived person are dark circles under the eyes.
Fine lines start to form and skin starts to lose its shine. This is due to the way your body reacts to a lack of quality rest.
Cortisol, a hormone released due to stress, starts to flood your body, making your skin age prematurely. This hormone breaks down collagen, a rejuvenating protein that keeps the skin elastic and smooth.
Not getting enough sleep also means that your body produces less human growth hormone. This hormone already starts to wane as we age so decreasing its production accelerates aging further. Human growth hormone is responsible for strengthening bones, thickening skin, and increasing muscle mass.
Contributes to Weight Gain
It’s been shown in studies that sleeping less than six hours per day throws the hormones associated with your weight regulation out of balance. Scientists associate shorter sleep intervals with decreases in leptin and increases in ghrelin. The former curbs your appetite while the latter causes you to feel hungry.
Causes Memory Issues
Information you learn during the day is written into your brain through synapses created during sleep. It makes sense that if you’re not getting enough rest, your brain won’t have the time to commit information to memory.
Makes You Accident Prone
Reaction time and awareness are severely impacted by a lack of sleep. From big disasters to small fender benders in traffic, a lack of sleep can impair your ability to function properly.
Increases Risk of Death
Besides accidents, depriving yourself of sleep can burden your health. Cardiovascular ailments and diabetes are a few of the health problems that can result from a lack of quality sleep.
Remedying Sleep Deprivation
Depriving your body of vital sleep can result in a host of health issues. Helping your body achieve better rest with products such as CBD oil capsules for sleep from places like HempFusion can put you on the road to a good night’s rest. Meditation, mindfulness, and a good diet can also help you get the sleep you deserve.
