Have you experienced not getting enough sleep, and you woke up feeling irritable, emotional and tired? These things are signs and effects of sleep deprivation. Not getting an ample amount of sleep results to a number of health problems, from mental to physical problems.

Sleep deprivation is a universal term to define; it is a state triggered by insufficient quality or quantity of sleep, which includes circadian rhythm sleep disorders and voluntary/involuntary sleeplessness. According to health professionals, sleep is vital for a human’s overall health just like healthy food, exercise, pure water; however a lot of individuals do not get sufficient sleep. Though the precise mechanism of sleep is unknown, numerous researches have shown that the body’s sleep-wake cycle plays a very imperative role in several body processes.

What happens when you are sleep deprived?

Sleep deprivation doesn’t just affect a single aspect of your health. Among the many impacts on your health are three major hazards that take a toll on your mental and physical health:

Three Primary Risks:

1. Reaction Time Slows

If you don’t get enough sleep, your reaction time is not fast as you normally would, making activities like driving and operating power tools very dangerous. One study even suggests that sleepiness while driving is risky as drinking while driving.

2. Your Cognition Suffers

lack of sleep can very much affect your ability to clearly think. Insufficient sleep also affects your memory retention, how you process information and decision making. This is why it is vital to get enough sleep before engaging any significant events.

3. Emotions Are Heightened:

When cognition and reaction time is lowered, emotions will increase. So any arguments with your spouse or co-worker might get out of proportion.

In the meantime, an earlier research has shown that lack of sleep has the same impact on the immune system as with physical illness. This helps in explaining why sleep deprivation is linked to increased risk of many chronic illnesses.

Poor Sleep Linked to Chronic Disease, Widespread Pain, and Weight Gain.

Having poor sleep has an impact on your overall health; this is because your sleep-wake cycle or circadian rhythm is the one that controls the rhythms of your biological activities at a cellular level.

During sleep, you start to discover a lot of interesting biological processes. A good example is how your brain cells shrink to 60%, which makes it more effective in waste removal.

Sleep is also linked to a lot of vital hormone levels, such as melatonin, by which its production is upset by sleep deprivation. This is really bad, since melatonin stops the production of many types of cancer cells, as well as stimulates self-destruction of cancer cells.

Sleep deprivation also reduces the levels of leptin which is responsible for fat regulation and at the same time increasing the hormone ghrelin which is the hunger hormone. Increase in appetite and hunger results to weight gain and overeating.

Insufficient or poor sleep has shown to be the top predictor of pain among adults over 50 years old. Another research has also shown that participants who changed their hours of sleep from 7.5 to 6.5 every night has shown an increased in the expression of genes linked with cancer risk, stress, inflammation, diabetes and immune excitability.

Therefore, disturbances in the sleeping pattern affect the whole body.

Basing on the results of the study, it looks as if sleeping for an extra hour, if you are sleeping for less than 7 hours each night, is a good way to improve your health. However, the opposite which is getting only an hour of sleep at night results in an increase risk of multiple chronic diseases.

Lack of sleep can:

• Increase your chance of getting cancer and  heart disease.
• Damage your brain by stopping the production of new neurons. Lack of sleep also increases the levels of stress hormones or corticosterone, which leads to lesser production of new brain cells in your hippocampus.
• Easily contributes to a pre-diabetic, insulin-resistant state, which makes you feel hungry even if you are done eating, which in turn leads to gaining weight.
• Contributes to early aging by alteringproduction of growth hormones, it is usually released by your pituitary gland during high-intensity interval exercises or deep sleep.
• Raises your possibility of dying from any cause.

Making minor changes in your routine and sleeping is exceedingly helpful to ensure you get an uninterrupted and relaxing sleep thereby resulting in better overall health.

We have 8 Tips to Sleep Better for Optimal Health.

1. Try to refrain from using the computer or watching TV at night, especially an hour before sleeping.

Computers and TVs emit blue light, which makes your brain think that it is daytime. Usually, between 9 and 10 pm, the brain starts to secrete melatonin and TVs and computers emit blue light which will alter the process.