Condition of not having enough sleep is sleep deprivation, which can even be even chronic or acute. Both these stages impact the brain activity differently, causing a widespread list of problems.
Do you ever think of the reason of not getting enough sleep? Or what barriers are coming in the way of managing your sleep-wake cycle?
Thinking about this issue is highly essential for maintaining a healthy lifestyle. Not getting enough sleep might ruin your health, causing a lot of complications. It is not right to say that sleep deprivation does not impact your health. It can even kill you, so keeping an eye on this unhealthy lifestyle is highly essential.
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Keeping a Balance in between Sleep, Health, and Quality of Life:
According to an expert on sleep Matthew Walker, sleep deprivation can shorten your life-impacting your health negatively. Walker passed this statement considering both neuroscience as well as psychology.
No matter if you are a businessman, school going student or a working woman, sleeping enough must be your priority. This article will be a detailed overview of the sleep deprivation in concern to the ways that can even kill you with chronic sleep deprivation.
Sleep in undoubtedly the top most determinant of health, which appreciates our healthy lifestyle and helps dealing with health problems.
How much should one Sleep?
For adults eight to nine-hour sleep is recommended, while relatively longer sleep is required for both children and old aged people.
You must keep on looking if you are getting enough sleep or not?
Because sleep deprivation can even be deadly for your health. If you notice an imbalance in your sleep-wake cycle, you must visit a medical specialist or your physician to get proper treatment. It will assist in digging out the hidden reason of your disturbance.
Stages of Sleep:
Sleep deprivation also imbalances the two stages of sleep, causing health disturbance. The following are the two stages of sleep:
1. REM Sleep Stage:
REM is rapid eye movement sleep stage and is the deepest sleeping stage. During this stage brain activity intensifies, especially of midbrain and forebrain. REM stage sometimes focus on eye muscle twitching and promote muscle movement.
2. Non-REM Sleep Stage:
This stage further divides into three stages, which are N1, N2 and N3. During this stage, the body drifts into two different stages. The three stages facilitate electric patterns of the brain.
During most of our sleeping time body remains in NREM stage rather than REM.
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Ten ways Sleep Deprivation can Kill you:
Sleep deprivation is deadly for health, causing unhealthy lifestyle. The following is a detailed overview of how sleep deprivation can kill you:
1. Sleeplessness can cause an Increase in Accidents:
If one is not having enough sleep, then it can result in causing accidents which will be deadly for health. Operating vehicles requires greater alertness level that can only be achieved if one had enough sleep last night.
Also, if you work for a business which demands operating machineries, then it can also cause unhealthy impacts on life.
Both the stages, drowsiness, and sleeplessness are somehow the same. In both cases, you move your life towards death while operating a vehicle.
Those who are the truck drivers, pilots, and operates industrial vehicles must have enough sleep, for this could be highly risky for health.
2. Obesity and Sleep Deprivation:
Sleep disturbances causes obesity, which is a leading reason of causing a significant range of problems. Obesity occurs due to the sedentary lifestyle of individuals causing chronic illness which can even shorten the life span of a person.
If a person awakes most of the time at night, it leads to cause food cravings. This abnormal behavior of eating is the significant reason of causing obesity. Not only this, but hormones often get imbalanced primarily cortisol which, as a result, leads to obesity.
3. Enhanced Cancer Risk:
People usually do not take sleeplessness on a serious note, and this is the major drawback leading to health risk. Sleepless leads to many cancerous types which might be deadly as well.
According to a research, it is found out that women who work late night are more likely to have breast cancer. There is a 30% increase in the chance of suffering from breast cancer.
The reason of disturbed sleep pattern is that there is an imbalance in between circadian rhythm as well as biological clock. This imbalance negotiates essential functions in the cellular level enhancing the risk of cancer.
4. Relation between sleep and Alzheimer’s:
Our brain built up includes cleansing of a protein called beta-amyloid, which can only proceed during our sleeping period. This protein connects with Alzheimer’s disease so that sleeplessness can enhance the chances of this disease.
NIH passed out the statement that if one is not having enough sleep, then it can lead to cause an increase in the protein. This increase in the protein results in amyloid plague causing Alzheimer.
Also, this increased protein leads to the diminished neuron firing and puts the brain at more considerable risk.
5. Heart Disease:
Increased sleeplessness leads to the increase in blood pressure causing a significant increase in heart problems. The optimum time of sleep is about eight hours, and if one is even deprived of this sleeping time and the person is undoubtedly at greater risk of heart attack.
Those who are not getting enough sleep have more significant C-reactive protein, which causes abnormal heart muscle functioning. Other than this, sleeplessness also causes CAD, coronary artery disease, as well as diabetes mellitus. While on the other hand, too much sleep is also deadly for health.
6. Type 2 Diabetes
Sleep disturbance causes abnormality in metabolism. Our body performs exceptionally if it is getting enough sleep, but sleeplessness ruins every functions of the body jeopardizing health.
According to the research findings of NIH, those who do not get enough sleep are more likely to suffer from type 2 diabetes. It occurs due to the imbalance of hormones, i.e. increased resistance to insulin.
7. Sleep and increased risk of Inflammation:
Cells cannot function properly if a person is not having enough sleep. Whenever inflammation occurs in the body, it is more likely to recover when cells are at resting position. Resting position of cells can only be possible if that person is sleeping.
So, in this way, sleeplessness can cause an increase in the risk of inflammation.
Inflammation can cause a list of deadly problems like MS, lupus, heart disease, chronic illness, diabetes, and chronic fatigue syndrome. All these diseases enhance the risk of causing death, as well.
8. Sleep Apnea:
It is defined as the condition if a person is a heavy snorer. Sleep apnea itself is not the only disease, but rather than this it links up with several diseases as well.
This disease requires on-time treatment, otherwise it can cause a list of problems like obesity, and myocardial infarction.
Sleep apnea is the condition when one feels difficulty in breathing during sleep. The disruption in breathing continuously occur several thousand times during sleep, causing abnormality in body functioning.
Lack of breathing not only causes a lack of oxygen to the muscles but to the heart and brain cells as well. It deprives the body of oxygen, causing deadly impacts on health.
9. Relation of Sleeplessness to Genetics:
Lack of sleep also causes abnormality in genes. Having a deep sleep promotes proper cellular functioning impacting DNA chain as well. Our genetic behavior connects with overall health and wellness of a person, that can disrupt due to lack of enough sleep. A study conducted in 2013, proved out this relationship of sleeplessness as well as genes.
Circadian pattern includes the involvement of genetic pattern, which will intrude due to sleeplessness. All this abnormality in the behavior causes genetic malfunctioning, which can impact the health negatively.
Immune System:
Sleeplessness increases stress in the body, causing disturbance in the immune system. Our immune system cannot function properly if the body is not getting enough sleep. The immune system protects the body from several attacks as well as promote the wounds to heal soon. This can only be possible if the body gets enough sleep.
Imbalance of the immune system causes an increased chance of cold as well as viral attack, which can be deadly even. In this case, vaccines also do not work correctly, making the body infected with a viral attack.
Verdict:
Sleep deprivation is a severe thing that must be taken under consideration for adopting a healthy lifestyle. One can work upon different ways to get more sleep like avoiding daytime napping, sleeping on consistent time daily, avoiding alcohol, eating correctly etc.
For choosing a healthy lifestyle, proper sleep must be on priority because negligence in that can cause a lot of health issues. Balance of the sleep-wake cycle and proper sleeping time is the root to healthy life with longer life span.
So, promise yourself to start up with a healthy lifestyle and get enough sleep daily as health is on the topmost list.
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