Sleep is one of the most important regulatory processes in living beings. Aside from providing much needed rest when you’re feeling tired, sleep expels toxins from your body and helps maintain your physical health.
Yet, sleep is one of the first things students and employees sacrifice to meet a deadline or get more work done. Some people even neglect sleep in favour of finishing one last episode of their favourite television series or playing a video game.
It is recommended that children get at least nine to 12 hours of sleep a day; adolescents eight to 10 hours; and between six and nine hours for adults.
Here are five reasons why it’s a bad idea to stop yourself from getting enough sleep.
1. Poorer stress management
During sleep, a wide range of processes occurs in the brain that help manage its functions and abilities. One of these is the regulation of hormones, including cortisol, which is responsible for the feeling of stress.
Studies show that irregular sleep can result in the overproduction of cortisol during the day, resulting in even small sources of stress creating an extreme feeling of panic and anxiety.
An excessively high build-up of cortisol in your system can have negative effects on overall health.
2. Memory loss
Not getting enough sleep can adversely affect your memory. Studies have shown that adults who get fewer than six hours of sleep a day perform markedly worse at knowledge-retention memory tests.
During sleep, the brain processes information received during the day, forming new neural pathways to encode the information into long-term memory. Without enough time for this to occur, information is not able to be stored efficiently.
3. Lack of focus
Failing to sleep enough has also been shown to have negative effects on one’s ability to concentrate and pay attention during the day.
Sleep deprivation can result in people spontaneously falling asleep for a few moments, a phenomenon known as microsleep. It also becomes harder to stay alert while fatigued.
A lack of sleep can result in symptoms such as dizziness, drowsiness and headaches, that further limit your focus and attention. It’s hard to work or learn if you are constantly nodding off.
4. Impaired reasoning ability
Chronic sleep deprivation can slow down your thought processes, impairing logical reasoning and your cognitive-processing ability. Failing to get enough sleep can also result in worse decision-making during the day.
5. Poor mental health
Lack of sleep is commonly associated with a variety of mental illnesses and disorders, including generalised anxiety disorder, depression, bipolar disorder and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).
Sleep deprivation has been shown to increase the likelihood of developing a mental illness, as well as exacerbating existing mental health conditions.
Mental illness is in itself a common cause of sleep deprivation. This results in a vicious cycle for those with poor mental health that can be hard to break.
If you suffer from insomnia or low-quality sleep, consider researching methods on how to sleep better. By making it a priority, you can tackle your responsibilities without feeling drained or exhausted even before you begin.
Dennis Relojo-Howell is the founder of Psychreg. You can connect with him on Twitter @dennisr_howell.
