5 Things That Happen to Your Body When You Don’t Sleep
For those of you who may not know or do not believe it, sleep is very important to keep our bodies healthy. There are many theories that go into explaining why sleep is important, but the most common one almost everyone knows is that sleep rejuvenates and repairs the body. After a hard day of processing and functioning, going to sleep refuels us. Our bodies need to shut down to remain in top shape for the next day. It’s like shutting down a laptop after working on it the whole day or for several hours. If we don’t shut the laptop off, after a while of being used, it starts to heat up. It hangs and glitches and becomes annoyingly slower. The same principle applies to our bodies needing sleep. So why is it that we take better care of our laptops than our bodies? Just like a laptop, our bodies start deteriorating, and here are 5 reasons how:
1. The body gets stressed out.
Cortisol is a hormone in the body involved in the sleep process and stress. When the body does not get sleep for long periods of time, cortisol levels start rising that throw the stress response system of the body into overdrive. This overdrive, due to lack of sleep, causes damage to the hippocampus, a region that has to do with emotions and long-term memory. It also causes there to be elevated cortisol release even when the body is resting, and leads to an exaggerated cortisol response to a stressor. This means that the body is always stressed and even small issues, like being late for class, can cause a disproportionate stress reaction.
2. The body’s immune system gets compromised.
Sleep deprivation leads to increased stress, as mentioned above, which in turn leads to the immune system of the body being negatively affected. As a result of prolonged sleep deprivation, chronic stress affects the formation and functioning of lymphocytes, which are white blood cells that protect the body against infection and disease. This significantly compromises the immune system, making the body more vulnerable to a host of infections and diseases.
3. You are more likely to get depressed and anxious.
Sleep deprivation, and the increase in stress due to being sleep deprived, also lead to negative effects on mental health. It causes a disruption in mood, leading to being depressed, and increases anxiety levels. Research found that prolonged lack of sleep actually changes brain chemistry, making the likelihood of depression and anxiety higher. And while a lot of us stay awake all night to study in an attempt to keep up with our academic work and get good grades, sleep deprivation actually leads to an increased probability of problems in school and poor grades, drug use, low life satisfaction, and poor perceived health. So, the phrase ‘killing ourselves to do well’ becomes quite literal.
4. Higher cognitive functioning, like learning and memory, is impaired.
Sleep is crucial for the acquiring of new information, its consolidation into long-term storage, and its eventual retrieval. Not sleeping a sufficient amount hinders this process. Since sleep is so important in preparing the brain for new information and its consolidation, sleep deprivation leads to degraded memory processing. As already mentioned above, sleep deprivation damages normal hippocampal functioning, hindering the formation of new memories. The irony is pretty obvious here, because we often stay up all night to study and revise, but the fact that we are not sleeping makes it harder to remember the information we are studying.
5. Attention, judgement and the decision-making process is also impaired.
Research shows that lack of sleep leads to changes in reward processing, impulsivity, risk taking, and sensation seeking. All of which result in impaired decision-making. When individuals have been deprived of sleep for significant periods of time, they are unable to properly weigh the costs and benefits of a decision. This is due to the fact that there is an increase in reward sensitivity in the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which causes an inability to accurately differentiate between and rewarding and non-rewarding stimuli. This in turn leads to riskier decision-making. Also, not sleeping enough makes it very difficult to maintain attention, resulting in not being able to ignore distractors while attending to one stimulus. It also significantly affects divided attention, and leads to a slowing of response and increased variability in performance.
With all of that being said, there are still more physical and mental health problems that arise because of sleep deprivation. I have highlighted only these 5 because they actually work against what we are hoping to achieve by staying awake. When the quality of sleep is reduced, so is the quality of mood, health, and work/academics, which is what most of us stay awake to better. These health effects automatically cancel out any improvement in studying or quality of work we are trying to achieve. Therefore, not only is it hazardous for our health, it is clearly not as helpful as we think it is. It’s important that we get at least 7 to 8 hours of sleep to function at our best and give peak performances in our academics and work. And if we start sleeping more, a lot of the problems we face in our daily life will magically disappear.
Sleep is not for the weak. In fact, not sleeping is what makes us weak.
If you or someone you know would like to support in dealing with your sleep, our team at The Growth & Wellness Therapy Centre can help. Please contact our intake and administration team to set up a free consultation with one or more of our clinicians.
About the Author
Aleena Kazi, Registered Psychotherapist (Qualifying), is an individual and child therapist at The Growth & Wellness Therapy Centre focused on issues of depression, anxiety, trauma, stress and identity.