Sleep Deprivation: What Makes it so Dangerous?

Written By: Karla Tafra

Not getting enough sleep on a nightly basis can do more than just leave you yawning at 2 pm or make you feel cranky and ready to cancel the day and go back to sleep. Over time, some of the potential negative side effects can be really dangerous and cause a variety of problems for your health and well-being as well as for those around you.

Sleep deprivation is a broad term, and it includes everything from having one rough night to more severe sleep problems that last for a few months. Even just one poor night of sleep can affect you the next day and cause everything from fatigue and low energy levels to a drastic decrease in productivity and an increased risk of getting into a car crash. Multiply that over a few weeks' or months’ time, and you can begin to grasp the severity of the potential consequences.

Nearly one-third of Americans aren’t getting enough sleep to sustain their daily activities, and the data isn’t much different in other parts of the world. The need to fit everything you possibly can into a 24-hour window is highly stressful, doesn’t leave much room for rest and relaxation, and can leave your brain wired for way longer than it should be, disrupting your hormones and impairing sleep.

And even though how much you are supposed to sleep each night depends on the individual and a variety of factors, experts agree that anything under seven hours of sleep per night can be considered sleep deprivation.

One of the first symptoms of inadequate sleep is an increased feeling of tiredness and fatigue. It can manifest itself in constant yawning throughout the day, inability to perform certain tasks, and the need to lie down and take a power nap. High-strung jobs and tough workouts can also make you feel tired, but with the right amount of sleep, they count toward a “regular daily tiredness level” which isn’t meant to impair your sleep once your head hits the pillow that evening.

Sleep deprivation drags throughout the day and can make you unable to do your regular tasks, prevent you from socializing, or increase your risk of injury if you still go ahead with your planned SoulCycle class.

Paired with fatigue comes low energy. When you haven’t slept enough during the night, your body hasn’t had the chance to fully recover and be ready to tackle whatever the next day brings. Instead, your body uses the energy storage it has and overcompensates for not only functioning and keeping you alive, but also for giving you the ability to go for a run, endure an eight-hour working day, and help you take care of your child.

This can be referred to as the “running on fumes” situation, as you’re using energy you basically don’t have. That’s why you can feel demotivated, uninspired, slow, and coupled with a negative mindset towards getting your tasks done on time.

When you’re low on energy, and you feel tired, your risk of injury dramatically increases. The inability to react as you normally would or concentrate on proper technique when you’re performing a certain exercise can increase the risk of spraining joints, pulling muscles, or even breaking bones. The research once again mentioned how anything under seven hours of sleep increases the risk of getting hurt.

With the risk of injury comes the risk of causing accidents. When you’re sleep deprived, your reaction time slows down. Not as much as it would if you were under the influence of alcohol, but the feeling can oftentimes be the same, especially if we’re talking about chronic sleep deprivation. Imagine yourself sitting in a car, driving home from work, completely zoned out. This is what usually happens to people when they say, “I have no recollection of how I actually got home.”

Their bodies drive in automatic mode, which can be dangerous to them as well as the people around them. When your reflexes are slow, you are less likely to react on time if a kid runs out in front of your car or the car in front of you suddenly stops at a red light. And this can be applied to bicycles, scooters, or any other vehicle, or even when you’re simply walking down the street and not paying enough attention to the world around you.

The research on sleep-deprivation-caused accidents is showcased even in work-related accidents, which, depending on the job itself, can range from minor to extremely dangerous and life-threatening.

From a more biological standpoint, sleep deprivation can completely mess up your digestion, nutrient absorption, and even the microbial diversity of your microbiome. Studies have shown how sleep deprivation can impair your glucose metabolism and bring your hunger and satiety hormones out of balance. This is why sleep deprivation is often linked with an increased risk of obesity and diabetes.

When it comes to microbial diversity, studies show how sleep deprivation can have a notable impact in as little as 48 hours. Having a diverse microbiome is extremely important for gut and immune health, as any sort of imbalance can increase your risk of inflammation and disease.

Sleep and immunity significantly affect one another, and any sort of imbalance can impact both. Consistent sleep strengthens your immune response and helps protect you from infections and disease, while sleep deprivation, both, short-term and long-term, can weaken the immune system.

While we sleep, our immune system revs up as it helps repair everything in our bodies, from cell damage to healing injuries. Additionally, there are certain components of the immune system that work even harder during sleep, such as the increased production of cytokines associated with inflammation. This is driven both by sleep and by your own circadian rhythm, and its main role is to strengthen your adaptive immunity, the one that activates when there is an attack on your organism.

When your sleep is off, so is your focus and the ability to concentrate. That’s why you can often feel like you’re easily distracted or cannot multitask like you normally would. Your brain cells cannot perform at their optimal function as they’re struggling to prioritize those actions your body needs to stay alive and well. In addition to losing focus, one of the symptoms of a reduced attention span is inattentiveness or “zoning out,” which can be detrimental to your productivity as well as social interactions as it often happens when someone is talking.

Another negative sign of sleep deprivation comes in the form of memory loss, or the inability to retain new information. And research shows that it’s inconclusive about how long-term this condition can actually be. It might be as simple as forgetting what you had for breakfast or what you needed to get from the grocery store, or it might be so severe as to increase your risk for dementia and Alzheimer’s disease.

That being said, studies also show how only two nights of good-quality, restful sleep can help restore the memory retention center in your brain, even though the memory loss you occurred might not improve.

Aging is unavoidable, and it’s something we all go through day after day, but preventing its early signs for as long as we can is probably on everyone’s list of goals. Sleep deprivation has been shown to impair skin health and accelerate skin aging, mostly showcasing the loss of collagen and the inability to repair after sun exposure. In the said studies, subjects with sleep deprivation showed increased signs of intrinsic skin aging, which resulted in more prominent fine lines, uneven pigmentation, and reduced skin elasticity.

And last but not least, sleep deprivation can increase the risk of death in a variety of different ways:

• Sleep deprivation increases the risk of injury and can cause accidents that might lead to death.

• Sleep deprivation can worsen anxiety and depression symptoms that might lead to suicidal thoughts.

• Sleep deprivation can lead to obesity and diabetes, increasing the risk of premature death.

• Sleep deprivation can cause Alzheimer’s disease and other cognitive disorders, increasing the risk of premature death.

• Sleep deprivation weakens the immune system, which leaves you at risk of getting infected with a deadly disease.

• Sleep deprivation worsens your stress levels, increasing your overall inflammation in the body, which might lead to many life-threatening diseases.

Sleep deprivation is a serious condition that usually takes fifth or even sixth place on our “building better habits” or New Year’s resolutions list. We all take sleep for granted, as we never stop to think about the impact it might have on our overall health and well-being. Take the matter into your own hands and focus on high-quality sleep as a priority so your body has plenty of time to recover, repair, and heal.