Suffering from Sleep Loss? 14 Sleep Deprivation Effects on the Body

A lack of sleep doesn’t just leave us with dark circles underneath our eyes. It can also affect the quality of our vision.

Our eyes cannot work to their full potential when we don’t get adequate sleep. Sleep deprived people can find themselves with eye strain, popped blood vessels and dry eyes. All of which can all affect the quality of our vision.

Yes, believe it or not, sleep deprivation can also take a toll on your love life. This goes beyond just not wanting to have sex when tired. Sleep deprivation affects the libido of both men and women. It can suppress the sex hormones oestrogen and testosterone, and increases the stress hormone cortisol.

This can result in decreased sex drive for both men and women, and even erectile dysfunction in men.¹³

Sleep deprivation can decrease your fertility, and not only because of your decreased sex drive. Our sex hormones are linked to our sleep patterns, and can be disrupted when we have trouble falling asleep. As a result, sleep deprivation can decrease both male and female fertility.¹⁴

One study even showed that women who suffer from insomnia are four times more likely to struggle with fertility compared to well rested women.¹⁵

The reality is that sleep can affect every stage of fertility, from menstruation to conception and birth.¹⁵

Did you know that when we don’t get enough sleep it can increase our blood pressure? Sleep disturbances like insomnia or short sleep duration have been associated with an increased risk of high blood pressure (hypertension).

When we sleep, our blood pressure decreases about 10 to 20% compared to daytime blood pressure, this is called ‘nocturnal dipping’.¹ An absence of nocturnal dipping can result in cardiovascular damage.²

Sleep is essential for the health of our heart. Sleep influences important processes that keep our hearts healthy. These include the regulation of blood pressure, glucose metabolism and the control of inflammation levels.³

Sleep deprivation has been shown to increase the likelihood of cardiovascular diseases like coronary heart disease³ and atherosclerosis⁴ (a buildup of fats, cholesterol and other substances in and on your artery walls ).

Stroke is a leading cause of death and disability worldwide.⁵ The common risk factors associated with an increased risk of a stroke have traditionally been viewed as obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and high cholesterol. However, a more recent addition to that list of risk factors is sleep.⁵

This is because poor sleep duration and quality are now associated with traditional stroke risk factors. There are now even recommendations that screening sleep quality should be used in helping prevent strokes.

Just a few lost hours’ sleep a night can trigger the body’s immune system to turn against healthy tissue and organs. This occurs through a process called inflammation.⁶

Inflammation triggered by sleep loss can potentially increase the risk of ‘inflammatory conditions’. These include asthma, neurodegenerative diseases, and chronic pain conditions like rheumatoid arthritis.

Sleep has an important function in the regulation of the body’s immune system. Special immune cells for fighting infections are produced when we sleep. Sleep loss has been shown to decrease the numbers of immune cells, which can reduce our ability to fight infections.⁹

Sleep can even affect how well our body remembers how to fight infection – known as immunological memory.⁹  Sleep deprived people are three times more likely to develop a cold¹⁰

When we sustain injury or infection our body seems to need more sleep, this is because sleep has an important role in immunity and recovery.

One study, from the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine, found sleep to be more important to the body than nutrition when it came to healing a wound. The study’s participants who slept normally healed from small skin wounds in about 4.2 days. Meanwhile, the sleep-deprived volunteers took about 5 days to heal.¹¹

Sleep can play an important role in influencing the hormones that affect our muscle mass. Poor muscle health is associated with conditions that are 15-30% more prevalent in individuals who experience chronic sleep deprivation.

It is hard to believe, but even one night of sleep deprivation can have an effect on our body’s ability to synthesise muscle.¹² So, if you are working on those chiseled abs, beauty sleep might really be a key ingredient.

Sleep deprivation can also affect your weight. Studies have shown that people who sleep less than 7 hours a day tend to gain more weight, and have a higher risk of becoming obese than those who get 7 hours of slumber.¹⁵

This is because a lack of sleep can affect the hormones that control our appetite. Not getting adequate sleep decreases the level of leptin in your body, a hormone that suppresses appetite and encourages the body to use its energy stores. While at the same time increasing levels of ghrelin, a hormone that causes an increase in appetite.¹⁴

So, if you are looking to lose weight, try getting more sleep…

Sleep deprivation can cause your body to release higher levels of insulin than it would normally. Higher levels of insulin can promote fat storage, and subsequently increases your risk of type 2 diabetes.

When we don’t get enough sleep, it can also change the way our body processes glucose. If you are regularly getting less than 5 hours of sleep per night, and building up a sleep debt, then your risk of developing type 2 diabetes rises even further.¹⁴

Finally, as being overweight increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes,¹ the effects of sleep deprivation on body weight can also increase your risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

Poor sleep or short sleep has been linked to the increased risk of certain cancers. These include breast, colon, prostate, and endometrial cancer.

In fact, there is such a strong link between sleep deprivation and cancer, that the World Health Organisation (WHO) has gone as far as classifying night shift work as a likely carcinogen.¹⁴

So far we have explored 13 different potential consequences on our health if we don’t get enough good sleep. From high blood pressure, to cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes and even cancer.

From high blood pressure, to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, diabetes, and cancer, sleep deprivation can have a massive impact on your physical well-being. These effects of sleep deprivation lead to one final important health impact…a shorter life expectancy.

Getting the right amount of sleep is strongly linked to our health, and it is important to strike the right balance. Too much or too little sleep has been shown to double your risk of death.¹⁶

If you are wondering how much sleep is the right amount, there is no one answer that suits everyone. However, there are some good guidelines to follow when asking the question ‘How much sleep do I need?’