No one will argue about the importance of sleep if you intend to function at your best the next day. Yet, we don’t always do the right thing when bedtime rolls around. Maybe there is a television program you want to watch and not record or get carried away scrolling through Twitter or Instagram that you disregard time and disrupt your sleep schedule. Even though you’ll feel miserable the next day and look worse for it, occasional missed sleep is not going to kill you. On the other hand, if you make a habit out of lack of sleep, there are consequences for the body from its effects.
Think of your poor brain that needs at least seven to nine hours of sleep to rid itself of the type of amyloid beta precursor proteins that you don’t want to accumulate. The reason you want these gone daily is because they tend to bind on the surface of cells and change structure that could be problematic for the brain. They can form clumps of plaque that could bring on Alzheimer’s.
Effects of skipping hours of sleep also extend to your heart. Those individuals that only sleep five hours or less each night can double their risk for developing cardiovascular diseases, especially for men. According to other researchers, blood vessels can harden due to the arterial plaque building up to a decrease in circulation.
Your muscles also can be impacted from the effects of missed sleep. After all, it is through sleep that the brain sends out hormones for repairing injuries and new muscle growth.
Habitually denying the body sleep also plays havoc with your gut. The effects of lack of sleep can cause inflammatory secretions in your digestive system. This can bring on disease or aggravate conditions that you already have such as Crohn’s disease.
Another concern that you should be aware of is constantly being robbed of sleep a night can double the chances of benign tumors in your colon, which may eventually lead to colon cancer.
Your eyes show the effects of missing sleep not just with more prominent dark circles, puffiness to drooping, but risking that horrible feeling of grittiness associated with dry eyes. Closing your eyes serves to supply that essential moisture that the eyes require to feel comfortable. Otherwise, you’ll need to start using lubricating eye drops.
You won’t be doing your beauty any favor neglecting sleep too often. In fact, you’ll notice the skin aging needlessly faster with more lines, sagging and less suppleness. At the same time, the effects of lack of sleep on your skin can also make current problems like acne and eczema flare up even more.
Constantly doing without enough sleep also can make you fatter from the chemicals it releases that stimulate appetite while also increasing your chances of developing type 2 diabetes from glucose intolerance.
Simply put, the harm that the effects of lack of sleep over time are ones you should take seriously. However, knowledge is power that gives you more control so these negative effects need not be in your future.
