Lack of Sleep Is As Important As Exercising and Eating Healthy

Lots of people think that eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly are all you need for good health.

However, that’s far from the case. In order to get - and stay - healthy, you also need to make sure that your body is getting all the sleep it needs.

Too many of us aren’t getting the required amount of sleep each night. There are very few of us, though, who understand what those right amounts might be for our age, health, and lifestyle.

Curious about why your body needs so much sleep to stay healthy? Keep reading to learn more about why a lack of sleep isn’t just unpleasant - it’s also dangerous.

How Much Sleep Do You Actually Need?

While every little bit of shut-eye counts, there are actually certain targeted sleep numbers that you should shoot for, based on your age. 

If you aren’t currently getting the recommended amount of sleep, don’t panic. After all, there are some conditions in life - like new parenthood or particularly stressful periods at work - where getting a full seven to eight hours of sleep per night is a challenge (especially if you’re trying to get a full unbroken eight hours - we’re looking at you, new moms). 

However, do whatever you can to meet the sleep targets recommended by the National Sleep Foundation. This will ensure that you stay healthy and are able to meet all of the challenges that the day throws at you.

Currently, it’s recommended that adults aged 26 to 64 years of age get at least seven to nine hours of sleep each nine. That recommendation holds true for young adults, too (those who are 18 to 25 years old).

If you’re a bit older - 65 or more - you can get by with just seven or eight hours of sleep. However, if you’re a teenager, you’re going to need eight to ten hours of sleep every night. School-age children, those aged six to thirteen years, need up to eleven hours of sleep, while preschool children and toddlers need anywhere between ten and fourteen hours of sleep.

Back that up for infants and newborns, and you’re going to want to make sure your kids get at least twelve to seventeen hours of sleep each night, with the requirement decreasing as your baby gets older.

Too Little Sleep Increases Stress

Aside from causing you to stress about questions like, “can you die from lack of sleep?” not catching enough zzz’s will lead to a whole other kind of stress, too.

Fail to get enough sleep - like as many as one in three people do - and you’re going to have some serious problems on your hands. Oh, and that one-third number? That’s only the number of people who self-report that they don’t get enough sleep. A larger percentage of the population gets fewer than six hours of sleep a night - up to 50% of the adult population, in fact.

Not getting enough sleep suppresses your immune system and puts your body into a state of heightened alertness. You’re going to be more likely to react to stressful events - even those that aren’t life or death situations - with a fight-or-flight response.

It has a cumulative effect, too. In other words, stress builds up over time. The outcomes of a lack of sleep on health are usually the worst among people who have a history of diabetes, heart attack, stroke or hypertension.

Why is that the case? In general, stress makes it easier for cerebrovascular and cardiovascular diseases to take hold in your body. You may be more likely to suffer from certain cancer and diseases since your body won’t be able to deal with stress effectively.

Causes Accidents

This one might sound obvious, but not getting enough sleep can cause some serious accidents.

Do you remember the Exxon Valdez oil spill? What about the 1979 nuclear disaster at Three Mile Island? Does Chernobyl ring a bell?

All of these incidents were influenced by sleep deprivation. Whi;e there were certainly other factors at play, sleep deprivation was a contributing factor.

You don’t have to be working at a nuclear energy facility in order to be impacted by a loss of shut-eye, either. Not only can it make you a dangerous driver - drowsiness can slow your reaction time just as much as driving drunk - but it can also lead to injuries and accidents on the job.

In fact, the National Highway TraffiC safety Administration believes that fatigue is a cause in more than 100,000 car crashes each year - with the greatest toll taken on individuals under 25 years of age.

Dumbs You Down

Not to be harsh, but sleep deprivation isn’t going to be doing you any favors in your college classes, either. Despite the commonly held belief that “pulling all-nighters” is what it takes to get through college, too little sleep can actually make it more difficult for you to get those As you want.

Not getting enough sleep can have serious implications when it comes to your brain’s ability to learn and store new information. It will impair your alertness, attention, reasoning, concentration, and problems solving skills. It also affects how your brain produces and consolidates memories.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re going to have a tough time learning new things and remember what you learned the next day.

Even if you ace your SATs, sleep deprivation is just going to dull your memory and make you more forgetful.

It can also impair your judgment. Unfortunately, this is a bit of a vicious cycle. Your interpretation of events will be skewed, meaning you’ll have a harder time making good judgments about events and decisions because you aren't able to accurately interpret and act on them.

Therefore, you might not realize how sleep deprived you are. If you think you’re doing fine with limited sleep, you’re probably wrong. It’s not your fault - it’s the lack of sleep talking. You’ll get used to your sleep deprivation over time and think you are doing just fine. However, if you were to evaluate your performance on tests of performance and alertness with a doctor, you would find that you are actually not doing as well as you think.

Sleep Deprivations Can Lead to Serious Health Issues

As if getting dumber, hurting yourself on the job, and being stressed out all the time weren’t enough reasons to get the shut-eye you need and deserve, take into consideration the fact that sleep deprivation can have some lasting implications. 

Sleep deprivation can put you at risk for serious problems like heart disease, heart failure, heart attack, irregular heartbeat, stroke, high blood pressure, and even diabetes.

It’s believed that up to 90% of people who suffer from insomnia -or the sleep disorder that makes it difficult to fall and stay asleep - likely suffer from some other health condition, too.

And if you’re asking yourself, “can you die from lack of sleep?” the unfortunate - but short-  answer is yes. In several studies, researchers have found that people who cut their sleep from seven to five hours a night practically doubled their risk of death from certain diseases, including cardiovascular diseases.

Kills Sex Drive

If you’d like your time between the sheets and your new mattress to not always equate to the five or six hours of sleep you get per night, you may want to start logging some more hours of shut-eye. Sleep deprivation can seriously lower your libido and decrease your interest in sex. Not only will you suffer from increased stress, which can cause your sex drive to suffer a serious blow, but it can make you feel sleepy and unwilling to spend the extra energy on a roll in the hay.

Depression

Have you ever found yourself feeling inexplicably weepy after a short night of sleep? If so, it could be sleep deprivation to blame. 

Lack of sleep and sleep disorders, in general, are major culprits when it comes to increasing symptoms of depression. In fact, a 200 study of 10,000 people showed that those with insomnia were more than five times as likely to develop depressive symptoms than were those without.

To make matters worse, lack of sleep and depression are conditions that feed on each other. You may have a harder time falling asleep or have an erratic sleep schedule if you're depressed. It can be very difficult to treat the two diseases separately, too.

Ages Your Skin

Don’t get enough sleep, and you’re going to just look old. Likely you’ve experienced the puffy eyes and sallow skin that occur after a night or two of missed sleep. However, if you miss too much sleep, or suffer from chronic sleep deprivation, you will likely find that you suffer from more serious beauty dings, like fine lines, dark circles, and lackluster skin.

The reason why is the same reason why you feel more stressed out when you don’t get enough sleep. When you’re skimping on sleep, your body releases more of the stress hormone, cortisol. In excess, cortisol can break down the collagen in your skin, which helps keep skin tight.

Sleep loss also impacts the way your body releases human growth hormone. This hormone promotes growth, and as you get older, it’s necessary to increase your muscle mass, strengthen your bones, and thicken your skin. It’s only during that deep, restorative level of sleep that you can get the tissue repair your body needs - and craves.

Weight Gain

If you’ve been trying to lose weight and simply can’t shed the pounds no matter what you do, you may want to spend a few more hours between the sheets. 

When you don’t get enough sleep, you’re going to be hungrier. You may be more likely to become obese, as you’ll feel hungrier than normal during the day. In fact, if you log fewer than six hours of sleep each night, you’re about 30% more likely to become obese than an individual who is able to get between seven and nine hours of sleep. 

There are two main chemicals in your brain that come into play when you think about sleep and your weight. One of these is ghrelin. Ghrelin encourages hunger cues, while leptin tells the brain that you are full and you are no longer hungry.

If you don’t get enough sleep, your body’s levels of leptin will decrease while its ghrelin will increase. Unfortunately, you aren’t going to start craving fruits and vegetables when you’re sleep-deprived, either. Usually, you’re going to want high-carbohydrate, high-fat foods-  in other words, the ones that will give you quick energy, but cause you to seriously pack on the pounds.

Solve The Lack Of Sleep Issue For A Healthy Lifestyle

Getting enough sleep or lack of sleep isn’t as easy as it might seem. If you’ve been used to getting only five or six hours of sleep per night for what seems like forever, it’s going to take some serious work to overhaul your sleep habits. 

You can get started by setting small goals for yourself. If you’re currently only getting five hours of sleep each night, why not up it to six? Go to bed just one hour earlier or get up one hour later - whichever works best for your schedule. Start by backing up your bedtime by fifteen-minute intervals each night so it seems like a small change and not a giant leap. 

You should also rethink your sleep hygiene. Make sure the room is dark, quiet, and relaxing. It should be set to relatively cool temperatures so you don’t wake up tossing the covers off yourself in the middle of the night. You should also avoid things like caffeine, alcohol, and large meals before you go to bed.

Finally, remember that eating a healthy diet and getting some exercise aren’t the end-all, be-all when it comes to sleep, but they can definitely help to make falling and staying asleep a bit easier. Be patient with yourself. In a bit of time, you'll be logging nine hours of sleep per night, no problem.

Oh - and with no counting sheep required!

Rebekah Pierce is a professional social blogger and has worked on several online publications including Citrus Sleep. Rebekah is an experienced content writer and copyeditor. You will find many of her works throughout CitrusSleep.com that cover a wide array of subjects including sleep education, natural, sleep products, electronics, fashion and many more. She is passionate about her work and family.

Follow Lisa at Rebekah Pierce

More Articles You May Enjoy