What diseases are caused by lack of sleep?

Insuf­fi­cient sleep is a seri­ous prob­lem for many peo­ple today. They often have to sac­ri­fice sleep for things that seem more impor­tant — work, the pos­si­bil­i­ty of addi­tion­al income, sports or enter­tain­ment. With sys­tem­at­ic lack of sleep, fatigue accu­mu­lates, per­for­mance dete­ri­o­rates, and excess weight appears. Thus, lack of sleep leads to a gen­er­al dete­ri­o­ra­tion in the qual­i­ty of life.

Causes of lack of sleep in modern people

The norm of sleep for infants is 12–15 hours, for preschool chil­dren — 10–13 hours, for teenagers — 8–10 hours, for adults — 7–9 hours. But many peo­ple sleep less than 7 hours for var­i­ous rea­sons. Some go to bed late because of the desire to watch a movie or play a com­put­er game, oth­ers are forced to wake up ear­li­er to take their chil­dren to school or kinder­garten, and still oth­ers to walk the dog.

Among the main caus­es of lack of sleep among chil­dren and adults are not only work or study, but also the ubiq­ui­ty of elec­tric light­ing, which makes you want to do some more work or have fun by watch­ing TV. Recent­ly, many young peo­ple have reduced sleep due to the use of mobile devices, with which they do not part even at night.

But the main obsta­cle to a good night’s rest is high employ­ment. Every day, adults with fam­i­lies and chil­dren are forced to spend more than 8 hours at work. If you add to this the 2 hours spent on the road to work and back, then there is very lit­tle time left for com­mu­ni­ca­tion with the fam­i­ly, and even less for recu­per­a­tion at night. Stress­ful sit­u­a­tions are often the cause of insom­nia, due to which the qual­i­ty of a night’s rest dete­ri­o­rates sig­nif­i­cant­ly.

Bad habits, which include the inabil­i­ty and unwill­ing­ness to go to bed and get up at the same time, have a neg­a­tive effect on the human body. A sleep deprived per­son has a need for addi­tion­al stim­u­lants, such as cof­fee or ener­gy drinks, mem­o­ry wors­ens, and the like­li­hood of devel­op­ing men­tal dis­or­ders increas­es. But many adults, forced­ly or delib­er­ate­ly, con­tin­ue to ignore the prop­er relax­ation of the body at night.

Diseases caused by lack of sleep and bad bedtime habits

Peo­ple who neglect night­ly rest often cite exam­ples of great peo­ple who slept only 2–3 hours and still felt alert and active. How­ev­er, the vast major­i­ty of peo­ple need to sleep much more, but not every­one suc­ceeds. Ordi­nary peo­ple with lack of sleep are more like­ly to get colds and infec­tious dis­eases, as their immu­ni­ty dete­ri­o­rates.

Lack of prop­er night rest leads to the devel­op­ment of bad habits, includ­ing overeat­ing. The body of a sleep-deprived per­son requires replen­ish­ment of ener­gy resources, as a rule, through the use of harm­ful prod­ucts — sweets and fast food. As a result, obe­si­ty is one of the most com­mon dis­eases of mod­ern peo­ple.

Hyper­ten­sion is anoth­er com­mon dis­ease among sleep-deprived peo­ple. Due to con­stant lack of sleep, blood pres­sure ris­es even in the absence of phys­i­cal exer­tion or the need to move quick­ly. There­fore, peo­ple who work hard and sleep lit­tle often die ear­ly from a stroke or heart attack.

The inabil­i­ty to relax and recov­er leads to sad con­se­quences for the ner­vous sys­tem. One of the most com­mon men­tal dis­or­ders in sleep-deprived peo­ple is depres­sion. Its most fre­quent symp­toms are lack of inter­est in work and life, gloomy thoughts, decreased men­tal activ­i­ty. In addi­tion, a sleep deprived per­son becomes irri­ta­ble and aggres­sive.

Con­trary to false belief, bad habits like smok­ing or drink­ing alco­hol do not pro­vide an oppor­tu­ni­ty to relax and get a good night’s sleep. They only lead to a wors­en­ing of already exist­ing health prob­lems and, ulti­mate­ly, reduce the qual­i­ty of life and its dura­tion. And only the abil­i­ty to get enough sleep at night is the best means of pre­vent­ing many dis­eases.

Prevention of sleep deprivation and related diseases

Many peo­ple are often not able to prop­er­ly orga­nize the dai­ly rou­tine — they are late at work and still do not have time to com­plete all the tasks on time. Often employ­ees are forced to stay in the office until late at night. Par­ents of small chil­dren who, in addi­tion to car­ing for a child, often take work home or are engaged in clean­ing, cook­ing, etc., are also forced to lack sleep.

Thus, many mod­ern peo­ple are forced to neglect sleep pat­terns. But often they are not able to prop­er­ly orga­nize the regime. Pre­ven­tion of many dis­eases includes three main com­po­nents — a good night’s rest, prop­er nutri­tion and phys­i­cal activ­i­ty. To get enough sleep, you must fol­low the dai­ly rou­tine and go to bed at the same time.

Before you go to bed, you need to fol­low a few rules. The first is to refuse to use a com­put­er, TV and smart­phone at least 30 min­utes before the start of a night’s rest. It is even more harm­ful to engage in live­ly Inter­net dis­cus­sions or read mate­ri­als on impor­tant and com­plex top­ics. In addi­tion, the flick­er­ing of the screen itself inter­feres with sound sleep.

Sec­ond­ly, before you go to bed, you can not overeat. Heavy food is dif­fi­cult to digest, and also con­tributes to the for­ma­tion of extra pounds. It is bet­ter to drink a glass of low-fat yogurt, milk or eat an apple. And the third rule is to equip the bed so that it is con­ve­nient and com­fort­able to fall asleep. The tem­per­a­ture in the bed­room should not exceed 18–25 degrees, and the bed or sofa should be com­fort­able. Of course, it is high­ly unde­sir­able to drink cof­fee and alco­holic bev­er­ages.

Pre­ven­tion of sleep depri­va­tion is the way to get rid of many health prob­lems. There­fore, even with a busy sched­ule and the need to per­form many dai­ly and impor­tant tasks, you should adhere to the dai­ly rou­tine and sleep as much as nec­es­sary in accor­dance with age. After all, a well-rest­ed per­son will be more pro­duc­tive, will be able to bet­ter con­cen­trate on work, study, and will be less sick.