How lack of sleep affects the general condition of the body?

Sleep is an essen­tial com­po­nent of the phys­i­ol­o­gy of the body, pro­vid­ing the nec­es­sary rest for all organs and sys­tems. How­ev­er, many peo­ple neglect to get a full night’s rest — whether it’s for work, per­son­al life, or enter­tain­ment. Such a lifestyle adverse­ly affects the state of the body. Con­stant lack of sleep leads to the devel­op­ment of severe com­pli­ca­tions that sig­nif­i­cant­ly impair the patien­t’s qual­i­ty of life.

Overweight problems

Lack of sleep sig­nif­i­cant­ly affects our body weight. Due to lack of sleep, we feel tired, often feel weak. In the day­time, we have to do a lot of work, which often sim­ply does not have the strength. There­fore, we begin to “seize” over­work with high-calo­rie foods. With pro­longed lack of sleep, the human body begins to accu­mu­late excess weight, which then will be very dif­fi­cult to lose.

Fast car­bo­hy­drates are espe­cial­ly dan­ger­ous — buns, cook­ies, choco­late and con­fec­tionery. With­out sleep, we try to fill the lack of ener­gy with the help of these prod­ucts, but instead we get extra pounds. And after work, com­ing home tired, we try to get rid of the ail­ment with the help of a plen­ti­ful high-calo­rie din­ner. It also con­tributes to a sig­nif­i­cant increase in body weight.

Oth­er rea­sons for the appear­ance of excess weight with lack of sleep are the fol­low­ing fac­tors:

• increased pro­duc­tion of the hunger hor­mone in a sleepy per­son;
• slow­ing down the metab­o­lism in the body, which leads to poor absorp­tion of prod­ucts;
• increased appetite;
• decreased mood due to low lev­els of sero­tonin, which leads to the desire to please your­self with sweet or floury prod­ucts.

The ver­sa­tile effect of lack of sleep on metab­o­lism ensures rapid weight gain. With con­stant lack of sleep, the devel­op­ment of obe­si­ty is pos­si­ble, which often leads to severe com­pli­ca­tions. Excess weight is a risk fac­tor for the devel­op­ment of dis­eases such as strokes, heart attacks, hyper­ten­sion and dia­betes. Against the back­ground of obe­si­ty, defor­mi­ties of bones and joints can also occur.

Violation of the heart and blood vessels

Against the back­ground of lack of sleep, blood pres­sure ris­es sig­nif­i­cant­ly. Phys­i­o­log­i­cal­ly, this process is man­i­fest­ed by nar­row­ing of small periph­er­al arte­ri­oles. Due to the increase in vas­cu­lar resis­tance, the load on the heart increas­es. Its mus­cle wall begins to work in an enhanced mode, which leads to faster wear of the fibers. There­fore, those peo­ple who often lack sleep have a sig­nif­i­cant­ly high­er risk of devel­op­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases.

An increase in blood pres­sure and the devel­op­ment of hyper­ten­sion also con­tributes to the appear­ance of ath­er­o­scle­ro­sis. It occurs due to the fact that when blood enters the nar­rowed ves­sels, their walls receive minor dam­age. Micro­trau­mas are closed with fat­ty mol­e­cules that restore the integri­ty of the artery. How­ev­er, if the lipid bal­ance is dis­turbed, patho­log­i­cal fat­ty plaques form in the area of ​​dam­age. Over time, they can increase and com­plete­ly block the lumen of the ves­sels. Because of this, acute cir­cu­la­to­ry dis­or­ders occur in vital organs — heart attacks and strokes, which threat­en the life and health of the patient.

Decreased memory and attention

Lack of night rest adverse­ly affects the state of the brain. Dur­ing sleep, the num­ber of medi­a­tors in the ner­vous sys­tem is restored — sig­nal mol­e­cules nec­es­sary for trans­mit­ting infor­ma­tion and reg­u­lat­ing the func­tion­ing of the body. Inad­e­quate sleep leads to the fact that the brain does not have time to replen­ish the reserve of these mol­e­cules.

Due to the lack of medi­a­tors, human cog­ni­tive func­tions are impaired. There are dis­or­ders of mem­o­ry and atten­tion. We can­not con­cen­trate on our work, we are con­stant­ly dis­tract­ed by unim­por­tant details, we switch between activ­i­ties. Any infor­ma­tion that we try to remem­ber is absorbed very poor­ly. It becomes dif­fi­cult for us to car­ry out any math­e­mat­i­cal cal­cu­la­tions, to build log­i­cal chains.

In rare cas­es, with pro­longed lack of sleep, a person’s mem­o­ry may be lost or dis­tort­ed. He can even for­get what he did dur­ing the day and where he was. The next day, mem­o­ries com­plete­ly drop out or are per­ceived vague­ly, “as if in a fog.” This is due to the fact that dur­ing sleep, the brain process­es all the events that occurred dur­ing the pre­vi­ous day and moves them into long-term mem­o­ry. Insuf­fi­cient pro­cess­ing of mem­o­ries leads to the fact that they are dis­tort­ed and mixed with each oth­er.

Absent-mind­ed­ness, reduced mem­o­ry sig­nif­i­cant­ly inter­feres with the work or study of a per­son. There­fore, a full-fledged sleep is so impor­tant, which pro­vides the patient with a pro­duc­tive work­ing day.

What else affects poor sleep?

Lack of sleep affects almost all organs and sys­tems of the body. Oth­er neg­a­tive effects of lack of sleep include:

• decreased immune activ­i­ty and increased sus­cep­ti­bil­i­ty to infec­tious dis­eases;
• the appear­ance of psy­cho­log­i­cal changes — irri­tabil­i­ty, apa­thy, bad mood;
• dete­ri­o­ra­tion of the skin, nails and hair;
• hor­mon­al changes in the body;
• con­stant psy­cho-emo­tion­al stress;
• depres­sive episodes;
• increased risk of devel­op­ing type 2 dia­betes;
• decreased adap­ta­tion to phys­i­cal activ­i­ty;
• vio­la­tion of sex­u­al desire.

These dis­or­ders may devel­op grad­u­al­ly. For a long time, a sleep deprived per­son feels good, but it must be borne in mind that dur­ing this peri­od he spends the inter­nal reserves of his body. After some time, symp­toms of over­work inevitably occur, which pre­vent a per­son from work­ing ful­ly. This is why get­ting enough sleep every day is so impor­tant.

For a good rest, an adult needs at least 7 hours of sleep. At the same time, it is desir­able to estab­lish a sin­gle dai­ly rou­tine. Going to bed and wak­ing up should be at the same time. So the body will recov­er bet­ter. Nor­mal­iza­tion of the dai­ly rou­tine is one of the main com­po­nents of the pre­ven­tion of seri­ous dis­eases that can appear against the back­ground of lack of sleep.