A Lack of Sleep? Sleep isn't Lost Time

Sleep occupies nearly a third of our lives, but many of us give surprisingly little attention and care to it. This neglect is often the result of a major misunderstanding.

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Sleep isn't lost time, or just a way to rest when all our important work is done.

Instead, it's a critical function, during which your body balances and regulates its vital systems, affecting respiration and regulating everything from circulation to growth and immune response.

Sleep isn't Lost Time.

Almost anything can cause the occasional restless night - a snoring partner, physical pain, or emotional distress. And extreme sleep deprivation like jetlag can throw off your biological clock, wreaking havoc on your sleep schedule. In most cases, sleep deprivation is short-term. Eventually, exhaustion catches up with all of us.

However, some long-term conditions like respiratory disorders, gastrointestinal problems, and many others can overpower fatigue. And as sleepless nights pile up, the bedroom can start to carry associations of restless nights wracked with anxiety.

A Lack of Sleep?

A lack  of sleep will actually prevent your brain from being able to initially  make new memories, it's almost as  though without  sleep the memory inbox of the brain shuts down and you can't commit new experiences to memory.

New incoming informational emails are just bounced, you end up feeling as though you're amnesiac. You can't essentially make and create those new memories.

A lack of sleep will lead to an increased development of a toxic protein in the brain that is called beta-amyloid.

That is associated with Alzheimer's disease.  it is during deep sleep at night when a sewage system within the brain actually kicks into high gear,  it starts to wash away this toxic protein beta-amyloid.

If you're not getting enough sleep each and every night more of that Alzheimer's related protein will build up,  the more protein that builds up, the greater your risk of going on to develop dementia in later life.

What are the effects of sleep deprivation on the body? Many different  effects firstly we know that sleep deprivation affects the reproductive system. Who are sleeping just five to six hours a night have a level of testosterone which is that of some 110  years their senior.

A lack of sleep will age you by almost a decade in terms of that aspect of virility and wellness. A lack of sleep impacts your immune system, after just one night of four to five hours of sleep,  there is a 70% reduction in critical anti-cancer-fighting immune cells called natural killer cells.

The reason that you know that short sleep duration predicts your risk for developing numerous forms of cancer. The list currently includes cancer of the bowel, cancer of the prostate,  as well as cancer of the breast.

In fact, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer is now so strong that recently the World Health Organization decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen.

In other words, jobs that may induce cancer because of a disruption of your sleep-wake rhythms.

You also know that a lack of sleep impacts your cardiovascular system. It is during deep sleep at night that you receive this most wonderful form of effectively blood pressure medication, your heart rate drops, your blood pressure goes down.

If you're not getting sufficient sleep,  you're not getting that reboot of the cardiovascular system.

Your blood pressure rises you have if you're getting six hours of sleep or less a 200% increased risk of having a fatal heart attack or a stroke in your lifetime. A global experiment that is performed on 1.6 billion people twice a year and it's called daylight savings time. 

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