How Losing Sleep Can Impact Your Health

When you get less sleep, studies have shown, you tend to eat much more, which can lead to weight gain if you are not watching what you are consuming and putting into your body. The hormones that are in charge of controlling and regulating hunger are also heavily connected to sleep.

Additionally, less sleep actually causes your brain to crave foods and thus, they become much more enjoyable, which will lead you to eat more.

When you are operating on less sleep, your brain has a more difficult time doing anything outside of the basic functions that it needs to survive. Therefore, sleep deprivation causes a huge decrease in creativity.

If you are an artist, writer or musician, and you are feeling stuck on a piece that you are working on, sometimes the best solution is to call it a night and pick up again the next day when you are rested.

Studies have revealed that a person's brain on twenty-four hours of constant wakefulness, or put more simply, after staying up all night, has the same level of function as someone who is driving while intoxicated. This can lead to damaged motor skills, and as a result, less ability to concentrate on the tasks that you need to do.

When you are up all night studying for an exam, then it may be a better idea to try and sleep beforehand, rather than cramming information that your brain will have a difficult time processing.

Sleep is critical on a physical level as well. After you wash and moisturize your skin at night, the time in which you are sleeping is when your skin primarily repairs and restores itself. Therefore, when you are getting less than ideal amounts of sleep, you are not allowing your skin to fully heal and work the way it needs to.

Also, one of the more unsightly negatives of sleep deprivation is under eye bags and dark circles, which can become permanent if you continuously do not give yourself enough time to rest during the night.

When you continually try to operate on lesser amounts of sleep, you will not only suffer the short term effects of this habit, but long term consequences as well. Many scientific studies have revealed that too much time without proper sleep can actually cause brain damage that is irreparable.

This can come in the form of less cognitive sharpness, memory loss, particularly the short term memory, or loss of fine motor skills. This is one reason why it is imperative that you make sleep a top priority in your life, and never discount it as something that can be caught up on later.

Getting less sleep means that you will most likely be irritable the next day, which can influence how you interact with friends and family, how you perform tasks, and every other aspect of your life. You may find yourself being sensitive to noises or things that you see but do not have control over.

If you go long enough without sufficient amounts of shut eye, then this type of irritability can become an unfortunate part of your everyday life. This is why you usually feel like you are in a much better mood when you get a good night's rest after a string of bad ones.

Sleep deprivation is a serious problem that should be taken much more seriously than it is currently. With these effects, there is no doubt that improving your sleep hygiene will have positive changes on your life.