Insomnia #3 – Consequences of Insomnia
At least one in three Americans does not get enough of sleep on a regular basis, but sleep deprivation comes with a heavy price tag.
Mark Haltrecht, D.O.
Family Practice Doctor
NSLIJ Plainview Hospital
No matter how well you may think you are adapting to a limited sleep, the truth is that a short sleep schedule will impact your day to day functioning and impair your long term health. So how much sleep is enough, in a standard 24-hour period, infants require a 16 hours of sleep. Children tend to need 10, teenager should get nine and most adults need seven to eight. Pregnant women, particularly those in the first trimester may require up to 11 hours of sleep. But doctors agree that the bottom line is if you feel drowsy during the day, you have not had enough sleep during the night.
In the short term, sleep deprivation can lead to decreased performance and alertness during day time activities. Reducing sleep by just one and a half hours can lead to a 30% reduction in alertness. In fact, over 100,000 car crashes and 7,000 accidental deaths, each year are attributed to drowsy driving.
If you are not getting enough sleep, your cognitive function and your memory in particular suffers a blow. This can make it difficult to think and process new information on the job or at school and can double the risk that you will suffer in occupational injury. Sleep lost can also lead to a host of serious physical maladies over the long term including an increased risk of heart disease and high blood pressure. In addition, because the body repairs and strengthens it’s immune system during non REM sleep, people who do not sleep well are then in increased risk of catching a cold or the flu.
There are some evidences that not sleeping well is a factor in obesity, whether this is true or not, it is certainly affect that sleeping well is as important to your health as eating right and exercising. Recurrent insomnia can also lead to severe depression. Conversely, people who are depressed, often have trouble sleeping resulting in a vicious cycle. Romantic relationships can be negatively affected by poor sleeping habits as well. Not only do restless sleepers disrupt the sleep of their partners, they are often irritable and moody during the day, hardly a recipe for romance.
Clearly, not sleeping enough during your night time hours can have big consequences for your day time ones. Because of those factors that can contribute to sleep loss, talk to your doctor about what may be causing your insomnia.
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