Lack of sleep and your health

Everyone knows the feeling of staying up too late and feeling groggy the next morning. You become irritable, perhaps a bit forgetful, your reactions and thinking are dimmed and you can be a bit clumsy. You might reach for the wrong foods to give you a boost, lack motivation and feel a little fed-up.

For some people this is their permanent reality. Insomniacs, those who suffer from conditions like sleep apnoea and people whose medical issues, environment or lifestyle doesn’t allow them a full night’s sleep, have to deal with these and many more symptoms on a daily basis.

So, how exactly does long-term sleep deprivation affect your health? The simple answer is, in a multitude of ways. According to The Sleep Charity, regularly getting fewer than six hours’ sleep a night puts you at increased risk of stroke and heart disease. It can increase insulin resistance, a risk factor for Type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

Fewer than five hours’ sleep per night increases the risk of diabetes and shortened sleep can increase your levels of C-reactive protein, which is normally released when we’re under stress or have some kind of inflammation in the body. Allied to this, a lack of adequate sleep can make you crave caffeine and sugary drinks, which add to the problem.

Lack of sleep suppresses your immune system, making you more vulnerable to infections and metabolic and hormone changes. It can cause problems such as irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) too. Tiredness can impact on driving ability. The UK Government states sleepiness contributes to one in five traffic accidents (RTAs) on UK roads. It adds: “It also increases the severity of an accident, as driver reactions are impaired.”

In Wales, this would mean more than 660 RTAs may have been avoided in 2022, if people had enough sleep.

According to the charity Mental Health UK, sleep can affect your emotional regulation. Sleep deprivation is associated with poor mood, which in turn disrupts sleep and creates a vicious cycle.

It can give poor focus, memory and concentration, as mentioned earlier, and can make us more likely to engage in risky and anti-social behaviour. It can makes us less able to manage stress.

One in four children suffer from some kind of sleep difficulty at some point during their development. Therefore, spotting and dealing with sleep issues early is key to setting up good sleep habits for later life and guarding against future illness. The Sleep Charity estimates around 40% of employees will suffer sleep issues, so it can affect performance at work, as much as other areas of life. The British Medical Association, which looks after the interests of doctors, puts things more bluntly. It says: “Not getting your head down for a sufficient time can put yours and others’ lives at risk.”

So, it is easy to see how a lack of sleep can put undue and unnecessary strain on health services and staff, already stretched to their limits.

In short, sleep is a preventative medicine and most of us can administer it ourselves, with a little preparation.