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(You think you love your sleep? If you’re not Japanese – think again. The Japanese are HARDCORE SLEEPERS. Google images of “Japanese subway sleeping” for some pro-level public transport power-naps that most of us mere mortals can only aspire to.)
I’ve been staying up til all hours recently for a number of reasons (Diablo, nail painting, thesis – in that order >.<) and trying to make up the loss with copious amounts of coffee. While instinctively I know this is a VERY BAD THING, sometimes I need a reminder that “beauty sleep” isn’t just one of those things my mum tells me…
Benefits of sleep
Learning – Are you finding it harder to remember new things you’ve learnt? Sleep deprivation could be the culprit. More studies are showing the importance of sleep in memory consolidation (i.e. putting things from your short term into your long term memory). One theory for this is that your hippocampus (part of the middle bit of your brain) stores new information while you’re awake. When you go to sleep, your hippocampus and your neocortex (grey stuff on the outside of the brain) “talk” to each other, and the information transfers to the neocortex, which is later accessible. Kind of like typing lots of things into a new document – sleep is the “save” button which transfers all the data onto a permanent place in your hard drive.
Problem solving – Got a problem you can’t seem to work out? Again, sleep can help your brain put the pieces together (technical term: “insight formation”).
Butterfingers – This is an obvious one – sleep deprivation destroys your motor skills. I’m sure you’ve noticed it 😉
Hawtness – “You look tired” – yes, it’s been proven that other people can tell the difference when you’ve had enough sleep! People picked pictures of sleep deprived people as being less attractive, less healthy, and more tired compared to pictures taken when they’ve had enough sleep. So “beauty sleep” is a real thing!
Obesity – Lack of sleep is linked to gaining weight. Studies have shown that people who regularly sleep less than 6 hours a night are far more likely to have higher-than-average BMIs, and those who sleep more than 8 hours have the lowest BMIs. Along with not exercising and eating too much, lack of sleep is one of the major risk factors for obesity. The reason for this is that the sleep-wake cycle affects many important hormones that are involved in appetite, metabolism and glucose regulation. For example, lack of sleep leads to increased insulin secretion. Since insulin increases fat storage, this will lead to weight gain, and increase the risk of getting diabetes. Other important hormones include leptin, which tells your brain when you’re full, and ghrelin, which tells your brain you’re hungry. Not having enough sleep (you guessed it) decreases leptin and increases ghrelin levels.
Heart problems – Heart disease and strokes are linked to lack of sleep. Even one night of sleep can cause higher blood pressure the following day in susceptible people. However, both sleeping too little (less than 6 hours) or too much (more than 9 hours) led to an increased risk of coronary heart disease in women.
Psychological disorders – Prolonged periods of sleep deprivation are linked to depression and anxiety. Several studies have shown that sleep deprivation leads to mood-related symptoms such as stress, anger, sadness, mental exhaustion, social withdrawal and pessimism, which goes away after returning to a normal sleep schedule.
Immune system – Sleeping can help you stave off an oncoming infection.
Life Expectancy – As you might’ve guessed from the many health effects listed above, sleep deprivation is correlated to lowered life expectancy. Sleeping less than 5 hours a night increases your risk of death overall by a whopping 15%!
Further reading
J M Ellenbogen. Cognitive benefits of sleep and their loss due to sleep deprivation. Neurology 2005, 64, E25.
J Axelsson, T Sundelin, M Ingre, E J W Van Someren, A Olsson and M Lekander. Beauty sleep: experimental study on the perceived health and attractiveness of sleep deprived people. Brit Med J 2010, 341, c6614.
Division of Sleep Medicine at Harvard Medical School – Healthy Sleep Website
Ooh, an interesting read. Who would have thought sleeping less can be related to so many things! Thanks 😀
I didn’t know until I started researching it… then, oo-er 🙁 No more all-nighters for me!
Being as old as I am, I can nod my head and agree with all of the above (didn’t know about the heart problems tho..).
During summer I sleep 6 hours +/- because the light outside affects me. During winter, well I would like to hibernate from mid November to mid January, where the light visibly becomes stronger and brighter. Unfortunately that’s not an option, but I sleep around 8 hours during the winter.
So it could be fun to know if a sleeping pattern like that is good or bad for you if you know LOL
@Maria – I have the same issue with affected by the light. Was really hard when I worked all 3 shifts and had to rotate through them all – then go ‘save lives,’ working as a clinical laboratory scientist in a hospital lab. Black out curtains helped a lot when I was needing more sleep than getting in spring/summer due to light.
@beachgal – I should have been clearer… If I needed more sleep during summer I of course use the black out curtains. The point is that I function very well with the short night during summer, it is as I write my sleeping pattern and have been at least 10 years now.
But I do remember when I were younger, I visited a friend in Lapland – the sun is up 24 hours – and that almost killed me, I was sleep deprived and a total mess after a few days LOL
I think it’s normal to want to sleep and eat more in winter… I’m not sure if it’s good or bad, but it seems very normal to me 🙂
Yayyy, I’m normal (at least when it comes to sleep coughh, coughh…;)
hahah i love this post and the pictures! diablo! nooooo ur one of them. haha i can’t get my bf of the stuff.
My bf got me on it 🙁 He hates me being productive and wants me to die early, obviously!
Oh Boy! Just what I needed. I am going through titration off a # of meds and major changes to my seizure meds. My sleep is been so wacko for 3 weeks now, I only sleep about 2 hrs then awake. I don’t sleep in the nighttime as I want to at all. I can grab finally about 2-3 hrs from 9 to 12noon. I don’t even have my nails polished because of shaky hands! Cannot wait until my body gets used to the withdrawl and change over of these meds. And yes, I have all the above things plus some. I am a clinical scientists or was until I was disabled due to a major bone disease
One thing you did not include here is how lack of sleep DOES affect your hair, skin and nail condition. Hair is dry already – now added frizz – not being a good time to have decided to grow it out! Nails will break and be prone to ridges. My face skin looks like it always needs a major spa session with a good exfoliation and an oxygen mask boost. Only doing that only lasts less than half a day and back to looking sallow.
Oh no 🙁 That sounds very difficult, hope it settles down soon!
I can’t find much research on whether lack of sleep affects hair, skin and nails, but I’ve definitely noticed that when I don’t sleep enough my eyebags and skin are horrible… but at the same time, when I don’t get enough sleep, I usually don’t have time to take care of my face properly either!
Yaaaay psychology 😀 I loved the whole sleep topic in my A level, I was gutted we didn’t cover it in my degree! Really interesting how people who’ve done “sponsored stay-awake” things start to become delusional and things.
Interesting post, thank you!
xo
Haha yeah – also with sensory deprivation, I’ve always wanted to do one of those experiments just to see if I go crazy or not! I’m so in my head all the time anyway, I suspect that I’d do better than a lot of people who are more extroverted… but I’m also a wimp so I could break very easily :
I just found out about the sleep-weight connection recently from my personal trainer, it was mindblowing and totally counter intuitive! I want that koala.
Agreed on both counts! (counter-intuitive and koala-stealing)
I need more sleep..Zzzzzzzz
Me too, I’ve been sleeping at 2 for the last few days… not good!
I love this post and I love sleeping a lot. I quite agree with you. The pics is really funny. The best way sleeping for me is to sleep on a propriate matress.
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