To Sleep, Perchance To Dream....

"In a landmark study of human sleep deprivation, University of Chicago researchers followed a group of student volunteers who slept only four hours nightly for six consecutive days. The volunteers developed higher blood pressure and higher levels of the stress hormone cortisol, and they produced only half the usual number of antibodies to a flu vaccine. The sleep-deprived students also showed signs of insulin resistance — a condition that is the precursor of type 2 diabetes and metabolic slowdown. All the changes were reversed when the students made up the hours of sleep they had lost."
"The Chicago research helps to explain why chronic sleep debt raises the risk of obesity, heart disease, stroke, and diabetes."
Harvard Health

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"Because sleep is when the body and especially the brain regenerate and repair themselves, sleeplessness has been identified as a factor in an endless list of afflictions, including hypertension, heart disease, diabetes, obesity, memory loss, bipolar disorder, reduced immunity, mood swings, impaired carbohydrate metabolism and increased heart-rate variability. Not to mention depression and substance abuse and the impairment of memory, self-expression and the ability to read emotions in others. Oh, and a hundred thousand motor-vehicle accidents a year."
Ian Brown, The Globe and Mail

It's a familiar condition, lack of sufficient sleep, and few of us link that congenital (for some) condition with actual health harm that can be quantified and which in the final analysis not only makes us miserable emotionally, but incapable of operating our bodies functionally. The road to extremely ill health, including depression and ill temper and social isolation is paved with many sleep-deprived nights that are too short and deprive us of optimum health conditions. The rough rule of thumb is that we need one hour of sleep for every two hours of waking activity.

Science and those in the field of health sciences, have been warning us for quite a long time that we are short-changing ourselves by not sleeping adequate hours. Whether we're engaged in shift work or night-time work, or just try to manage too many activities in too-short time-frames, losing out on sleep as a result, we're heading for trouble with insufficient sleep to allow our brain and bodies the time needed for restoration, repair and rest. That includes infants to adults, to the elderly retired.

Inability to function as one should leads to irritability and frustration, and in the long term leads into impaired health of a truly frightening level. There is nothing particularly new about these findings. It has long been well known that the effects of sleep deprivation can be horribly injurious to the human mind and body. It is why sleep deprivation has been used as a tool of torture for hundreds, possibly thousands of years. Simple observation has led to the conclusion that humans cannot function effectively with lack of rest.

On the good news front, however, people who are unable to ameliorate their sleep schedules by planning to change their habits can take heart from the results of a new study that concluded if people lacking sufficient night-time sleep every day during the week, managed to sleep in late over the weekend, it could make a substantial difference on making up sleep deficit. Individuals, according to the research published in the Journal of Sleep Research, who made up their deficit with weekend long sleeps, were found to have no raised risk for mortality.

"Sleep duration is important for longevity", points out Torbjörn Åkerstedt, first author of the study, at the Stress Research Institute, Stockholm University, and Karolinska Institute. Data was collected from over 38,000 adults through a lifestyle and medical survey in 1997, throughout Sweden, with a fallow up of 13 years, that made use of a national death registry. "I suspected there might be some modification if you included also weekend sleep, or day-off sleep", noted Dr. Åkerstedt.

The research results revealed, with factors linked to gender, body mass index, smoking, physical activity and shift work accounted for, that those under age 65 who managed only five sleeping hours nightly, seven days a week, had a 65%  higher mortality rate, compared to others who slept six or seven hours nightly. The increased risk of death, however, skipped those who slept five or fewer  hours during the work week, but slept in on weekend mornings to total eight or more hours of sleep.


So while consistent sleep deficits represent a true and alarming health hazard, it gives little comfort to know that reversing the order and having too much sleep nightly can also prove harmful to human health. Those individuals who consistently oversleep -- sleep for eight or more hours nightly, seven days a week, were discovered almost equally vulnerable, with a 25% higher mortality rate compared with those who kept to six or seven hours a day.

Symptoms When an individual does not get enough sleep to feel awake and alert, they begin to experience symptoms of sleep deprivation. The main symptom of ongoing sleep loss is excessive daytime sleepiness, but other symptoms include: yawning moodiness fatigue irritability depressed mood difficulty learning new concepts forgetfulness inability to concentrate or a "fuzzy" head lack of motivation clumsiness increased appetite and carbohydrate cravings reduced sex drive Effects Sleep deprivation can negatively affect a range of systems in the body. It can have the following impact: Not getting enough sleep prevents the body from strengthening the immune system and producing more cytokines to fight infection. This can mean a person can take longer to recover from illness as well as having an increased risk of chronic illness. Sleep deprivation can also result in an increased risk of new and advanced respiratory diseases. A lack of sleep can affect body weight. Two hormones in the body, leptin and ghrelin, control feelings of hunger and satiety, or fullness. The levels of these hormones are affected by sleep. Sleep deprivation also causes the release of insulin, which leads to increased fat storage and a higher risk of type 2 diabetes. Sleep helps the heart vessels to heal and rebuild as well as affecting processes that maintain blood pressure and sugar levels as well as inflammation control. Not sleeping enough increases the risk of cardiovascular disease. Insufficient sleep can affect hormone production, including growth hormones and testosterone in men.  Medical News Today