“the shorter your sleep, the shorter your life span” - Matthew Walker
how Sleeplessness kills you
Do you think you got enough sleep this past week? Can you recall the last time you woke up without an alarm clock feeling refreshed, not needing caffeine? If the answer to either of these questions is “no,” you are not alone. Two-thirds of adults throughout all developed nations fail to obtain the recommended eight hours of nightly sleep. I doubt you are surprised by this fact, but you may be surprised by the consequences. Routinely sleeping1 everyday less than 6 or 7 hours a night demolishes your immune system, more than doubling your risk of cancer. Insufficient sleep is a key lifestyle factor determining whether or not you will develop Alzheimer’s disease2 [More than 1 million cases per year (India)]. Inadequate sleep—even moderate reductions for just one week—disrupts blood sugar levels so profoundly that you would be classified as pre-diabetic. Short sleeping increases the likelihood of your coronary arteries becoming blocked and brittle, setting you on a path toward cardiovascular disease, stroke, and congestive heart failure. sleep disruption further causes depression, anxiety, suicidality.
stop doing this at night!!!
how you gain weight by sleeping less
Perhaps you have also noticed a desire to eat more when you’re tired? is no coincidence. Too little sleep swells concentrations of a hormone that makes you feel hungry while suppressing a companion hormone that otherwise signals food satisfaction. Despite being full, you still want to eat more. It’s a proven recipe for weight gain in sleep-deficient adults and children alike. Worse, should you attempt to diet but don’t get enough sleep while doing so, it is futile, since most of the weight you lose will come from lean body mass, not fat.
Low quality life
“I’ll sleep when I’m dead” is therefore unfortunate. Adopt this mind-set, and you will be dead sooner and the quality of that (shorter) life will be worse.
Sadly, human beings are in fact the only species that will deliberately deprive themselves of sleep without legitimate gain.
World Health Organization (WHO) has now declared a sleep loss epidemic. It is no coincidence that countries where sleep time has declined most dramatically over the past century, such as the US, the UK, Japan, and South Korea, and several in western Europe, are also those suffering the greatest increase in rates of the aforementioned physical diseases and mental disorders.
doctors to start “prescribing” sleep. As medical advice goes, it’s perhaps the most painless and enjoyable to follow. Do not, however, mistake this as a plea to doctors to start prescribing more sleeping pills—quite the opposite, in fact, considering the alarming evidence surrounding the deleterious health consequences of these drugs.
But can we go so far as to say that a lack of sleep can kill you outright?
Actually, yes
First, there is a very rare genetic disorder that starts with a progressive insomnia, emerging in midlife. Several months into the disease course, the patient stops sleeping altogether
Second, is the deadly circumstance of getting behind the wheel of a motor vehicle without having had sufficient sleep. Drowsy driving is the cause of hundreds of thousands of traffic accidents and fatalities each year.
I. The World Health Organization and the National Sleep Foundation both stipulate an average of eight hours of sleep per night for adults.
A progressive disease that destroys memory and other important mental functions. Brain cell connections and the cells themselves degenerate and die, eventually destroying memory and other important mental functions. Memory loss and confusion are the main symptoms.
No cure exists, but medication and management strategies may temporarily improve symptoms.