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How Lack Of Sleep Can Kill You
Category: Living WellNew research suggests what we’ve already understood as truth: lack of sleep can not only make you an unpleasant human being, but it can also actually kill you.
From the obvious health-related effects of lack of sleep, such as obesity, heart disease, high blood pressure, diabetes and shorter lives. There’s even new findings that lack of sleep causes Alzheimer’s disease plaques, albeit in mice. Worse, long-term lack of sleep may cause changes in the brain that may stay permanently, which may predispose people to mental disorders like depression.
Just one night of short sleep has been shown to increase levels of inflammatory chemicals in the blood (SN: 10/11/08,p. 14) and increase hunger-promoting hormones. A week of getting just two hours less sleep per night than usual changed the way people in one study responded to glucose, mirroring a change seen in people who develop diabetes.
And lack of sleep can also have immediate injurious or fatal consequences: The National Highway Transportation Safety Administration estimates that drowsy-driving crashes result in about 40,000 nonfatal injuries and 1,550 deaths each year, probably a conservative estimate. Now, scientists are trying to understand not only how sleep deprivation affects driving performance, but also why one sleepy person might drive fine while another becomes a road menace.
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