Sleep Clinics Inglewood CA

You may sleep as few as 5 hours, or as many as 10, but what's most important is that you get what you need. Here's what happens when you don't.

If you suffer from chronic or even occasional insomnia, have experienced jet lag or pulled an all-nighter and then stumbled into work the next day, you have first-hand knowledge of what happens to your brain-and sometimes your life-when you don't get enough sleep. Things fall apart.

The short of it is: Your brain cells start to misfire when you don't get enough sleep. When your brain cells are dysfunctional, you can't think or speak clearly, your thoughts and speech patterns become dull and slow, your judgment is poor and your reaction time is delayed. You're in a bad mood.

The longer you go without a full night's sleep, the more stress your brain cells experience, and the worse your symptoms become. Hallucinations, immune system breakdown, chronic disease, even death, are all possible. Even when sleep deprivation doesn't result in an all-out tragedy, your capacity to do simple, everyday tasks is greatly compromised.

Asleep at the Wheel

Driving when you're tired can be as dangerous as driving while drunk. Harvard Medical School's Division of Sleep Medicine estimates that approximately 1 million vehicle crashes, 500,000 injuries and 8,000 deaths occur in the U.S. each year as a result of driver drowsiness.

Poor Mental Performance

The longer you are awake, the more pressure there is on your brain to fall asleep. If you're getting too little sleep night after night, that pressure increases to the point where it becomes extremely difficult to stay awake and you literally lose brain power and higher-level cognitive functions, such as logical reasoning. Your thought processing capabilities are impaired and you lose some of your motivation, concentration, working memory and ability to solve problems.

Off Your Game

Any activity that requires coordination is affected by lack of sleep. In addition to poor performance, your risk of having an accident is higher when you suffer from sleep deprivation.

More than a Bad Mood

A lack of sleep and poor sleep quality are directly associated with anxiety and depression. A University of Pennsylvania study found that people who had less than 5 hours sleep every night for a week were not only mentally exhausted, but felt stressed, angry and sad. That's a no-brainer when you think about it. Even after one night of poor quality sleep, most people feel irritable, short-tempered and less able to cope with stress.

Weight Gain

A 2010 University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) review of studies performed between 1965 and 1994 concluded that lack of sleep increases both the risk of becoming obese and staying obese. This study confirms the findings of numerous other studies related to sleep and weight gain, wherein sleep restriction caused hormonal changes in the body that resulted in increased hunger and appetite.

References:

Harvard Medical Sc...

Certain hormones send hunger signals to your brain that let you know when it's time to eat. Other hormones send signals that tell your brain you are full and it's time to stop. And just like the rest of your body, those hormones don't work as well when you don't get enough sleep.

Hormones are "chemical messengers" that help make things happen in your body by sending signals to and from your brain. Ghrelin and leptin are known as the "hunger hormones" because they help regulate your appetite.  Your stomach produces more ghrelin when you start getting hungry and need to consume calories. Your fat cells produce leptin once you have eaten and need to burn calories. At the same time, low levels of leptin send a signal that there is a shortage of calories in your body.

While looking at nighttime levels of these two hormones, researchers at UCLA's Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior discovered that sleep loss at night may lead to increased levels of ghrelin and decreased levels of leptin during the day. The unfortunate outcome of this hormonal dance, the researchers speculated, is an overstimulated appetite that often results in weight gain.

A study published in a 2010 issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine confirmed that dieters who got less sleep produced higher levels of ghrelin over time, felt hungrier and lost more than 50 percent less fat, even when they lost the same amount of weight as well rested dieters. The participants in this study ranged in age from 35 to 49 and were all overweight or obese, but otherwise healthy. When the dieters slept an average of 7 hours and 25 minutes each night, they lost equal amounts of fat and lean tissue. When sleep was restricted to just a little more than five hours, their bodies ultimately burned much less body fat and much more muscle protein to produce energy, even when calorie intake was the same.

The goal of healthy weight loss is to lose excess body fat and preserve as much lean muscle mass...