A person who loses one night’s sleep will generally be irritable and clumsy during the next day and will either become tired easily or speed up because of adrenalin. After missing two night’s sleep, a person will have problems concentrating and will begin to make mistakes on normal tasks. Three missed nights and a person will start to hallucinate and lose grasp of reality. Someone who gets just a few hours of sleep each night occurs a large “sleep debt” and can begin to experience many of the same problems over time. A 1997 study found that people whose sleep was restricted to four to five hours per night for one week needed two full nights of sleep to recover performance, alertness and normal mood.
A recent U.S. Army study concluded sleep deprivation reduces emotional inteligence and constructive thinking skills.
Other short-term consequences include:
- Decreased daytime alertness. Loss of just one and half hours sleep can result in a 32% reduction in daytime alertness.
- Impaired memory and cognitive ability, the ability to think and process information.
- More than double the risk of sustaining an occupational injury.
- Impaired immune system.
Long-term consequences can include the following:
- High blood pressure
- Heart attack
- Heart failure
- Stroke
- Psychiatric problems such as depression and other mood disorders
- Mental impairment
- Increased mortality risk
- Relationship problems with a bed partner
- Obesity - (The link between obesity and sleep is an interesting one as lack of sleep can cause weight gain by increasing hunger and affecting metabolism, and extra weight can cause sleep disorders such as apnea which cause sleep deprivation.)
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