The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Your Body

“Read more about the short and long-term effects of sleep deprivation.”

— Dr. Dale

From The Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Your Body  

If you’ve ever spent a night tossing and turning, you already know how you’ll feel the next day — tired, cranky, and out of sorts. But missing out on the recommended 7 to 9 hours of shut-eye nightly does more than make you feel groggy and grumpy. The long term effects of sleep deprivation are real. It drains your mental abilities and puts your physical health at real risk. Science has linked poor slumber with all kinds of health problems, from weight gain to a weakened immune system. 

Your body needs sleep, just as it needs air and food to function at its best. During sleep, your body heals itself and restores its chemical balance. Your brain forges new connections and helps memory retention. Without enough sleep, your brain and body systems won’t function normally. It can also dramatically lower your quality of life. A review of 16 studies found that sleeping for less than 6 to 8 hours a night increases the risk of early death by about 12 percent.The obvious signs of sleep deprivation are:

• excessive sleepiness

• yawning

• irritability

• daytime fatigue

Stimulants like caffeine aren’t enough to override your body’s profound need for sleep. Behind the scenes, chronic sleep deprivation can interfere with your body’s internal systems and cause more than just the initial signs and symptoms listed above. Read on to learn exactly how sleep deprivation affects specific body functions and systems.

Central nervous system

Your central nervous system is the information highway of your body. Sleep is necessary to keep it functioning properly, but chronic insomnia can disrupt how your body usually sends information.During sleep, pathways form between nerve cells (neurons) in your brain that help you remember new information you’ve learned. Sleep deprivation leaves your brain exhausted, so it can’t perform its duties as well. You may also find it more difficult to concentrate or learn new things. The signals your body sends may also come at a delay, decreasing your coordination skills and increasing your risks for accidents. Sleep deprivation also negatively affectsyour mental abilities and emotional state. You may feel more impatient or prone to mood swings. It can also compromise decision-making processes and creativity.If sleep deprivation continues long enough, you could start having hallucinations—seeing or hearing things that aren’t there. A lack of sleep can also trigger mania in people who have manic depression. Other psychological risks include:

• impulsive behavior

• depression

• paranoia

• suicidal thoughts

You may also end up experiencing microsleep in the day. During these episodes, you’ll fall asleep for a few seconds or minutes without realizing it. Microsleep is out of your control and can be extremely dangerous if you’re driving. It can also make you more prone to injury due to trips and falls. 

Immune system

While you sleep, your immune system produces protective, infection-fighting substances like cytokines. It uses these substances to combat foreign invaders such as bacteria and viruses. Cytokines also help you sleep, giving your immune system more energy to defend your body against illness.Sleep deprivation prevents your immune system from building up its forces. If you don’t get enough sleep, your body may not beable to fend off invaders. It may also take you longer to recover from illness. Long-term sleep deprivation also increases your risk for chronic illnesses like diabetes and heart disease.

Respiratory system

The relationship between sleep and the respiratory system goes both ways. A night time breathing disorder called obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) can interrupt your sleep and lower the quality of your sleep. As you wake up throughout the night, this can cause sleep deprivation, which leaves you more vulnerable to respiratory infections like the common cold and flu. Sleep deprivation can also make existing respiratory diseases worse, such as chronic lung illness.

Digestive system

Along with eating too much and not exercising, sleep deprivation is another risk factor for overweight and obesity. Sleep affects the levels of two hormones, leptin and ghrelin, which control feelings of hunger and fullness. Leptin tells your brain that you’ve had enough to eat. Without enough sleep, your brain reduces leptin and raises ghrelin, which is an appetite stimulant. The flux of these hormones could explain nighttime snacking or why someone may overeat later in night. A lack of sleep can also contribute to weight gain by making you feel too tired to exercise.Sleep deprivation also prompts your body to release higher levels of insulin after you eat. Insulin controls your blood sugar level. Higher insulin levels promote fat storage and increase your risk for type 2 diabetes.

Cardiovascular system

Sleep affects processes that keep your heart and blood vessels healthy, including your blood sugar, blood pressure, and inflammation levels. It also plays a vital role in your body’s ability to heal and repair the blood vessels and heart.People who don’t sleep enough are more likely to get cardiovascular disease. One analysis published in the European Journal of Preventive Oncology linked insomnia to an increased risk of heart attack and stroke.

Endocrine system

Hormone production is dependent on your sleep. For testosterone production, you need at least three hours of uninterrupted sleep, which is about the time of your first REM episode. Waking up throughout the night could affect hormone production.This interruption can also affect growth hormone production, especially in children and adolescents. These hormones help build muscle mass and repair cells and tissues. The pituitary gland releases growth hormones continuously, but sleep and exercise also help induce the release of this hormone.

You Asked: How Can I Use More of My Brain?

“Here’s some advice on how to avoid distractions and stay focused throughout the day.”

— Dr. Dale

From You Asked: How Can I Use More of My Brain? 

It’s a myth that humans only use 10% of their brains. “That idea is not only inaccurate, it doesn’t make any sense,” says Earl Miller, a professor of neuroscience at the Picower Institute for Learning and Memory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. "Even the simplest behaviors engage much of our brain."

But while that old 10% dictum is bogus, it’s true that many of us have some untapped reserves of mental acuity that, if harnessed, could sharpen our powers of insight and analysis. The key to accessing those reserves, Miller says, is to stay focused. “The main thing that impedes our cognition is distraction."

Distractions are powerful drains on the brain's ability to focus, and one of the best ways to get more from your mind is to give yourself the gift of uninterrupted stretches of time.

Think of your mind as a muscle that can be strengthened with exercise. But the latest science suggests that "exercise" doesn't mean app-based brain games or activities like Sudoku, but bouts of prolonged, uninterrupted concentration, Miller says. Put simply, a distracted brain is a dumb brain. Unfortunately, “our brains are curious and are always interested in what’s going on around us, so it’s very hard to ignore all that and to stay focused."

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Distractions are ubiquitous, popping up as email alerts, text messages and social network updates. “People think that they can multitask and check these things without losing their focus, but we have lots of studies showing that task-switching leads to mistakes and back-tracking, and that it wastes a lot of time,” Miller says. And all of these interruptions seem to be getting in the way of more creative, profound insights. When your brain is bombarded by distraction, “your thoughts are more superficial, and you’re not getting as far down that path to where new ideas emerge."

Other experts agree. Switching between tasks can result in a phenomenon called “attention residue,” according to the work of Sophie Leroy, assistant professor of business at the University of Washington. When you ask your brain to quickly shift from one task to another, it struggles to cleanly discard the first and move on to the next. “Let’s say I work on a project right up until I have a meeting,” she says. “I may be at the meeting, but my brain is still trying to find closure on that project I was working on, so questions and ruminations about that project are interfering with my ability to concentrate.”

The more tasks you ask your brain to perform in a short period of time, the more that cognitive clutter accumulates, and the more your performance declines. Calvin Newport, associate professor of computer science at Georgetown University and author of the book Deep Work, puts that performance decline in real-world terms. “Anecdotally, it seems like most people experience a 50% drop in productivity and cognitive capacity when in a state of distraction,” he says. And even though a quick peek at your inbox or social feed only takes a second, "the duration of those checks does not correlate to the magnitude of the distraction,” Newport says.

Newport realized just how much those quick checks were tanking his brain’s performance when he wrote his last book. In an effort to be more productive, he started scheduling blocks of time to check his phone or email, while committing the rest of his day solely to his book or his research duties as an academic. “I should have had less time for my usual work because I was also researching and writing this book,” he says. “But the number of peer-reviewed papers I published that year went up by a factor of two.”

One of the best ways to sharpen your focus—and therefore enhance your brainpower—is to schedule this sort of uninterrupted time to focus on the cognitive tasks that matter to you. “It’s not uncommon for people who do this to talk about their productivity increasing,” Newport says. Research suggests that meditation may be another way to strengthen your brain’s ability to concentrate.

It's also important to complete one mental task before moving on to another. “If you have a meeting at 11, most of us will work until 10:59 and then rush to the meeting,” Leroy says. “That doesn’t give the brain time to figure out what it’s accomplished or what else needs to be done, and so there’s no closure.” Your brain needs that closure, she says, in order to transition effectively to its next chore.

She recommends taking some time between mental tasks—even a minute or two—to consider the work your brain just performed. "Write down where you are and what you want to do when you return to the task,” she says. In one of her experiments, people who followed this protocol improved their performance on a decision-making test by 79%, compared to people who hadn’t taken any time to collect their thoughts between tasks.

Another simple-sounding—yet challenging—recommendation is to inject more boredom into your life. “Don’t pull out the phone when standing in line, and if you’re sitting alone somewhere, try it without looking at a screen,” Newport says. Most of us need these breaks if we hope to stay focused on anything for longer than a few minutes. “The brain has to be comfortable not getting some shiny new stimuli from a device every few seconds," he says.

Indeed, a little digital break goes a long way. “I think being connected all the time is a lot like sugar: it’s easy for us to get accustomed to it and to want more,” Leroy says. “If you’ve been spending a lot of time multitasking, it’s going to take time to teach your brain to maintain focused attention."

How The 'Low-FODMAP Diet' Can Help Manage Irritable Bowel Syndrome

“Read more about the benefits the Low-FODMAP Diet can have for people with IBS. ”

From How The 'Low-FODMAP Diet' Can Help Manage Irritable Bowel Syndrome 

Abdominal pain and a swollen belly, gas, constipation, or diarrhea—these symptoms of irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) affect one in seven American adults. A common gastrointestinal (GI) disorder, IBS is a long-term but not life-threatening condition. Still, it can interfere with many aspects of daily life, and is one of the top reasons for missing work.

There is no specific test for IBS, so gastroenterologists typically diagnose it only after testing for and ruling out all other GI problems. We do not know exactly what causes it, and so far there is no cure, so treatment focuses on controlling symptoms.

Traditionally, IBS has been managed in many different ways, including dietary intervention, supplements, and medications like anti-cramping and anti-diarrheal drugs. A relatively recent approach, called the low-FODMAP diet, has helped many people with IBS and is fast becoming the new gold standard for managing symptoms.

What Does ‘FODMAP’ Mean?

FODMAP is an acronym for a group of carbohydrates: fermentable oligosaccharides, disaccharides, monosaccharides, and polyols. These are sugars that occur naturally in a variety of foods and are added to many processed foods. They are normally good for us, but people with IBS tend to be sensitive to them. FODMAP foods include:

Fructose. Typically found in many fruits, like watermelon, apples, and cherries, as well as honey and high-fructose corn syrup.

Lactose. Found in dairy products, like milk, cottage cheese, and thin yogurt.

Fructans. Found in wheat, including many bread products, as well as garlic and onions.

Galacto-oligosaccharides. Typically found in beans.

Polyols. Found in mushrooms and peaches, and in artificial sweeteners like sorbitol, mannitol, and xylitol.

The Low-FODMAP Diet

Formalized in 2010, the low-FODMAP diet was developed by a team of researchers at Monash University in Australia. They found that removing foods with the highest concentrations of FODMAPs from the diet improves IBS symptoms. A low-FODMAP diet can also help people with other ailments, like small intestinal bacterial overgrowth (SIBO) and in some cases Crohn’s disease and ulcerative colitis. This is specifically when they are in remission and have IBS symptoms.

The diet, which should be followed under the guidance of a registered dietitian, involves eliminating FODMAP-containing foods for two to eight weeks, depending on the person and the severity of their symptoms. Once all GI distress has disappeared, the person slowly adds the foods back to their diet to determine the level they can handle before IBS symptoms start to return.

There are many different ways to accomplish this “reintroduction process.” I have found it most helpful to eat a small amount of food in one FODMAP category once a day for three days, while observing how the body reacts. This method isolates each sugar and will show clearly how your body reacts to it.

For example, if you eat a couple of teaspoons of honey once a day for three days and find you are perfectly fine, you have passed the fructose “test.” You would then take fructose back out of your diet and go on to lactose. (You remove the category of food you have tested to avoid building up these sugars.) If you have a negative reaction, you would take that category back out of your diet, give yourself a few days without any FODMAPs, then go on to the next category.

This system helps empower people by teaching them which foods make them feel better or worse. They can then decide how and when they want to manage their symptoms. For instance, if ice cream upsets your stomach, you might choose to avoid it during the week because you want to focus on your job and avoid stomach rumblings during meetings. While on weekends, you may not worry about that and decide to have a scoop.

The Low-FODMAP Diet Is Not Forever

We do not know the long-term effects of adhering to this restrictive diet, but we do knowyou should not stay on it indefinitely. It is healthier to have some FODMAPs in our diet because fermentable carbohydrates are necessary to provide energy to the “good” bacteria in our colon.

Keep in mind that people with IBS are not allergic to these foods—they are intolerant of them at varying levels. It is important to determine how much of the problematic food types you can tolerate by retesting them in smaller amounts. If fructans trigger your IBS symptoms, say, you might still be able to eat a small amount without reacting. So instead of cutting out garlic entirely when cooking, use the level you can tolerate, which might be a half or quarter clove.

Also, try to avoid consuming multiple FODMAPs all at once, because the cumulative effect can be challenging. Monash University offers a helpful app that uses a “traffic light” system to indicate whether a food is considered low, moderate, or high in FODMAPs.

Keys to Success

The diet takes time and patience, and you need to be very organized. Having the right information is critical. There is a lot of FODMAP data on the internet, but some of it is incorrect or outdated. The diet is constantly being updated, with researchers continuing to test different foods, and adding items to the list of tolerable and intolerable foods. While on this diet, it is also important to make sure you are still getting all the essential nutrients, as well as plenty of fiber. These are all reasons it is important to work with a registered dietitian (RD) who is well versed on the low-FODMAP diet and can help you follow it in the most effective and healthy way.

As an RD in gastroenterology, I have seen how difficult living with IBS can be. But I have also seen how managing the disease by changing how one eats has been incredibly helpful—even life-changing—for many people.