Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Day 12. The Effects of Lack of Sleep.

Pushing oneself to the limit can be damaging. And in the case of lack of sleep, the results can be detrimental in many aspects. The world never sleeps. Banks are open 24/7 via e-banking, 7-eleven operates 365 days a year, and somewhere someplace out there, there is someone playing poker on Facebook. heh. =)

What are the effects of lack of sleep? If you ask me, there are many. From my experience, I get moody when I do not get enough sleep. My sense of alertness goes down and my situational awareness drops. This makes driving/riding very dangerous and back in the army, driving at 50km/h for 3 hours straight after going for 4 days without sleep, a very scary experience. When I do not get enough sleep, I can't focus on the task at hand. Voices seems so distant, and I cannot fully comprehend what I'm doing. As a result, the lack of sleep has a negative impact.

What do experts have to say about the lack of sleep?

"Lack of sleep disrupts every physiologic function in the body," said Eve Van Cauter of the University of Chicago. "We have nothing in our biology that allows us to adapt to this behavior."

"The strongest evidence out there right now is for the risk of overall mortality, but we also see the association for a number of specific causes," said Sanjay R. Patel of Harvard Medical School, who led one of the studies, involving more than 82,000 nurses, that found an increased risk of death among those who slept less than six hours a night. "Now we're starting to get insights into what's happening in the body when you don't get enough sleep."

"Based on our findings, we believe that if you lose sleep that your body needs, then you produce these inflammatory markers that on a chronic basis can create low-grade inflammation and predispose you to cardiovascular events and a shorter life span," said Alexandros N. Vgontzas of Pennsylvania State University, who recently presented data at a scientific meeting indicating that naps can help counter harmful effects of sleep loss.

"Melatonin can prevent tumor cells from growing -- it's cancer-protective," said Eva S. Schernhammer of Harvard Medical School, who has conducted a series of studies on volunteers in sleep laboratories. "The theory is, if you are exposed to light at night, on average you will produce less melatonin, increasing your cancer risk."

"This adds to the growing evidence that sleep deprivation among medical residents significantly impairs their ability to perform, although it is important to note that we did not assess performance on specific medical tasks," says J. Todd Arnedt, PhD, a sleep psychologist who is a clinical assistant professor of psychiatry and neurology at the U-M Medical School. Arnedt works in the the U-M Sleep Disorders Center and the U-M Depression Center Sleep & Chronophysiology Laboratory.

5 out of 5 has something negative to say about the lack of sleep. So dear readers, ensure that you have enough sleep, so that you can live a long and productive life!

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