chronic sleep loss can lead to a number of health problems but first let me
define chronic sleep loss chronic sleep loss would be considered poor sleep
whether it be not enough sleep too much sleep or broken choppy sleep lasting for
more nights during the week than not and that spanning greater than one month so
that's just to give you a framework to go by so if you normally sleep well but
once a month perhaps your child gets sick and you're up for three nights that
doesn't feel very good but that's not considered chronic insomnia especially
when it comes to having these negative health effects just so you know okay so
one one negative outcome of poor sleep to your body is weight gain and diabetes
and studies have shown and I have some study references in the notes so you can
see the actual studies so these studies show that chronic sleep deprivation
leads to increased cortisol and the increased cortisol affects the way your
body processes sugar and it's that defective sugar processing that can lead
to insulin resistant and therefore diabetes
now keep in mind just to reiterate this is chronic sleep deprivation and not a
few nights here and there for sleep and suddenly you've got diabetes so how does
sleep deprivation make you gain weight well part of it has to do with the
impaired glucose processing but a big part of it has to do with the impact
sleep deprivation has on your appetite hormones ghrelin is the hunger hormone
and leptin is the satiety hormone or the hormone that makes you feel full
research has shown that just one night of sleep deprivation increases ghrelin
or increases your appetite and decreases leptin or decreases your sensation of
being full so the connection is that just that sleep deprivation reset your
appetite such that you're hungrier and want to eat more and even when you do
eat you don't feel as full some researchers even linked the increased
appetite in an increased craving for carbohydrate rich foods and this is
exactly what the body would want because leptin is produced mostly produced in
the fat cells of the body the adipose tissue and if the levels are low then
the body is saying or the fat cells are saying we don't have enough fat so let's
hold off on breaking down some of that glucose and let's store it as fat
because our levels are low guys and we need this stuff around so all the more
reason that if you aren't sleeping enough and you're eating late you can
just pack on more fat now if you or someone who sleeps four hours a night
you've been doing that pretty much for years do I expect you to gain 50 pounds
probably not if you have a fairly slim body build so it's not like it
automatically means you pack on weight you could but does it have to mean that
what it could look like is that you gain weight over time few pounds here a few
pounds there and despite changing your diet
despite exercise you just can't seem to lose any weight and you can see this
with people who are in very good shape people who body build things like that
if they're sleeping poorly they can have trouble trimming down and losing
particularly abdominal fat having a hard time getting that six-pack now maybe you
might not feel sorry for someone who can't get a six-pack but the point is is
that it doesn't have to manifest as packing on a bunch of weight it could
manifest as a gradual weight gain over time that you just can't seem to shake
and can't seem to lose even heroic despite heroic efforts in changing your
diet and exercising another negative consequence is cardiovascular disease
and this is thought to be influenced by that increased cortisol again but also
sleep deprivation causing an increase in other inflammatory type chemicals in the
body that then accelerate hardening of the arteries so through that you get
then the cardiovascular disease whether it be manifested as high blood pressure
or simply increased risk of heart attacks because of that
in the reference materials you'll see a reference to a study from the Journal of
Cardiology that showed that people who slept too little or too much
so at greater than 10 our thing we're at increased risk of having a shortened
lifespan or sudden death how that sudden death manifested I'm not quite sure but
I think the net-net is poor sleep can be very bad and even to the degree where we
can look at it as a lifestyle marker for health and then the last health effect I
want to discuss is worsening of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder
or ADHD or a DD even as we sometimes call it if you know someone or have a
child or you yourself have ADHD you'll know that it can be very debilitating
and very problematic depending on the setting that you're in and how much what
you do is stretching your ability to compensate for your attention issues
well ad sleep deprivation to the mix and now you just accelerate the problem even
more or exacerbate it even more this can be seen even more dramatically in
children with ADHD so if you have a child who has a ADHD or let's say it's
marginal it's a little bit of a problem but your child's not on medication and
they're just kind of getting by you need to make sure your child gets sleep you
know it to be a huge priority to try to get your
child to sleep enough because their ADHD can be the effective it can be
multiplied by them not sleeping