What happens if you don’t sleep well? Sleep and rest are vital for good mental health. Discover the consequences of not sleeping and resting during the night.
If you’ve spent a night tossing and turning in bed, you already know that it will be three times as difficult to perform the next day. Not sleeping can make us feel very tired, moody and irritable. But, when you get used to not sleeping seven to nine hours every night, this can contribute to developing other negative effects on both mental and physical health. So what are the consequences of not sleeping enough?
Consequences of sleeping a few hours a night
Even though it has happened to all of us at some point, not being able to sleep well It can have effects from the first day. In fact, sleeping problems have the following consequences for the next day:
- Lack of alert: Even waste just an hour can not sleep It can have an impact on your attention span the next day.
- Drowsiness: The Lack of sleep contributes to experiencing tiredness and sleepiness during the day.
- Memory impairment: Not sleeping and resting well It also means suffering consequences on your ability to think, remember and process information.
- Stress in relationships: It is likely that low the effects of sleep or fatigue What does not sleeping well mean is that a person is more irritable and has a greater tendency to have conflicts with others.
- Quality of life : One of the consequences of experiencing problems sleeping a night is that people have less motivation and energy to participate in their daily tasks or exercise.
As we see the effects of lack of sleep and rest They are perceived from the first day. Therefore, it is important to take care of our sleeping habits.
Consequences of not sleeping
The consequences of insomnia or lack of sleep In the long term they go one step further. In fact, not being able to sleep and rest well ends up affecting both our mental abilities and our mental and physical health. Mainly, the consequences of not sleeping are the following:
- Worse learning and concentration: The Lack of sleep stuns our brain. This is because sleeping well is essential for both our thinking and learning. In fact, when you cannot sleep well for long periods your cognitive capacity ends up being damaged. Not getting enough sleep damages your attention, alertness, concentration, reasoning, and problem solving. This makes it more difficult to learn efficiently. Additionally, during the night, various cycles in our sleep play a critical role in consolidating memories. Therefore, if we do not sleep enough we will not be able to remember what we learned or experienced during the day.
- Health problems: Suffering from a sleep disorder as well as chronic sleep loss can end up affecting your physical health. So much so that not sleeping enough It can cause heart disease, heart failure, irregular heart rhythm, high blood pressure, diabetes, among others.
- Lack of sexual desire : Experiment sleeping problems It also continually affects our libido, making people less interested in sex. In these cases, lack of energy, drowsiness, and increased tension may be largely to blame.
- Increased risk of depression: Over time, lack of sleep and sleep disorders can also contribute to experiencing symptoms of depression. In fact, research indicates that people diagnosed with depression were more likely to sleep less than six hours a night. So much so that the most common sleep disorder, insomnia, has a very close link with depression.
- Gain weight : The Lack of sleep It is also linked to increased hunger and appetite, and it also has a link to obesity. According to studies, people who slept less than six hours a day were almost 30% more likely to become obese than those who slept seven to nine hours.
- Increased stress : The difficulty in reconciling sleep and sleep well It can end up making you perceive the stress of your daily life more. This happens because lack of sleep contributes to experiencing more mood swings as well as increasing people’s irritability and anger. All of these effects end up making it much more difficult to cope with stress in daily life.
- More anxiety : As with other psychological conditions, the relationship between Lack of sleep and anxiety seems to go both ways. In fact, people with anxiety tend to experience more sleep disturbances, but sleep deprivation can also contribute to experiencing more anxious feelings. Therefore, this link can become a cycle that perpetuates both sleep and anxiety problems.
As we see, there are many consequences of not getting enough sleep. In fact, if you suffer from some of these psychological effects due to lack of sleep and rest, it is important to solve it with the help of a mental health professional. Sleeping well contributes to a fuller, happier life.