What Happens To Your Body And Brain If You Don't Get Sleep

According to Matthew Walker, a professor of neuroscience and psychology at the University of California Berkeley and author of the book "Why We Sleep" , a lack of sleep can prevent the brain from making new memories. Without sleep, the brain's memory inbox shuts down, and new experiences cannot be committed to memory. This can make it difficult to create new memories. Additionally, lack of sleep can lead to increased development of a toxic protein in the brain called beta amyloid, which is associated with Alzheimer's disease. During deep sleep at night, the brain's sewage system becomes active and helps wash away this toxic protein. If you consistently do not get enough sleep, the buildup of beta amyloid increases, raising the risk of developing dementia later in life. The effects of sleep deprivation on the body are numerous.

We know that sleep deprivation affects the reproductive system. We also know that men who are sleeping just five to six hours a night have a level of testosterone which is that of someone 10 years their senior. Therefore, a lack of sleep will age you by almost a decade in terms of that aspect of virility and wellness.

We also know that a lack of sleep impacts your immune system. After just one night of 4 to 5 hours of sleep, there is a 70% reduction in critical anti-cancer-fighting immune cells called natural killer cells. This reduction is the reason we know that short sleep duration predicts your risk for developing numerous forms of cancer. Currently, the list includes cancer of the bowel, cancer of the prostate, and cancer of the breast. In fact, the link between a lack of sleep and cancer is now so strong that recently the World Health Organization decided to classify any form of nighttime shift work as a probable carcinogen. In other words, jobs that may induce cancer due to the disruption of your sleep-wake rhythms.

We also know that a lack of sleep impacts your cardiovascular system, as it is during deep sleep at night when you receive this most wonderful form of a natural blood pressure medication. Your heart rate drops, and your blood pressure goes down. If you're not getting sufficient sleep, you're not allowing your cardiovascular system to reboot. As a result, your blood pressure rises. If you're getting six hours of sleep or less, you have a 200% increased risk of experiencing a fatal heart attack or stroke in your lifetime.

There is a global experiment that is performed on 1.6 billion people twice a year called Daylight Saving Time. We know that in the spring when we lose one hour of sleep, there is a subsequent 24% increase in heart attacks the following day. Another question that arises is: what is the recycle rate of a human being, and how long can we actually last without sleep before?

We start to see declines in brain function or even impairments within the body after about 16 hours of wakefulness. Once you surpass 16 hours of being awake, that's when mental and physiological deterioration becomes apparent.

We know that after you've been awake for 19 or 20 hours, your mental capacity is so impaired that you would be as deficient as someone who is legally drunk behind the wheel of a car. So, if you were to ask what the recycling rate of a human being is, it does seem to be about 16 hours, and we need about eight hours of sleep to repair the damage of wakefulness. Wakefulness essentially causes low-level brain damage.