Negative effects of lack of sleep

Introduction

Sleep is important as it enhances the well-being in terms of emotional regulation and cognitive performance. It is advisable that people should get enough sleep in order to avoid diseases such as coronary heart disease and others which affect mental and physical health. An important point to note is that while sleeping, brain functions effectively and leads to consolidation of memories, brain development and energy conservation. Sleep is also associated with positive growth and development, where human beings develop healthy weight.  In addition, it is important to get enough sleep in order to improve learning (as it is stated by studied), be creative and improve problem solving skills. The purpose of this paper is to examine the negative effects of lack of sleep. Things to note are that lack of sleep or sleep deficiency results to chronic health problems related with neurocognitive disorders, neurobehavioral disorders, psychiatric conditions, cognitive impairment and other problems.

 

ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA (2010) asserts that lack of sleep or sleep deprivation is a state where human being lack sleep in a certain period or a state where human beings do not get enough sleep as required. People are involved in sleep deprivation due to various factors one of them being work-related factors. Both chronic and acute sleep deprivation is associated with negative consequences which affect cognitive functions and operant memory. This article presents negative effects of lack of sleep from evidence-based practice where in the first study, volunteers experienced sleep deprivation in 90-hours and the second study human beings experienced lack of sleep in one week. The findings showed that lack of sleep is associated with many negative effects.

            The first effect is exteroceptive impairments. Lack of sleep causes visual disruption where human beings create inaccurate image formation and as a result, people experience double vision and hallucinations. What happens is that lack of sleep creates tunnel vision and as a result, human beings develop visual errors (ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA, 2010). Second is the cognitive and operant process. Lack of sleep and prolonged wakefulness leads to impaired cognitive processing. In addition, sleep deprivation results to distraction of thoughts which affects the accurate and effectiveness of performance. For example, lack of sleep in a single night contributes to 20-32% of visual errors and 14% of errors are contributed in an electrocoagulation trial (ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA, 2010). Other point is that prolonged wakefulness is associated with intonation impairments. This means that in the study, individuals who lacked sleep in one week were unable to verbalize their thought, they hard difficulties in reasoning and they could not perform task which required thinking and ability. Third are metabolic alterations. The study showed that individuals who slept only four hours in a single night increased appetite and hunger and this was as a result of leptin hormone. Lack of sleep also increases diabetic conditions and obesity which was as a result of imparement of glucose metabolism and lower energy expenditure. Young children in the study had a high BIM which is responsible for increasing weight. The study showed that reduction of sleep time is associated with risk of overweight.  For example, the study showed that lack of sleep increased the risk of increasing 5kg by 35% and the risk of developing obesity was 27% (ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA, 2010).  Lack of sleep weakens the activities of brain structures. In the study, individuals   who experienced 72-hour wakefulness decreased the metabolic rate of the brain by 6-8%. Other thing which was noticed is the glucose hypometabolism in various parts including hypothalamus, thalamus, cerebellum and others. The hypometabolism affected the   activities in motor speech center where cognitive functions decreased. On the same note, lack of sleep is associated with manic symptoms which affect the mental functions (ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA, 2010).  The study showed that individuals who lacked sleep suffered from interpersonal relationships and emotional intelligence. In addition, these individuals developed aggressive behaviors and other psychopathology behaviors such as insanity. Lack of sleep is associated with therapeutic application in that human beings are unable to perform normal functions. This occur when individuals develops depressive disorders which is contributed by organized activities (ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA, 2010).     

 

 Christian and Ellis (2011) use psychological and neurocognitive perspectives and state that lack of sleep affects self-control and increases hostility. The two leads to workplace deviance within the organization and as a result, this becomes a big problem to the organization. Workplace deviance is a threat to the well-being of the organization especially when individual develops deviance behaviors such as drug use, poor performance, vandalism and more (CHRISTIAN & ELLIS, 2011). Employees who are exposed to deviant behavior develop stress-related problems and fear at work which leads to turnover. Sleep research is used in many organizations to examine how deviance behaviors are related with   lack of sleep. Many studies and researchers have found that sleep deprivation is associated with disastrous behaviors which range from work performance, decision making, and worker well-being among many.  According to National Center on Sleep Disorder Research, in every year, U.S spends $150billion to cover loss contributed by accidents (CHRISTIAN & ELLIS, 2011). The authors assert that sleep is capable of influencing brain functions and individual alertness. However, sleep deprivation or lack of sleep affects the cogitative capacity. In addition, evidence show that lack of sleep affects self-regulation and affects the innovative thinking skills. Other point is that lack of sleep affects the brain functioning and the effect occurs when the prefrontal part of the brain is affected. This part is critical as it comprises neocortical structures which serve the purpose of controlling emotions, executive and supervisory. What happens is that individuals with sleep deprivation act impulsively-meaning that they act aggressively and violates social norms. This occurs due to the impairment of prefrontal cortex and when this part is damaged, it leads to antisocial behaviors.  The issue of self-regulation arises when brain function (prefrontal cortex) is affected (CHRISTIAN & ELLIS, 2011). What happens that is that brain damage occurs when glucose metabolism is low and glucose plays a significant role in the self-regulation.  When the brain part known as prefrontal cortex is damaged, self-regulatory resource depletion is developed. The article finds that sleep deprivation is associated with workplace deviance behaviors.  Self-regulation encompasses the control of behaviors and emotions, and the occurrence of self-regulatory resource depletion is an indication that individual develops lack of self-control and hostility. The article affirms that when self-regulatory resources which control the behaviors are damaged, individuals develop deviant behaviors. In addition, the individual acts impulsively and creates risky decisions.  Sleep deprivation or lack of sleep affects the emotion regulation (CHRISTIAN & ELLIS, 2011). This happens when prefrontal cortex is damaged which results to negative emotions which means that an individual is unable to regulate negative emotions and thus shows hostility.

Chittora et al (2015) assert that sleep is a physiological process responsible for the development of mental and physical health. However, lack of sleep or sleep deprivation results to neurobehavioral and neurocognitive effects and impaired functionality which leads to neuropathology.  Lack of sleep weakens the functions of brain structures. For example, lack of sleep for about 72hours reduces the brain metabolic rate by 6-8% (Chittora et al, 2015). In addition, the article asserts that lack of sleep increases the level of plasma glucocorticoids and cortisol which leads to brain cells damage. Other negative effects of lack of sleep include muscles ache, memory lapse, hallucinations, headaches, high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity among many. Lack of sleep leads to depressive disorders, cancer and other diseases and these occur due to the suppression of immune system. Behaviors disturbances such as motor activity, body weight and more are contributed by sleep deprivation (Chittora et al, 2015). All these effects occur due to the fact that lack of sleep causes oxidative challenges which interfere with the brain. The latter has high metabolic rate, high oxygen consumption, and high fatty acids which makes it vulnerable be the oxidative challenges. The Oxidative stress interferes with the defense system and fails to remove the free radicals. In addition, the oxidative stress affects the neuron and cause synaptic plasticity impairment which promotes memory deficits and finally causes neurodegeration (Chittora et al, 2015).

 

 

Conclusion

Sleep plays a significant role in maintaining the well-being of human beings. Various studies and researches have shown that sleep promotes physiological homeostasis, and for a human being to live healthy life, it is advisable to get enough sleep. In addition, for brain to function properly and make memory consolidation, sleep is needed. Sleep play many roles such as removing waste products from brain, promotes synaptic plasticity, energy conservation, brain development and growth, brain repair among many other functions. However, sleep deprivation is associated with negative outcomes such as brain impairment, verbal disturbances, mental-fatigue, epileptic attack, insomnia, impaired learning and more. The research has also found that lack of sleep interferes with the cognitive and emotional functions. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Reference

ORZEŁ-GRYGLEWSKA  Jolanta. (2010). CONSEQUENCES OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION. International Journal of Occupational

Medicine and Environmental Health23(1):95–114 DOI 10.2478/v10001-010-0004-9

 

Chittora, R., Jain, A., Suhalka, P., Sharma, C., Jaiswal, N., & Bhatnagar, M. (2015). Sleep deprivation:

Neural regulation and consequences. Sleep & Biological Rhythms, 13(3), 210-218.

doi:10.1111/sbr.12110

 

CHRISTIAN, M. S., & ELLIS, A. J. (2011). EXAMINING THE EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION ON

WORKPLACE DEVIANCE: A SELF-REGULATORY PERSPECTIVE. Academy Of Management

Journal, 54(5), 913-934. doi:10.5465/amj.2010.0179