Stay up late, and leave the world early - How sleep deprivation kills you

“The shorter you sleep, the shorter your life.”

 — Matthew Walker, sleep scientist

Weall have the kind of friend who sleeps very little every day. May be you’re one of them. I even know some people would brag about how little they sleep, just to prove how hard they work and how “efficient” they are, how they “cherish” their every waking moment. It’s just plain irony to me, because if you were a good time manager, you wouldn’t have to stay up in the first place.

I am the total opposite of these people. I need my sleep. A lot of sleep. No less than 7 hours. So it was inevitable for me ask them, “How do you survive with so little sleep? Aren’t you tired?” And almost always, I got a confident “No, I’m fine with sleeping 6 hours a day.”

As it turned out, they were wrong. They were far from “fine.”

Every physiological system of our body is regulated by sleep, and almost all severe diseases can be traced to be related to a lack of sleep.

In this article, I’m going to give you a quick glimpse of what sleep deprivation can do to you. I will talk about it in two aspects — cognitive impairment, and Alzheimer’s Disease.

The things I present here are scientific findings that are testable, replicable, and reliable. Note that I don’t present every detail from every study but only important findings and implications.

Cognitive Impairment 

First, let’s take a look at how your cognitive ability would be impaired by a lack of sleep.

Obviously, it is harder to focus when you don’t have enough sleep. But to what extent does this affect you and how seriously is the effect? Take driving for example:

If you have less than 5 hours of sleep, the chance you get into a car accident is 30% higher.If you’re awake for more than 20 hours, you’re basically worse than a drunk driver.

Now, it is important to say, under the effect of alcohol, people simply react slower. However, if you dose off behind the wheel, you don’t react at all. When you’re drunk and you see a person walking cross the road, you might hit the brake a bit latter than usual. But when you fall asleep, even for a moment, you don’t see, and you don’t hit the brake.

Driving is the case that requires intense attention. What about other cognitive ability? Like learning? Many of us stay up late to catch up for the school work or to prepare for the exam tomorrow. How much can we stuff into our brain when we don’t have enough sleep?

Very little. It turns out that sleep is the “save button” to our memory (another quote form Matthew Walker).

In other words, without sleep, the words you read on the pages can’t be stored in your brain.

So next time when you think you “have to” stay up late for the exam, think twice, especially when you have to drive tomorrow. Or maybe think earlier, plan ahead so that you have enough sleep on the night before the exam.

Alzheimer’s Disease

Alzheimer’s is one of the leading cause of death worldwide. After 50, every two of us is likely to have this kind of disease. However, the cause of this disease and the cure for is have remained unknown. Even the diagnosis made for it cant’t be sure either. The only way to accurately know if one has this disease is still autopsy.

One reason that has been believed to be the cause of this disease is the chemical tau and the tangles it created at the neurons. According to a recent research, sleep deprivation could be an early bio-marker for this.

Although this finding is still pretty preliminary, it adds another layer to the importance of sleep.

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These are not my arguments, they are facts. Sleep literally influences every angle of our lives. Through evolution, we are who we are now, and depriving ourselves of sleep is against this rule. In fact, human beings are the only species that will intentionally deprive themselves of sleep.

Some people might say, “Those are just statistics, I could be the exception. I can totally survive with little sleep.” Yes, there’s a gene called DEC that allows some people to sleep little and show no symptoms of sleep deprivation.

But the chance to have this gene is less than being hit by a thunder.

Also, sleep deprivation is a debt you accumulate over time. You may not be aware of its harm when you’re young. But when you are in your 40s or 50s, it might manifest itself by a stroke, and you either survive or you don’t.

After knowing these facts, I simply cringe when people tell me sleep only 6 hours of sleep. What they don’t know is that they are not using their time wisely, they’re trading their waking time for living time. The simple truth is — the less you sleep, the sooner you die.

References: 

Walker, M. (2017). Why we sleep: Unlocking the power of sleep and dreams. Simon and Schuster.Walker, M. P., & Stickgold, R. (2006). Sleep, memory, and plasticity. Annu. Rev. Psychol., 57, 139-166.Yoo, S. S., Gujar, N., Hu, P., Jolesz, F. A., & Walker, M. P. (2007). The human emotional brain without sleep—a prefrontal amygdala disconnect. Current Biology, 17(20), R877-R878.Barnes, C. M., Miller, J. A., & Bostock, S. (2017). Helping employees sleep well: effects of cognitive behavioral therapy for insomnia on work outcomes. Journal of Applied Psychology, 102(1), 104.Disrupted sleep in one’s 50s, 60s raises risk of Alzheimer’s disease. (n.d.). Retrieved October 21, 2019, from https://medicalxpress.com/news/2019-06-disrupted-50s-60s-alzheimer-disease.html

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Written by Felix, Chen-wei, Yu. Graduate Student of Applied Psychology in KMU.