Lack of sleep causes more damage than most of us realize — and yet it’s usually the first thing we sacrifice when life gets busy. Between work, family, and everything else competing for our time, shaving off an hour or two (or three) feels like a reasonable trade-off. We tell ourselves the grogginess is manageable, that coffee will cover it. But the consequences go well beyond feeling tired in the morning. Over time, consistently short nights can have a serious impact on your overall health.
“I used to suggest that sleep is the third pillar of good health, along with diet and exercise,” said neuroscience and psychology Prof. Matthew P. Walker, who teaches at the University of California, Berkeley. “But I don’t agree with that anymore. Sleep is the single most effective thing you can do to reset your brain and body for health.”
“No aspect of our biology is left unscathed by sleep deprivation,” he says. “It sinks down into every possible nook and cranny.” To get a sense of the breadth, consider this: a study published last year showed that just one week of sleeping fewer than six hours a night resulted in changes to more than 700 genes. Just one week!
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, people that get less than 7 hours of sleep a night are:
- 41% more likely to have a heart attack
- 38% more likely to have coronary heart disease
- 50% more likely to have a stroke
- 40% more likely to have asthma
- 83% more likely to have COPD
- 4% more likely to have cancer
- 40% more likely to have arthritis
- 57% more likely to have depression
- 50% more likely to have chronic kidney disease
- 30% more likely to have diabetes
- 24% more likely to be obese
In a worst-case scenario, lack of sleep will cause death.
Short-term lack of sleep (getting six or fewer hours of shut-eye a night) triples your risk of drowsy driving-related accidents, according to the National Sleep Foundation’s Drowsydriving.org. While not all accidents result in death, the AAA Foundation for Traffic Safety reports that drowsy driving is involved in more than one in five fatal crashes on U.S. roads each year. And, consider this: if you drink and drive, your reflexes are delayed, but if you fall asleep at the wheel, you have no reflexes at all making fatal accidents far more likely.
Research suggests that what lack of sleep causes over the long term goes far beyond fatigue — it may significantly raise your risk of death from any cause. In the Whitehall II Study, British researchers tracked how sleep patterns affected the mortality of more than 10,000 civil servants over two decades. The results, published in 2007, showed that people who cut their sleep from seven hours to five or fewer nearly doubled their risk of death from all causes. The risk of dying from cardiovascular disease, in particular, also doubled.
What does all of this evidence scream? If you’re not banking 7-9 hours of sleep a night, you’re paving a path to very bad health outcomes and possibly even an early grave. So, the next time you’re prioritizing things on your 8-mile-long to-do list, make sure sleep comes out on top.
All material on this website is provided for your information only and may not be construed as medical advice or instruction. No action or inaction should be taken based solely on the contents of this information; instead, readers should consult appropriate health professionals on any matter relating to their health and well-being.
If you’re wondering just how much those lost hours are really adding up, Is 5 Hours of Sleep Enough? The Truth Will Probably Surprise You. is worth a read.