Sleep is a crucial aspect of your life that, when affected, will cause your whole system to become dysfunctional. If you have insomnia or think you may have it, you’ll notice its damaging effects reflected in how you feel during waking hours. When you have a condition such as insomnia, you might feel locked out of dreamy heaven; read below for how insomnia negatively affects your health.
What Is Insomnia?
Insomnia is an inability to fall asleep within a normal time range and a failure to stay asleep. Most people with normal sleeping behaviors can fall asleep within 15 to 30 minutes of lying down and are able to sleep uninterrupted for up to seven hours. Many things cause insomnia, but conditions such as chronic stress, depression, illness, and medications can exacerbate its symptoms. In today’s day and age, heightened levels of stress and anxiety are commonplace, and as such, insomnia is on the rise.
Adults need around seven to eight hours of sleep a night in order to function optimally. Many people who don’t even have sleep disorders fail to achieve those hours. We as a society are running on empty, and rectification is required. You might think of insomnia as something you simply have to deal with, but it’s not a benign condition—this is how insomnia negatively affects your health.
Dementia
You may believe insomnia isn’t so bad when you think in the short term, but lack of sleep can affect your quality of life as you age. It’s a working theory that your brain refreshes itself while you sleep, ridding it of any substances that tend to build up, such as plaque. Plaque buildup is a leading cause of disorders such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Therefore, insomnia increases your likelihood of a diagnosis of one of these disorders.
More Accidents
Sleep deprivation negatively affects your own health, but it can also put the health and safety of others at risk. People who work in the medical field are often overworked, so it’s safe to assume they’re constantly sleep deprived. Additionally, the stress of a medical job can cause sleepless nights, increasing the likelihood of insomnia. Errors of all kinds increase in people who suffer from sleep deprivation because of insomnia.
This applies to those outside the medical field as well—whether you’re a forklift operator or simply driving to and from work, when you combine sleep deprivation with the operation of any machinery, the people around you are at serious risk. Insomnia drastically reduces your alertness and reaction time, which in turns increases the likelihood of accidents of all kinds.
Heart Health
Sleeping fewer than six hours per night increases your chances of having a myocardial infarction, otherwise known as a heart attack. When you suffer from sleep deprivation, your heart suffers with you. The reason that lack of sleep and heart health are correlated is due to the fact that when you wake up, your body naturally spikes your heart rate and blood pressure. This spike is completely normal. However, if you can’t stay asleep or you wake up several times a night, your body works overtime to consistently produce these responses. When normal responses become abnormal, your heart experiences extra stress.
Stroke
As established, insomnia gravely affects your heart health. The symptoms correlating to bad heart health, such as increased blood pressure and heart rate, also raise your risk of stroke. Stroke is much more likely in people who have chronic high blood pressure.
A statistic that might surprise you is that insomnia increases your risk of stroke by as much as 50 percent. Additionally, if you also have other conditions such as obesity, your risk of stroke is also increased. As such, you can glean why insomnia increases your likelihood of stroke.
Cancer
In addition to staying away from carcinogens in our foods and products, we must also stay away from… lack of sleep? Yes, insomnia is carcinogenic, making your body more susceptible to cancer. The most common cancers associated with sleep debt are prostate, breast, and colon cancers. Insomnia increases your risk of cancer due to the havoc it wreaks on your body. While you sleep, your body rests and rejuvenates itself; it fails to accomplish that without sleep. Sleep deprivation puts your cells through more wear and tear, and as a result, it damages your DNA, increasing the risk of various cancers.
Obesity and BMI
If you’ve ever found yourself scrounging in the kitchen for something high in calories when you received less-than-ideal sleep, this was no coincidence. Sleep regulates ghrelin and leptin, which are the hormones related to feeling hungry and full, respectively. With insomnia, you can expect to feel hungrier than usual. Without proper sleep, it’s much harder for your body to maintain the homeostasis of your hormones. As such, lack of sleep puts those hunger hormones out of whack, so you’re more likely to overeat. This is why insomnia increases the likelihood of obesity and having a higher body mass index (BMI), which can diminish overall well-being.
Mental Health
Insomnia doesn’t just negatively affect the health of your body; it also affects the health of your mind. When you have insomnia, you may be twice as likely to have a diagnosis of depression. What’s more, insomnia might trigger or increase symptoms of psychosis, paranoia, mania, and more. Lack of sleep can exacerbate many symptoms relating to underlying mental health conditions and increase your likelihood of developing one of these conditions.
How To Mitigate Insomnia
As your insomnia becomes more chronic, the above health conditions are likely to increase in severity. If you’re wondering how you might mitigate insomnia, there are many options, the most common being the prescription of sleeping pills. The problem with prescription pills is that they can be habit-forming, and they’re best when used short term or sparingly. So how can you help your insomnia in the long term?
If you’re wary of medication, that’s understandable. NeuroSpa offers transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) treatment for insomnia. TMS is an FDA-approved, nonmedical, noninvasive therapy that works by stimulating areas of your brain to rewire it. This restores natural brain functioning and optimizes your sleep. If you’re in Orange County, CA, and want TMS treatment for your insomnia, NeuroSpa is happy to help you.
