A foggy mirror
Are you tired? It’s a simple question, but your ability to answer it may be flawed, says Roy Raymann, the vice president of sleep science at SleepScore Labs, which makes technologies to improve sleep. “The brain is actually fooling you,” he says, just like it can fool you into driving after a few drinks. Recognizing your fatigue is particularly tricky if it’s brought on by regularly “under-sleeping” a little (say, six hours every night) rather than severely shorting sleep only on rare occasions (like getting just three hours of rest twice a year), says Dr. Jedidiah Ballard, an osteopathic physician and assistant professor of emergency medicine at Augusta University in Georgia. Here’s how experts say you can spot such mild chronic sleep deprivation:
You have weird cravings.
Raymann was never a fast-food-in-the-morning kind of guy, but that changed early in his career in sleep research. “I noticed that the smell of the Burger King restaurant in the morning after a night shift was really triggering me to walk in and get a burger at 6:30 a.m.,” he remembers. Now, he knows why: chronic sleep loss due to long, night and rotating shifts. “Sleep loss triggers the release of specific hunger hormones that will make you crave food with a lot of calories more often,” he says. And that, of course, leads to a host of long-term health issues including high blood pressure, diabetes and weight gain.
You can’t catch up at work.
Most of the qualities you need to be on your game at work and school — such as high motivation, good judgment, a sharp memory, solid reasoning, strong problem-solving skills and concentration — go downhill if you usually don’t get enough rest. In fact, studies show that being awake for 20 hours is enough to diminish your driving ability and reaction time as much as drinking to the legal alcohol level, Ballard says. Eventually, you’ll be straight-up delirious. When Ballard was training to be an Army Ranger, soldiers sometimes slept just 45 minutes a night. “It was not uncommon at night to see a guy talking to a bush he thought was a squad member,” he says.
You keep snapping at loved ones.
“I’m sorry for what I said when I was tired.” There’s a reason that phrase adorns T-shirts, mugs and e-cards: Many qualities that support strong relationships — think empathy, patience and emotional stability — take a serious hit with sleep deprivation, as does your general mood and outlook on life, says Dr. Camilo A. Ruiz, an osteopathic doctor and spokesperson for the American Academy of Sleep Medicine. “Sleep deprivation weakens that part of the brain that deals with reasoning and processing emotions,” he says. “Therefore, sleep-deprived patients can think less positively, have less impulse control, suffer with bad moods and show less empathy towards others.”
You can’t break a bad mood.
That fatigue-induced low mood — as well as other symptoms of sleep deprivation like low energy, apathy, trouble concentrating, irritability, feeling overwhelmed by everyday tasks and low motivation — can damage more than your relationships. Often, it can mirror or contribute to clinical depression, Ballard says. “Sleep is absolutely vital to regenerating neurotransmitters like dopamine, serotonin and norepinephrine,” he explains. “When our sleep is inadequate and these tiny chemicals are depleted, our emotional reserve plummets.” In fact, some research even found that people with insomnia were three times more likely to report thoughts of suicide and death in the past month than those without the condition.
Your libido is shot.
The more you need to get into bed, the less you want to get it on in bed. “Sleep is a must to replenish and release our sex hormones,” Ballard says. One study in the Journal of the American Medical Association even found that when young men slept less than five hours a night for one week, their testosterone levels plummeted as much as they would have had they aged 10 to 15 years. Beyond dulling your sex drive, sleep deprivation can impair both men and women’s reproductive systems enough to make it hard to get pregnant when they do have sex.
You’re not seeing fitness results.
Those wacky hormone levels can also mean trouble if you’re trying to build muscle, burn fat, run faster or otherwise make gains in the gym. Not only will your actual exercise routine likely suffer due to symptoms like poor coordination, but your muscles won’t have the necessary ingredients to repair and grow. “Your body is built as a system that loves regularity and has pre-programmed all kinds of maintenance efforts to happen at a particular time,” like when you’re asleep at night, Raymann says. “When you lose sleep, you disrupt that system and some of the recovery might not happen.”
You keep getting sick.
If you always seem to get sick when you feel like you can least afford it — say, a critical season at work or while cramming too much in before a vacation — here’s one likely explanation: It’s not bad karma, it’s sleep deprivation. “It weakens immune function and makes one more prone to catching the flu, colds and more serious infections,” Ballard says. Indeed, plenty of research details how sleep quality and quantity can make or break cells’ immune response development. Create your own karma instead of risking sickness, Ballard recommends. “Choose your battles, learn to say no and get the rest you need,” he says.
More from U.S. News
7 Reasons You’re in a Bad Mood That Can Actually Be Serious
7 Signs You’re Tired Other Than Yawning originally appeared on usnews.com
