8 horrible things that happen if you don't get enough sleep
Samantha Lee/Business Insider
Surrounding ourselves with screens comes with an unexpected side effect: We can't sleep. And our bodies and minds are suffering.
Whether it's because we're staying up to squeeze in a final episode of "The OA" or scrolling through Facebook, nearly 40% of us get less than seven hours of sleep a night, according to a recent Gallup poll. And the CDC estimates that another 50-70 million Americans likely have a sleep disorder.
Here are eight horrible things that can happen if you don't get enough sleep:
Colds
Samantha Lee/Business InsiderIf you're wondering why you're sick all the time and seem to pick up every bug that travels around the office, it's probably because you're not getting enough sleep. When a group of 153 people were exposed to a common cold, those who had gotten less than 7 hours of sleep in the two weeks prior were almost 3 times more likely to get sick than those who'd had 8 or more hours of sleep. How well you sleep is also a factor — those who had spent 92% of their time in bed actually asleep were 5.5 times more likely to catch a cold than those who had been peacefully slumbering 98-100% of the time they were in bed.
Source: Archives of Internal Medicine, 2009
Tummy troubles
Samantha Lee/Business InsiderNot sleeping can make the symptoms of Inflammatory Bowel Disease and acid reflux worse and may put you more at risk of developing IBD and inflammatory bowel syndrome, something that one in 250 Americans currently experience. Additionally, people with Crohn's disease were twice as likely to experience a relapse when they weren't getting enough sleep.
Source: World Journal of Gastroenterology, 2013
Irritability and mood swings
Samantha Lee/Business InsiderResearchers have found that interruptions and disturbances tend to bother us more when we haven’t slept. "Complaints of irritability and [emotional] volatility following sleepless nights" are common, a team of Israeli researchers observed after following a group of underslept medical residents. The study found that the negative emotional effect of disruptive events — things like being interrupted while in the middle of doing something — were amplified by sleep loss.
Source: Sleep, 2005
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