Signs Your Lack of Sleep Is Killing You (And How to Improve It)

You hear it over and over again like a broken record: get good sleep on a daily basis, or you’ll suffer the consequences. Genetically, there are the lucky few who can get away with a lack of sleep and still function at a high level. Let’s face it though—that probably isn’t you.

Getting great (or at least good) sleep requires a proactive approach, and most people aren’t wired to create a strategic approach to sleeping well.

Waking up tired isn’t just about a horrible feeling; it affects your health, your mood, and your cognitive functioning. It’s safe to say we aren’t at our peak performance under the influence of a lack of sleep. As much as we love coffee or any source of caffeine, the solution lies in your ability to change your patterns.

The good news is that it’s completely within your control. I’ll show you several strategies you can implement to gain the upper hand in your quest to obtain a proper night’s sleep.

Signs of a Lack of Sleep

The alarm yells, and you hit the snooze button, hoping for a small window of reprieve. It works until you’re jolted awake by the consistent efficiency of the alarm clock again. So much for hoping it suddenly breaks so you have an excuse to sleep in.

You begrudgingly get up after the third snooze cycle, haphazardly making your way into the kitchen to start brewing that cup of coffee you so desperately need. All the while you’re swearing at yourself, decrying that this is in fact the last time you’re going to go to bed this late.

With the liquid injection of caffeine taking effect, it’s smooth sailing in the morning, but before you know it, lunch is around the corner, and you’re downing some carb-heavy meal with your colleagues. With a belly full, you settle back in to focus, and like clockwork, your eyes shut and your head nods as you fight a losing battle with the nap gods.

You somehow weather this storm, wondering why companies don’t allow siestas that you always hear so many positive things about from your Spanish friends.

It’s now time to head home, and after fighting some traffic that routinely rears its ugly head, you’re back at your place. You’re exhausted mentally and physically. Besides playing with the kids and talking with your significant other, you’ve got just enough energy to eat dinner. But of course you conveniently forgot to pick up the dry cleaning on the way home^[1].

Does this sound like you?

If you paid attention to the hypothetical and quite common situation above, you’ll notice a number of areas that sleep affects: your career, personal life, physical state, and mental state.

Dark eye circles, wrinkles, brain fog, a lack of focus, and forgetting things are some examples of far-reaching effects a lack of sleep has in almost every area of your life.

Lack of Sleep and the Brain

In today’s fast-paced and highly stimulating society, it’s a full time job in itself trying to stay on track and keep your focus on the task at hand. We’re the masters of multi-tasking, and that’s not always a good thing.

When you’re tired, your cognitive functioning decreases as a result of neurons (the basic building block cells of the brain) having trouble communicating properly. This leads to temporary mental lapses that affect both memory and your personal visual perception^[2].

In other words, you become more forgetful. You get distracted more easily and lose focus. You can’t think straight, better known as brain fog.

How long does it take for all this to happen? Just one bad night of sleep.

How Lack of Sleep Affects Your Health

You’re at an increased risk of inviting in many health problems in the long-term if you can’t manage to get the right amount of sleep each night.

Here are some of the effects you could experience:^[3]

Cardiovascular Disease

You have a 48% increased chance of heart disease, including an elevated risk of a heart attack is you are experiencing a consistent lack of sleep.^[4]

High Blood Pressure

Your blood pressure could skyrocket, induced by both stress and low sleep.

Stroke

With your brain constantly fatigued and not able to properly repair itself overnight, your chances of stroke increase.

Diabetes

You’re at nearly three times the risk for Type II diabetes.

Lower Sex Drive

Your partner probably won’t be a fan of this, and neither will you. Your sex drive plummets when you’re groggy, and for good reason: you just don’t have the energy to accomplish simple tasks, let alone get frisky.

Higher Chance of Depression

Your energy levels go down, and your outlook on life can take a hit. In fact, getting too much or too little sleep is usually the first sign of mental health issues.^[5]

Weight Gain

Weight gain is another side effect of a lack of sleep. Your glucose metabolism takes a beating, along with the hormones that regulate your overall metabolism, shown through decreased leptin levels and increased ghrelin levels.^[6]

Leptin acts as an appetite suppressant and is released when you’re full, while ghrelin is released from the stomach in response to fasting and promotes the feeling of hunger.

Decreased Immune Function

The immune system takes a big hit when you’re consistently running low on a good night’s rest. In fact, you’re three times more likely to catch a cold, according to John Hopkins Medicine.

How to Get Enough Sleep

With all the things that can potentially go wrong with a lack of sleep, it’s no surprise we struggle when we’re tired. Luckily, we can actively combat our fatigued ways through a variety of time-tested methods, hacks, and tips,

Establish a (Short) Nightly Routine

Our brain loves habits and routines. This is, actually, a good and a bad thing. The brain doesn’t know the difference between what’s considered productive and what’s a waste of time, so it’s up to you to establish the difference between the good and the bad.

One excellent habit is to create a nighttime routine, which effectively tricks the brain into bedtime mode by starting a process of chemical reactions that signal you’re about to lay down soon.

Don’t worry; this is nothing that requires some elaborate, long process. It ideally should be something short. You can include some of the following:

• Meditating for a few minutes
• Sitting down and reflecting on how the day went
• Thinking about some things you’re grateful for, journaling, or writing
• Reading for 15-30 minutes
• Getting involved in a relaxing hobby

By establishing a routine and following through on it consistently, you’ve successfully associated that routine with sleep. You can take a look at the night routine of Lifehack’s CEO as reference: The Ultimate Night Routine Guide: Sleep Better and Wake Up Productive

If you notice, none of the above habits involve technology. It’s been found in many research studies that blue light emitted by our screens can disrupt your sleep cycle^[7].

If you happen to find yourself on the computer in the evenings, do yourself a favor and install a program called Flux. As the night wears on, Flux continually erases the blue light more and more until it’s virtually eliminated from your screen, helping you avoid the sleep-blocking blue light.

Don’t Go to Bed Hungry (And Do Eat Carbs)

Most sources will agree that eating late lends itself to disaster — your body is allocating resources trying to digest a heavy meal, and you’ll have trouble falling asleep. That heavy, pressing feeling on your stomach as you try to turn out the lights just doesn’t work for many people.

As a result, you’ll read about how staying away from food for a few hours before bed is the smart choice, especially when it involves carbs.

But studies have shown that eating carbs at night (especially starchy carbs) can actually help you fall asleep faster.^[8] Tryptophan and serotonin, two brain chemicals involved in sleep, are naturally boosted after eating carbs. Ever felt like taking a nap after a big, starchy meal? You get the idea behind it now.

Now, that doesn’t mean you should eat a pepperoni pizza two hours before bed, but swearing off carbs after 3 PM isn’t the solution either. Don’t be afraid of them, and make sure you aren’t going to bed hungry. Be reasonable.

Reserve Bed for Sleeping

Your bed should only be used for sleeping and, aside from that, a little friskiness. Anything else has no place there.

Trying to study or read in bed is bad news for your sleep cycle and may worsen your lack of sleep. When your head hits that pillow, your brain needs to know that it’s sleep time, not social media time, or reading time, or even studying time.

Remember how earlier I suggested that executing a relaxed nighttime routine or habit tricks your brain into starting the process of releasing sleep-inducing hormones, as it expects to shut down soon for some slumber?

One of those habits is getting the brain to believe that sleep is right around the corner once you lay in your bed. If you begin to associate your bed with activities such as reading or studying, your brain may fail to make the right association.

Listen to a Podcast or Audiobook

Not a fan of reading actual books? Soak it in through your ears, and there’s no better time before bed. It’s a chance to kick back, relax, and potentially even close your eyes as you listen to an audiobook of your choice.

If you’d prefer not to pay for the audio version of a book, there are also thousands of podcasts available for free. Ranging from storytelling to personal development and anything in between, there’s never been a better selection of tools at your disposal.

Keep Your Schedule Consistent

Whatever you do, stay consistent in order to get over a lack of sleep. Implementing a good routine or habit for a week and then falling off won’t do you much good. If you’re confused as to why something isn’t working, focus on your execution.

Things like this take time — you can’t expect a 180-degree turnaround after a week or two. This is especially true when you’ve already tricked your brain into association with a bad habit that you’re trying to undo.

Neuroplasticity, the ability for the brain cells to form connections based on repetition, is a real thing. Like anything, it can be good or bad — if you’ve implemented great habits, neuroplasticity is an awesome thing. If you’ve implemented bad habits, it’s a bad thing.

Fortunately, it’s completely possible to undo bad connections and form good ones with a little bit of patience and grit. Here’s how you can learn to break a bad habit: How I Broke 3 Bad Habits in Less Than 2 Months

The Bottom Line

If you could start making changes today to help you get better sleep, what would you do? If you’re consistently experiencing a lack of sleep, it’s time to implement some great sleep habits to bring yourself to peak performance and improve your quality of life.

Developing a routine, listening to audiobooks or podcasts, keeping a consistent schedule, and reserving the bed for sleeping only are just a few of the choices at your disposal.

It’s time to go out and get the hours of sleep you deserve.

More on Beating a Lack of Sleep

• 5 Things That Will Help You Sleep Naturally
• 20 Best Guided Meditations for Sleep and Insomnia
• Why You Can’t Pay off a Sleep Debt You’ve Accumulated Over the Week

Featured photo credit: Zohre Nemati via unsplash.com