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www.AbbysHealthFood.com | # 60| Page 21 Negative Side Effects of 10 By Carly Fraser S L E E P D E P R I VAT I O N Whether you delay your sleep because of video games, 9Gag or Reddit, your sleep deprivation could have some very serious side effects. Both chronic and partial sleep deprivation affects not only your mood, but it results in daytime sleepiness, headaches, and poor concentration, to name a few. The hormone melatonin is secreted by the pineal gland in the brain, somewhere between 9 and 10pm. It helps to maintain the body's circadian rhythm and regulates other hormones like the timing and release of female reproductive hormones. When it is dark, your body produces more melatonin, and when it is light, melatonin production drops. You can see why learning how to improve and protect your melatonin production is important to your overall state of well- being. But what happens when we don't take the necessary steps to ready ourselves for bed, and instead stay up long into the night, only to wake tired, groggy, and moody? NEGATIVE SIDE EFFECTS OF SLEEP DEPRIVATION Increased stress levels, unnatural exposure to blue light from electronics and decreased exposure to natural light are all contributors of sleep deprivation. When we're bombarded by the effects of an unnatural environment, our sleep becomes compromised. According to recent research done by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), around 7–19 percent of adults in the United States state that they regularly lack sleep or don't get enough rest. However, getting enough sleep is vital for overall wellbeing. The body needs and requires enough sleep to fight off disease, strengthen the immune system, detox, digest, and maintain cognitive health. Without it, our bodies struggle, and could lead to some of these negative side effects: 1. Higher Levels of Anxiety When we sleep, our body repairs itself and relaxes muscle tension caused by stress. When we slack on our sleep, this stress builds up, and essentially doubles the stress tension for the next day (making it more difficult to cope). The mind body connection is strong, and stress on the body, if not repaired through proper sleep, will lead to stressful thoughts and manifest as anxiety. Anxiety is also caused by chronic adrenaline release, something that is also linked with those who get little sleep each night. Research presented at the annual Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego revealed that missing just one night of sleep results in a pattern of brain activity that looks just like anxiety. "If we are chronically sleep deprived, if we keep losing sleep, it could sensitize us to greater anxiety levels and help develop an anxiety disorder," said Eti Ben-Simon, a postdoctoral fellow in the department of neuroscience at the University of California, Berkeley. The study found that when participants were sleep deprived, their anxiety levels increased by 30 percent the next day, with half the participants reaching the threshold for a clinical anxiety disorder. 2. Higher Levels of Depression Lack of sleep interferes with our neurotransmitters and can ultimately lead to a decline in synaptic signaling between neurons, which normally regulate our mood. One study on the link between sleep deprivation and depression found that the amygdala (an area of the brain responsible for processing emotions and regulating anxiety) was greatly impacted. It was found that participants who had been sleep deprived for 35 hours showed a greater amygdala response when presented with emotionally negative pictures. Those who had not been sleep deprived had a much lower response. In addition, links with parts of the brain that regulate the amygdala seemed weaker, too. This could signify that the participants were perhaps less able to control their emotions. These findings point to how sleep deprivation could be a major trigger in developing mental health conditions like depression. 3. Impaired Cognition Lack of sleep has been directly correlated with less focus during the day and a decline in forming proper memories. The journal, SLEEP, also found that just one night of sleep deprivation was associated with loss of brain tissue. 4. Higher Risk of Stroke Studies have been done, which have found that insomniacs have the highest risk of stoke compared to those with no sleeping problems. Lack of sleep weakens cardiovascular health, raising blood pressure and restricting blood flow to the brain.