Nowadays we are sleeping less that the average one hundred years ago. The average today is about seven hours even though the recommended amount for most people is eight hours. A century ago the average was nine hours sleep a night. With all of our technology we have given ourselves more and more reason to get distracted including televisions, computers and video games. While this may have become the norm, there are several important reasons you should consider eliminating these distractions and getting more sleep to avoid the following symptoms of sleep deprivation.

Mental Effects

• Your mind is constantly active throughout the day even though you may not realize it. Whatever activity you do your brain is on the go all the time even if you do not consider yourself to be stressed. This takes its toll on the mind which needs sufficient time to recharge to function properly.

• Speech impediments can be caused by sleep deprivation which scientists think may be because our speech center almost shuts itself down leaving a less able part of our brain to handle speech functions. The result can be stuttering, slurring, repetition and clichés.

• It gets harder to access our older memories and to convert our long term memory to our short term memory, making it very difficult to retain information and learn a new skill.

• Creativity is reduced and problem solving abilities decreased with sleep deprived subjects shown to be less accurate and much slower to solve problems

• If someone is deprived of REM sleep they might suffer from hallucinations or some form of temporary insanity

• Driving can be dangerous if you are not getting enough sleep because you reaction time and judgment abilities are impaired and this is considered as harmful as intoxication to your driving ability.

Emotional Effects

• Attitudes become more pessimistic
• Heightened emotional stress and increased anxiety
• Depression and extreme sadness
• Unreasonable anger - road rage is thought to be caused in many cases by sleep deprivation

Physical effects

• The body ages faster
• Heart beat becomes less consistent
• Proper functioning of the body can be impaired because sleep deprivation causes a lowering of the core body temperature
• High blood sugar and other symptoms linked to type II diabetes because lack of sleep does not allow the body to process glucose properly.
• Fatigue
• Exhaustion

So as you can see there are serious mental, emotional and physical consequences to not getting enough sleep. It is essential that our mind and body has time to recharge and repair. It affects all areas of our life from relationships, to work, to personal relationships and can put our life danger because it impairs our judgment abilities and can lead to long term health problems.

There is not an exact amount of sleep that is optimal as it varies from person to person and eight hours a night is just a benchmark. Some people find they need less while others need more. The most important thing is that you wake feeling refreshed and rested. If you sleep a lot but still feel like you are not rested you should see your doctor who can rule out other problems such as sleep apnea which may be the problem.

Get more time to sleep by cutting out some of the unnecessary distractions in your day - your mind, body and spirit will thank you for it.