Table 2.
A summary of the main consequences of insufficient sleep.
| Complications | Effects | References |
|---|---|---|
| Daytime sleepiness | - Inadvertently fall asleep during sedentary activities,such as meetings, reading, watching television or movies, or while driving and increased risk for motor vehicle accidents | Komada et al.92 |
| Emotional disturbances | - Results in a
more negative mood, with reduced optimism and sociability.
Complaints of pain were also observed - Worsens mood states in healthy adolescents, with females having heightened vulnerability |
Haack and Mullington77 Short and Louca83 |
| Effects on functions of the brain | - Cognitive
impairment, prefrontal cortex dysfunction, Novelty detection, a
mechanism that involves the frontal lobes, gets negatively
affected - Memory disorders |
Gosselin et al.75 Saletin et al.82 |
| Effects on the structure of the brain | - Reduction of
cells in the dentate gyrus of the hippocampus - Structural changes in the cortical neurons- Degeneration of locus ceruleus neurons |
Guzman-Marin et al.76 Roman et al.81 Zhang et al.84 |
| Effects on body weight | - Weight gain
during insufficient sleep reverses when normal sleep is
resumed - Decrease of appetite-suppressing hormone leptin while levels of ghrelin, a hunger |
Knutson and Van Cauter78 Nedeltcheva et al.79 |
| Glucose metabolism | - Glucose
tolerance test shows a pre-diabetic state in otherwise normal
persons - Changes in insulin sensitivity and body weight - Increased insulin resistance in diabetes |
Robertson et al.80 Knutson and Van Cauter78 |
| Cardiovascular system | - Hypertension,
arrhythmia, oxidative stress,endothelial dysfunction,
inflammation, and metabolic disorder in coronary heart disease
patients - Coronary heart disease |
Aldabal & Bahammam53 |
| Reproductive system | - Impairment of sperm health | Liu et al.85 |
| Genes linked with immune and inflammatory processes | - Fraternal twins
have shown that resiliency and vulnerability to sleep loss are
highly heritable - Variant in the ABCC9 gene that explains approximately 5% of thevariation in sleep duration - Genetic polymorphisms related to orexin signaling, are important for predicting an individual's vulnerability to overeating and gaining weight when sleep deprived |
Kuna et al.86 Allebrandt et al.87 Spaeth et al.88 |
| Circardian rhythms | Reduction in circardian transcripts in whole blood | Archer & Oster89 |
| Immune System, Inflammation and Infection | - Decrease
antibody production following influenza vaccination - Dampened the normal circadian T-cell function and regulation - Associated with a 1.39 relative risk of developing pneumonia - Alterations in interleukin 6 and tumor necrosis factor alpha - Leading to cardiovascular disease, insulin resistance, and osteoporosis |
Bollinger et al.90 Patel et al.91 Irwin et al.74 |