The Dangers of Sleep Deprivation: Insights from a Neurologist

Written by Nahir Abdel Nabi

Monday, May 01, 2023 02:08 PM

Actress Nihal Anbar, a member of the Board of Directors of the Syndicate of Representative Professions, revealed the cause of the artist’s death Mustafa DarwishWhere she said in a special statement to “The Seventh Day” that the death was due to a sudden stop of the heart muscle, and the late artist wrote a post on social networking sites “Facebook”: “It is only me who did not know how to sleep.”

Dr. Anton Tikhonovsky, a neurologist, confirmed that lack of sleep negatively affects all body systems, and can lead to myocardial infarction and stroke, explaining that insomnia is a problem that bothers many because of its repercussions on the health of the body, according to what the newspaper reported. Gazeta.RU Especially since one of the consequences of lack of sleep is hallucinations, cardiovascular diseases, and so on, and an adult must sleep for a period ranging between 7-9 hours a day, and if the hours of sleep decrease compared to physiological standards until a few hours, then this means sleep deprivation.

Regardless of the reasons for lack of sleep, deviations occur in the body from the standards, which can eventually lead to health disorders such as impaired cognitive functions, decreased performance and emotional disorders, he said..

In addition to memory and concentration problems caused by reduced sleep duration, the person becomes irritable, and the nervous system does not have enough time to process the impressions and emotions accumulated over the previous day. Inadequate sleep in children leads to symptoms of attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, which disappear with improvement. sleep.

The neurologist also pointed out that chronic sleep deprivation becomes a cause of weight gain, because at night several substances that regulate the metabolism process are activated in the body, including ghrelin and leptin, and with a decrease in sleep duration, the concentration of the appetite-stimulating hormone ghrelin increases, and against this the concentration of the hormone ghrelin decreases. leptin that brakes it.

Tissue regeneration processes are active in the body during sleep, and this process depends mainly on the somatostatin hormone that the body produces during the period of deep sleep, meaning that the low level of this hormone, which is called growth hormone, leads to poor wound healing and recovery of health after injuries and physical exhaustion..

He also pointed out that “the permanent deviation of sleep time from the physiological norm is also a risk factor for the development of metabolic syndrome, which can lead to problems in the heart and blood vessels, including myocardial infarction and stroke.”.

The immune system also suffers when the quality of sleep decreases as well. For example, the results of an experiment conducted in 2003, which included examining patients vaccinated against hepatitis, showed that the amount of antibodies in patients who did not sleep the night after vaccination is twice as low compared to patients. who slept well