Your 20s are full of new jobs and dates and trips and parties and mistakes that you can fix (or forget about) in your 30s. And there’s basically no time for sleep.
Unfortunately, late nights don’t just make morning suck. When you keep not getting enough sleep, it can affect your body in the long run.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine [AASM] recommends between 7 and 9 hours of sleep per night for adults.
Experts are just beginning to understand how sleep affects just about everything you do. But they do suggest you look out for these scary side effects of skimping on sleep in your 20s:
1. Increased risk of disease
In a recent study involving more than 54,000 adults, researchers found that people who sleep less than six hours per night (or more than nine) were significantly more likely to have heart disease or diabetes, have suffered a stroke, or be obese, even after researchers adjusted the results for other known risk factors.
2. Heightened blood pressure
Sleep loss stresses out your body and mind in a way that causes your blood pressure to spike. Over time, this could damage your heart, arteries, kidneys, and even bring about stroke, loss of vision, and a host of other health problems you seriously don’t want.
3. Weakened immune system and reduced effectiveness of certain vaccinations
Vaccines are designed to trick your body into creating antibodies that provide immunity to a particular disease or infection. But exhaustion compromises the immune system, so your body doesn’t produce adequate antibodies, according to a study in which researchers administered hepatitis B vaccinations and measured patients’ antibodies before and after treatment. People who slept fewer than six hours a night were the least likely to respond to the vaccine and were 11.5 percent more likely to emerge unprotected.
4. Stress
When you don’t get enough sleep, your body naturally releases the stress hormone cortisol. And it doesn’t matter whether you were up late to work on spreadsheets or to work on catching up on your favorite tv show.
5. Greater risk of death
People who sleep less than five hours per night are 15 percent more likely to die from literally any cause, according to data from three massive studies. So yes, going to bed too late could eventually kill you.
6. Impaired creativity
Neuroimaging studies suggest that the brain spontaneously reorganizes information when you rest, which could explain why it’s so much harder to focus and come up with ideas when you haven’t slept.
7. Moodiness
There’s something about exhaustion that turns you into Negative Nancy: In a two-year study in which 78 medical residents tracked their sleep and intermittently recorded their emotional responses to various stimuli, researchers found that fatigue intensified participants’ negative emotions. Sleep deprivation actually affects your mood even more than it does your motor and cognitive performance, according to a massive review of 19 original research studies published in Sleep. Meaning? You’re more susceptible to angry tangents when you’re sleepy.
8. Lower GPA
Research suggests that college students who sleep the least earn lower grades than those who sleep nine or more hours per night. Your brain needs to cycle through certain deep sleep stages to store memories and solidify the things you learn. When you fall asleep, your heart rate and metabolic rate drop so your body can focus on those things. No sleep, no storage.
9. Poor decisions
Many parts of the brain are involved in decision-making. When you don’t give your brain enough rest, it functions at half-mast, and you’ll end up making less than savory choices.
10. Fertility issues
While there’s no conclusive proof that sleep deprivation directly causes infertility, experts know that lack of sleep can stress you out and suspect it can also can interfere with your body’s circadian rhythm. Together, this can ultimately suppress your reproductive hormones and impair your ability to sustain a pregnancy.
