What Happens When You Don't Sleep Enough? By W.P. Allen Allen At Isnare.com Ezine Articles

Missing a single night of sleep is really not that bad for your body. If you plan on giving a speech the next day, began a new job, ride on an airplane, or start a new vacation, it would only be natural to have a bit of difficulty getting the sleep the night before, but the next day's excitement and the activities that are to come almost always counteract any affects that you might feel if you lose sleep.

The main problem that you will experience because of a poor nights sleep, or even several nights of poor sleep, is that you just tend to get very sleepy. You may also have motivational problems for doing work or pretty much anything else but falling asleep. You may find that it's difficult to pay attention to certain tasks, especially if they're boring. Your reaction time also may be somewhat slowed. Certain activities can also be very risky if you're not getting enough sleep. So there are some affects, but they usually not very dangerous or critical.

For most people's positions, performance is not often affected by a single night of lost sleep. However, if you have to make crucial judgments or do creative thinking it can be much more difficult, and if your job is extremely mundane, there is a decrease in performance even if the lost of just several hours of sleep during one night.

In Cambridge, England there was a sleep study conducted with army recruits. The researcher had them do some very monotonous work. The work included doing things such as crossing out the letter B in a series of words, this was done for many hours a day after the army recruits had lost different amounts of sleep. The recruits that lost only a few hours of sleep still had trouble with the activity.

But most of the tasks that we do every day are not that boring, and especially in an emergency, we are kept awake by adrenaline and this keeps us effectively working the next day and makes up for any lost sleep.

If for some reason you find yourself forced to engage in activities such as driving after you have lost sleep, the danger is much more increased because you are not as attentive and not as careful in your judgment. You also may fall asleep behind the wheel.

When you have to spend an entire night without sleep-for example, because of an emergency-you may feel the most sleepy around the times of 4 to 5:00 AM. Then if you are continuing to stay awake, usually get some sort of second wind at about 8 to 10:00 AM and you can function relatively well again for the rest of the day.

Missing sleep on a chronic basis, however, may be a different story altogether. After you go for several nights without sleep, your performance goes way down, and you have much more trouble concentrating in doing menial tasks such as remembering numbers.

This is what normally happens when you find yourself without enough sleep. Unless you have to operate a vehicle or handle any type of heavy machinery you should be OK.

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