The Negative Effects of Poor Sleep: Is It Really That Important?

If you’ve been underestimating or ignoring the negative effects of poor sleep on your health and life, this article will change your priorities.

Countless studies have proven that sleep is one of the cornerstones of health. It’s equally as important, if not more important, than exercise and nutrition.

In today’s fast-paced world, sleep disorders run rampant. Many individuals suffer from the effects of poor sleep and sleep loss, struggling to perform daily tasks and enjoy their lives. Poor sleep isn’t a problem if you suffer from it occasionally, but if it becomes a pattern, it can be physically and mentally destructive.

Between 8-40% of people suffer from insomnia, while another 20-30% have poor sleep (1). Another 8-10% have chronic insomnia.

It’s not only sleep deprivation that can wreak havoc on your health and your daily life. It’s also the quality of your sleep or lack thereof.

So what are the differences between healthy and poor sleep? To understand this, we need to understand what goes on in our bodies when we sleep.

Why Is Poor Sleep So Dangerous?

While you sleep, your body is performing many tasks that are vital to your well-being such as repairing and rebuilding tissues, replenishing hormones, manufacturing white blood cells, and removing toxins. It also resets the circuitry in your brain to help with memory storage and the processing of stress and emotions.

If you’re struggling to sleep, your body isn’t able to properly perform these tasks. The effects of this impaired functioning can be seen when sleep deprivation contributes to the onset of a cold or other illness (2).

The increased risk of getting sick isn’t the only side effect of poor sleep. Some of the more harmful effects of insomnia and poor sleep include a higher risk of (3):

Diabetes
Pain and disability (4)
Hypertension
Obesity
Heart attack
Stroke
All-cause mortality (5)
Mental disorders such as depression

The effects of insomnia and other sleep disorders are easy to recognize in the short term. For example, an automobile accident related to sleep deprivation.

The long-term, cumulative effects I mentioned above are a lot more difficult to track. This is one reason it’s taken a while for poor sleep to be recognized as a serious individual and public health issue.

Now that we’ve gone over why you need your beauty sleep, let’s talk about what separates normal, healthy sleep from poor sleep.

The Differences between Poor Sleep and Healthy Sleeping Patterns

Healthy sleep is based on the duration, quality, timing, and regularity of your sleep, as well as the absence of interruptions. The different stages of sleep are all necessary for the restoration and recovery of your body and mind. Healthy sleep consists of rapid eye movement (REM) sleep and non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep. Stages three and four of NREM are your most restorative sleep stages, typically occurring during the first one-third of the night.

The general definition of sleep loss is less than seven to eight hours each night, which is the average basal need. Poor sleep is marked by several key factors, such as:

Waking too early
Having trouble falling asleep
Waking up frequently
Experiencing restless sleep (atypical movements, sensations, and behaviors while asleep)

These sleep issues often manifest as:

Excessive daytime sleepiness
Depressed mood
Poor memory
Difficulty concentrating

Some sleep issues are noticeable, like struggling to fall asleep. Others, such as sleep disruptions, aren’t always as obvious. Those who suffer from sleep apnea temporarily stop breathing but don’t usually wake up completely.

Insomnia versus Poor Sleep

While the term insomnia is often the default term to describe difficulty sleeping, there are around ninety known sleep disorders. Insomnia is one of the most common.

Insomnia is differentiated from other sleep issues by one crucial factor, chronicity. If you struggle to fall or stay asleep, or experience non-restorative sleep at least three times per week for at least three months, that’s considered insomnia.

But what causes insomnia and other sleep problems?

Causes of Poor Sleep and Sleep Loss

Cortisol-Melatonin Imbalance

Our circadian rhythm dictates our sleep cycles. Two hormones that play a crucial role in our circadian rhythm are cortisol and melatonin. Melatonin is also considered a neurotransmitter and is released by the pineal gland in the brain.

As melatonin rises in the evening, cortisol falls. As melatonin falls in the morning, cortisol rises.

Many lifestyle habits can disrupt this mechanism, such as confusing the light-dark reflex with bright screens or lights at night. Furthermore, your body needs to be exposed to actual sunlight during the day to produce enough melatonin at night.

Typically, cortisol levels are highest in the morning to assist you with waking up and lowest in the evening to help you sleep. People with insomnia or insomnia symptoms often show the opposite trend in cortisol levels (6).

The circadian clock regulates the release of cortisol through the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis (7).

As we’ll discuss later on, there are many other factors that can affect cortisol production and throw off your cortisol and melatonin levels. For example, a low-noise environment in the evening helps lower your cortisol.

External factors, such as chronic stress, can affect HPA axis performance by lowering its ability to adapt to stress (8). This affects your ability to get deep, restful sleep.

Gut issues

When you hear neurotransmitters, you probably think of the “chemical messengers” in the brain. But your gut produces neurotransmitters as well. If the good and bad bacteria in your gut are imbalanced, this can inhibit the production of neurotransmitters that help you get restful sleep.

The good bacteria in your gut contribute to the production of neurotransmitters like serotonin and dopamine. In fact, 90% of serotonin is produced in the gut. Serotonin production is a catalyst for melatonin production. If serotonin levels are low, it’s impossible to produce enough melatonin.

Gut issues are the root of many seemingly unrelated problems, but that’s a whole other topic. For now, it’s important to know that your gut health is crucial for healthy and restful sleep.

Hormone imbalance

The importance of balanced hormones is clear from our exploration of the roles of cortisol and melatonin.

Of course, you have more hormones than just these two that are essential to the overall balance of your system. We see the effect of hormone imbalance on sleep in women with premenstrual syndrome (PMS) and menopause. Sleep issues can be a result of fluctuating hormones and various hormone imbalances (9).

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can explain various hormone-related sleep issues. One example is the deficiency of liver blood that follows menstruation or results from heavy menstrual bleeding. This affects sleep and leads to daytime sleepiness, emotional imbalance, and other symptoms of sleep loss (10).

Another example is yin deficiency with heat, as commonly seen in menopausal women who suffer from hot flashes, night sweats, sleep disturbances, and anxiety.

Lifestyle and habits

Many lifestyle choices can harm your sleep quality and duration. Let’s go over some of these key contributors.

How to Improve Your Poor Sleep Health

Now that you know how important sleep is, you might be wondering how you can improve your sleep hygiene. These are only a few of the many lifestyle changes you don’t need a prescription for that can make a significant difference in your sleep health.

Set a sleep schedule

Going to bed and waking up at the same time every day can make a significant difference in your sleep health. This helps your body develop optimal timing for the release and inhibition of chemicals that dictate your circadian rhythm.

Avoid certain activities

Activities like working, having stimulating conversations, and watching action movies or the news engage your brain and activate your stress hormones.

Replace these activities with ones that signal to your mind and body that bedtime is approaching like reading, listening to soothing music, playing with a pet, meditating, or journaling.

Adjust lighting

Ditching the nightlight and making sure your room is completely dark will improve your sleep quality. Consider blackout curtains or an eyeshade if you still have light streaming into your room.

You should turn down full-spectrum lights in the evening to stimulate melatonin production. This includes avoiding screens one to two hours before bedtime. But if you tend to use screens before bed, wearing glasses that block blue light is the way to go.

Avoid certain drinks

Coffee, tea, soda, and energy drinks are all drinks that wreck your sleep quality.

You might think your afternoon cup of coffee isn’t messing with your sleep because you don’t have trouble falling asleep, but it can affect your sleep quality in unseen ways. Caffeine has a half-life of five to six hours, so you’ll still have a considerable amount in your system at midnight.

Avoid alcohol.

Alcohol is a sedative. Some people think it helps them sleep, but it damages their sleep cycles.

It’s important to cycle between NREM (deep sleep) and REM (dream sleep). Entering both phases multiple times throughout the night is essential for proper recovery and repair. Blood alcohol blocks REM sleep. The result is waking up multiple times throughout the night, sometimes without you realizing it.

Avoid sleep medications

These work similarly to alcohol in the way they disrupt important phases of the sleep cycle.

If you take sleeping pills, it’s a good idea to start a treatment plan with a Functional Medicine Practitioner to restore your circadian rhythm.

Limit eating

We know that our bodies are supposed to be repairing and healing overnight, which takes a lot of energy. Digestion also uses up a lot of energy, so it takes energy away from your healing processes.

It’s also uncomfortable to sleep with a full belly. Doing so usually results in restless sleep and sometimes digestive issues like acid reflux, which can further prevent a good night’s sleep.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture has been shown to help with many ailments that contribute to poor sleep quality, such as chronic pain (11), gut issues, anxiety (12), and other mental health disorders.

Acupuncture and other TCM treatments can have a significant positive impact on the gut microbiome, which we know is important for your sleep quality.

Psychobiotics

Psychobiotics are a probiotic strain found in foods such as yogurt and kimchi. They can manipulate the signals sent along the microbiome-gut-brain axis, improving mood and cognition (13). They can also lessen anxiety.

Incorporating psychobiotic-rich foods or supplements into your diet may be able to help you reduce sleep disturbances brought on by gut dysfunction, anxiety, and other mood-related issues. Healthy sleep is only one byproduct of a healthy gut-brain connection.

Use a sleep-monitoring app

This won’t help improve sleep but it’ll allow you to track your sleep quality and quantity so you can make necessary changes. The free version of these apps is sufficient in many cases.

Say Hello to Good Sleep Hygiene and Goodbye to Poor Sleep

By now, you know how important sleep is to your overall health and well-being.

It may seem daunting to restore your natural sleep cycle, but it doesn't have to be. Schedule a free 15-minute consultation with me, Dr. Martina Sturm, if you want to sleep and feel better.

I’ll help you figure out what’s behind your poor sleep and what you can do to improve it. It’s too important to put off.

Resources

Functional medicine, Longevity, TCMMartina SturmMarch 26, 2024Denver Sports and Holistic Medicine Sleep