When people get inadequate sleep for one night, they feel off the next day. But, in a cruel twist, research shows that when inadequate sleep continues nightly, they report feeling fine. “Lack of insight is a hallmark of chronic sleep loss,” says Andrew Varga of the Division of Pulmonary, Critical Care and Sleep Medicine at NYU Langone Medical Center. And per a recent Gallup poll, little more than half of us actually slumber for the 7 to 9 hours required to cycle through sleep’s distinct phases, REM and non-REM sleep, both of which are vital to reset the brain, clear out toxins, and allow the connection between neurons to build and strengthen. If you feel fine, how do you tell if you’re secretly, chronically tired? Here are some signs to look for. Youeve been making err,rsChronic sleep loss makes sustained focus nearly impossible. When sleep is disrupted, or we just don’t sleep long enough, the brain’s locus ceruleus neurons, which are necessary to sustain focus, degenerate and fail to signal to the cortex it’s time to pay attention. If you’re drifting off at work, zoning out at a lecture, or just committing too many typos, your brain needs a deep sleep to recover. “Well learned motor skills have an increased error rate when you suffer from sleep loss,” says Varga. That’s safe when you type, but risky when you chop onions, and downright dangerous on a long drive, which requires anticipation, continued focus, and sharp reflexes. MORE: The Simple Breathing Technique That Will Help You Sleep Your claws have been outIf you feel like the office curmudgeon, consider sleep loss a possible culprit in your spiral of negativity. Being short on sleep allows the brain’s emotion center, the amygdala, to go into overdrive. A revved up amygdala makes you irrationally anxious and stressed. Plus, sleep loss impairs norepinephrine and serotonin, two brain chemicals that keep you calm, focused, and happy. Add it all up and you get a grouch—and some unhappy coworkers, too. You lose your train of thoughtWe’ve all been there: You walk into a room and totally blank on what you’re looking for. Forgetting where you parked, put your keys, or what to pick up at the grocery store goes hand-in-hand with chronic sleep loss. Each stage of sleep works on an aspect of memory, whether it’s factual, emotional, or spatial. “Sleep creates a framework and a model of what you’re experiencing so you can extract the gist,” says Varga. A slight disruption in quality sleep—waking from your spouse’s snore, a car alarm, a crying toddler—hampers recall and how we orient ourselves. “When we don’t sleep well, we lose the ability to integrate and synthesize information,” she adds. This might explains why sleep-deprived people were easily suckered into false memories in a new study from the journal Psychological Science. (It was simple to convince them they saw non-existent footage of a news event. Hence why cults and ruthless interrogators successfully use sleep deprivation to alter people’s memories.) MORE: 9 Surprising Signs Of Depression You put your foot in itWe’ve all wished we had a time machine to go back 2 minutes and take back a nasty retort or a secret we shouldn’t have shared. Sleep loss is often the culprit here. The damage it causes to the rational part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex, impairs your sense of discretion. Blushing won’t save you, but 40 winks might. You’re eating crumb cake for dinnerThe heightened bodily stress caused by sleep loss leads us to seek comfort foods, says Carl Bazil, director of the Division of Epilepsy and Sleep at Columbia University’s medical school. In one study, people who slept only 4 hours a night showed significant decreases in leptin, the hormone that says you’re full, and a 28% increase in ghrelin, the hormone responsible for hunger. Adding insult to gluttonous injury, poor sleep slows your metabolism, enhancing the ill effects of your bad food choices. MORE: 20 Ways To Sleep Better Every Night
