What Happens To Your Body When You Sleep Less Than 6 Hours A Day?

Deprivation of sleep is an epidemic which has emerged across the world. Particularly in the 21st century, when technology has taken over our days and gadgets such as mobile phones have become our best friends, we waste more time with Facebook and Snapchat daily than we do with our actual friends. Mobile phones are embedded in our lives so deep that on an average every human being with a mobile device receives a notification every third minute, all across the day.

I have been an entrepreneur for 7 years now, ever since I was still in the first year of my college. Pulling all-nighters is kind of a habit by now. In my life, something or the other breaks down every single day and I am fire-fighting at almost any given moment in life. Sometimes, I can not sleep because there is so much work to do, sometimes due to excessive pressure and too much excitement remains the reason for the rest of the days.



None of this can be an excuse for not sleeping well. There are multiple reasons why you cannot be sleep deprived and need to put sleep on your 'priority task' list. American Academy for Sleep Medicine says that one in every three adults is suffering from lack of sleep today.

I must be one of them. Are you? Let's find out.

Within 48 hours, your body is under lack of Oxygen.

As oxygen level reduces your body, your athletic abilities start to slow down and you tend to feel slower than usual. Within 72 hours, the body starts to feel agitated, concentration hits a new low and you become accident prone in case you are driving.

There is a lot more that happens if you lose sleep on regular basis. I have tried to compile some of them for you here:

Lack of sleep makes you dumb.

Yes, that's correct. Research conducted by US military says, "Losing one hour of sleep per night for a week will cause a level of cognitive degradation equivalent to a 10 blood alcohol level."

You start to lose your memory. 

Just like the book-keeping exercise in the accounts department of an organization, our brains do its book-keeping as well and it does that when we are asleep. There is a brain event called "sharp wave ripples" which is responsible for consolidating memory.

This brain event occurs during the deepest of sleep and so directly impacts the memory if you are sleep deprived.

It makes you highly unproductive. 

You are getting dumb and you are losing memory, don't tell me you didn't see this one coming. You gotta get unproductive if the above two are happening for any reason whatsoever, leave apart the sleep.

Reducing your week from 6 days to 5 and your daily working hours and using that time to improve your sleeping habits will result in high productivity, always. Henry Ford proved the same with data.

Depression is waiting for you.

It happens to me. Every single time I find myself working late night for a week or so in a row, my behavior changes. I am usually not-so-positive towards things and my happiness level hits an all-time low. I tend to avoid people in office and on calls. Mostly I am people's guy but during those days, I like to be alone and be quite all the time.

For me, it takes good long sleep and a lot of movies are what help me to come back to normalcy.

s3x - Yes, that is affected as well. 

At least now you will start to take this issue seriously. This one is pretty obvious, though. A man/woman who is agitated at all times is not productive at work and is feeling depressed can never perform well during the intercourse as well.


Men with 'sleep apnea' have a low level of testosterone and this explains the situation anyways. Don't you dare ask me how am I doing in bed!

Sleep well if you hate getting fat.

Look at this picture, I said - Look at this picture twice my friend. I know you hate it. Here is what you gotta do - Start sleeping well.

You age faster. 

Last but not the least, lack of sleep helps you die faster (pun intended). Remember that dry skin and puffy eyes after your all-nighter at the office? That's exactly the sign of you aging faster. Cortisol is a hormone that increases stress in the body and lack of sleep increases that a lot. Also, lack of sleep leads to low secretion of Human Growth Hormone.

I know you want to live long and so do I. Now you know, what you need to do.

Life as we know it has changed in the 21st century for all of us. As an entrepreneur, maybe it's a little tougher than everyone else. When everyone is running the race of doing more, why not try something when we can actually 'Do more by doing less'.

Watch this clip below.