Sleep Deprivation Consequences | What's the Worst Thing That Can Happen?

Many articles speak generally about what’s the worst thing that can happen from lack of sleep or regularly not sleeping the 8 hours our body requires, so I decided to do some research on CNN archives and find some specifics, because these are much more convincing to people than general words.

I pulled out 3 specific entries from CNN archives related to sleep deprivation consequences and I rank them below just by myself from #3 to #1.

3^rd ranking worst sleep deprivation consequence

CNN, April 2003, scientists link sleep deprivation with fatigue, depression and poor concentration. Together these 3 factors are worse than a bomb on a person’s life. Lack of sleep strips the energy from the person removing any wish to do anything. Then it cuts out the concentration so that when the person actually does try to do something they fail miserably. And finally sleep deprivation puts the person into a depression, which, in most cases means the person is doomed without outside help.

2^nd ranking result of lack of sleep

CNN, March 2011, sleep deprivation increase levels of hunger. It was published that after sleeping only 4 hours women in the control group consumed 329 more calories compared to the day when they had regular sleep. Men also consumed more, but less than women. Men consumed 263 more calories when sleep deprived compared to when they had regular proper sleep.

This might not sound like a huge number but 3500 calories is 1 pound so this means in 10 days women gain 1 pound, which means roughly 35 pounds of weight gain in 1 year which is huge. Add to this all of the effects which were described in the 3^rd ranking above and you have a serious medical case on your hands.

1^st ranking worst result of sleep deprivation

CNN, December 2008 – chance of car accidents increase by 7.8% in the sleep deprived population. If you think this % is small then from 100,000 accidents 7.8% means 7,800 accidents more – now I am sure you will agree that’s a big number.

Further to this, in CNN, April 24, 2003, I found an extract saying “Each year there are 100,000 car accidents and 1,500 deaths due to sleep deprivation)

So, what’s the worst thing that can happen from lack of sleep? Answer – death.

Sleep Deprivation Effects Wikipedia

And to finish off this article I would like to add that there is a huge list of sleep deprivation consequences on Wikipedia and I am not going to list all of them, but here are some very common ones: