Sleeping Only 4 Hours And Still Showing Up To Work Know What Sleep Debt Does To Your Mind And Body
Hindustan Times
This worsens when poor sleep becomes a habit, with late nights, repeated scrolling on the phone and disrupted recovery becoming part of your routine. Sleep debt slowly builds up and silently wreaks havoc
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To understand the substantial impact of sleep deprivation on health, HT Lifestyle spoke to Dr Sabine Kapasi, CEO at Enira Consulting Pvt Ltd, founder of ROPAN Healthcare, and UN advisor, who helped unpack what happens inside the body when poor sleep becomes a regular habit.
Let's understand how sleep debt affects both mind and body.
This is what makes sleep deprivation so unsettling: there is a gap between perception and biological reality. You may think everything is fine when in reality, your brain and body may silently be struggling under all the weight of sleep debt.
“The cognitive decline caused by sleep debt shows itself as slower decision-making, delayed reactions, reduced concentration, attenuated memory and a diminished ability to control emotion,” Dr Kapasi said, implying that poor sleep extends beyond physical exhaustion. It affects how you think, respond, remember, and handle emotions. In turn, this can impact real-world environments such as offices, hospitals, roads, trading floors, and factories, where the doctor observed that small delays add up to operational errors, impaired judgment and lower productivity.
On the physiological front, too, poor sleep affects your body in several ways. It goes on to show how important sleep is, acting as a cornerstone of good health, both for mind and body. Dr Kapasi told us that several changes can happen simultaneously inside the body.
“Cortisol levels rise, keeping the nervous system in a prolonged state of tension, while testosterone and hormonal activity related to recovery decrease. The result is inconsistent energy, slower physical recovery, mental fatigue and reduced resilience under pressure.”
What makes sleep deprivation worse is that it is cumulative in nature. The expert described that it builds up over time, not after just one poor night of sleep, but rather many nights of poor sleep quality.
Why does the gap between perception and biological reality even exist? “People often adapt psychologically to the fatigue, which creates the illusion that they are coping. Biologically, performance continues declining underneath that perception,” Dr Kapasi said.
To simplify what she said, when poor sleep becomes a habit, you may start to believe that little tiredness is normal, and get used to it. But becoming habituated does not mean your body stays unharmed. Your brain, hormones and overall well-being all get adversely impacted.
Recovery, the expert gave a reality check, is much slower than you make it out to be. So sleeping till noon on weekends will not reverse the effects of poor sleep. This is why you need to act now and make sure every night you are getting proper sleep.
Note to readers: This article is for informational purposes only and not a substitute for professional medical advice. Always seek the advice of your doctor with any questions about a medical condition.