Fatal Effects of Lack of Sleep

It is not a good idea to stay up all night surfing the net, reading books, studying, playing etc.  An average man needs to have at least 7.5 hours of sleep.  If you have been sleeping less than 6 hours every night or you have not been sleeping for nights, you would want to sleep right after reading this list.

1.  Obesity - Lack of sleep does make you gain more weight.  According to research, human body burns 60-65% calories while sleeping.  Lack of sleep causes us to have more appetite but also causes our metabolism to slow down.  Slow metabolism causes our body to slow down the conversion of calories into energy, thus resulting to weight gain.  Michael Breus (the Director of the Sleepdan Beauty Sleep Issues in Health Arrowhead, Glendale, Ariz) explained the relationship of Weight Gain and Sleep through 2 hormones - Ghrelin and Leptin. “Ghrelin is a hormone that serves to inform you when the time to eat. And if lack of sleep, you’ll have a lot of ghrelin. As leptin is a hormone that tells you to stop eating. And when you lack sleep, leptin in your body just a little, “he explained.  If the hormone ghrelin in the body more than leptin, it would be related to weight. “You’ll eat more, but that the metabolism will slow when you lack sleep,” -Breus.  
2. Diabetes - Yes, sleep deprivation causes Diabetes. The main reason here is our body would have more insulin resistance due to lack of sleep.  Our body needs insulin to maintain low glucose content in our body.  Sleeping for only 7.5 hours or less makes our body slow or even non-responsive.  So, after eating our meals/snacks, our sugar level increases but there is not enough insulin to lower it down.  Worse, we tend to eat more because lack of sleep makes us hungry as I've stated in number 1. (based from scientists' research)
3. Heart Disease - Sleeping less than 7.5 hours every night provides 33% higher rate of cardiovascular diseases.  Lack of sleep raises Cortisol levels that causes inflammation resulting to plaques to be dislocated.  Once these dislocated plaques ruptures, they can block blood vessels in the heart or brain leading to stroke or heart attack.  Sleeping less than 7.5 hours every night provides 33% higher rate of cardiovascular diseases.
4. Stress - People who lacks sleep produces more cortisol or stress hormones.  Thus, lack of sleep affects the way you think resulting small problems to be more stressful and you tend to panic a lot which is really deadly.  Stress is, indeed, one of the top killers on earth and should really be avoided.
5. Mental Disorder - Study shows that the activity of the part of the brain that is responsible for emotional reaction called Amygdala is 60% higher than the people having enough sleep. "It's almost as though, without sleep, the brain had reverted back to more primitive patterns of activity, in that it was unable to put emotional experiences into context and produce controlled, appropriate responses," said Matthew Walker of the University of California Berkeley, who led the study.

sources:

sciencedaily

Time

reuters

dlife