5 Health Risks of Sleep Deprivation

Sleep is one of the basic things we need to stay healthy. Here are some health risks of not getting enough sleep.

• It can lead to depression

Sleep deprivation can be a contributing factor to depression. The most widely recognized sleeping disorder, insomnia, has the most grounded connection to depression. In a 2007 investigation of 10,000 individuals, it was discovered that insomnia is often the first symptoms of depression.

• Sleep deprivation accelerates aging

The vast majority have encountered wrinkled skin and puffy eyes following a couple of evenings of sleep loss. Chronic sleep deprivation can prompt dreary skin, and dark circles under the eyes. Sleep deprivation also retards growth especially in teenagers.

• Sleep deprivation can lead to obesity

Sleep deprivation is by all accounts identified with an increment in craving and hunger, and potentially leads to obesity. Not just does sleep deprivation stimulates appetites; it also fortifies desires for high-fat, and high-starch diets.

• Sleep deprivation can affect the immune system

The immune system produces protective cytokines and infection-fighting antibodies and cells when we are asleep. These are used as tools to battle off outside substances like microscopic organisms and infections. These cytokines and other defensive substances additionally help you sleep, giving the immune system more vitality to guard against disease.

• Sleep deprivation can cause serious damage to the respiratory system

Since lack of sleep can affect your immunity, you’re more defenseless against respiratory infections like flu. If you have a chronic respiratory disease, sleep deprivation can make it worse.

Ginari Gibb Price has been a physician for over ten years; she has completed a general psychiatry residency and two fellowship programs. She is presently a member of American Academy of Sleep Medicine.

Ginari Gibb Price – Narcolepsy In the Elderly

Ginari Gibb Price is a psychiatrist who practices in Atlanta, Georgia. She has conducted much research during her career and has presented papers on various topics, including a paper called “Narcolepsy in the Elderly.”

As she knows, narcolepsy is a neurological disorder that is manifested in daytime sleepiness and sporadic and uncontrollable episodes of falling asleep in the daylight hours. It is not a fatal condition, but it can be very debilitating and can have a serious negative impact on the quality of life for the sufferer.

Narcolepsy, as Ginari Gibb Price knows, most often affects people between the ages of fifteen and thirty and is seldom reported in people after the age of fifty-five. But she says that cases of narcolepsy have been reported in people older than seventy. In common with cases in younger patients, narcolepsy in the elderly typically begins with daytime sleepiness and disrupted sleeping patterns at night. It is often accompanied by weakness in the muscles, known as cataplexy, which can be brought on by emotional events like laughter. Diagnoses of narcolepsy must be made in a sleep lab so that other causes of sleepiness can be ruled out. Other tests follow.

If a diagnosis of narcolepsy is confirmed, then Ginari Gibb Price says that treatment is important in order to alleviate mental and social impairments. Narcolepsy in older patients, however, does not always have to be as aggressive as it needs to be in younger patients because in most cases they do not have the same occupational or parental responsibilities.

Lost In The Ivy Group Interview with Ginari Price (95), Jackie Lapardo (96), and Nyree Ramsey (97)

Lost in the Ivy is research project that details the history of African-Americans at Vanderbilt University. In addition to historical fact telling, the project also examines key issues involving racial identity and racial interactions at the university. The primary method of data collection is oral histories recorded from current students, alumni, faculty, and staff. This file features a short preview of a group interview with Ginari Price (VU 1995), Jacqueline Lapardo (VU 1996), and Nyree Ramsey (VU 1997) in Nashville, TN on October 13, 2007.