American Society of Anesthesiologists

What Is Sleep Deprivation? (0:40)

When you are sleep deprived, you can get headaches and irritability; but it also has chronic effects that can increase the risk of health issues. Watch Nina Radcliff, MD, explain how not getting enough sleep can negatively impact our health.

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Sleep deprivation means exactly what it sounds like, you're not getting enough sleep and this can have a number of effects on you. First of all headaches, grouchiness, irritability. It can also affect your body chronically, it can affect your heart, it can affect and increase your diabetes, it can increase weight gain.

There's a controversy about what's the exact number of hours for everyone to sleep. Scientists for the most part say that seven hours of sleep has a number of benefits but more recently they're saying that increasing it by just one hour upping it from seven to eight hours can actually help you lose weight, and so we're looking at maybe eight hours of the magic number.