Not Getting Enough Sleep Will Kill You Expert Warns

Exhausted mums everywhere know exactly the damage sleep deprivation can do.

But now a leading expert in the field of getting some shut eye has revealed just how dangerous it is to miss out on a good night’s kip.

Professor Matthew Walker, is warning of a  “catastrophic sleep-loss epidemic”.

Prof Walker,who is the director of the Centre for Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley, also says  wanting to get a good night’s sleep should never be confused with laziness.

While screaming children are not mentioned -electric lights, television and computer screens, longer commutes, increased working hours are increasing the amount of sleep deprivation in the world which is defined as getting less than seven hours sleep.

But this has been linked to cancer, diabetes, heart disease, stroke, Alzheimer’s disease, obesity and poor mental health among other health problems.

Basically what he is saying is a lack of sleep is killing us.

Professor Walker, told the Guardian: ‘No aspect of our biology is left unscathed by sleep deprivation.

‘It sinks down into every possible nook and cranny. And yet no one is doing anything about it. Things have to change: in the workplace and our communities, our homes and families.

‘Once you know that after just one night of only four or five hours’ sleep, your natural killer cells – the ones that attack the cancer cells that appear in your body every day – drop by 70 per cent per cent, or that a lack of sleep is linked to cancer of the bowel, prostate and breast, or even just that the World Health Organisation has classed any form of night-time shift work as a probable carcinogen, how could you do anything else?’