The Science Behind the Toxic Effects of Chronic Sleep Deprivation

Let me scare you to sleep.

Our modern world is laced with slow poisons — things like tobacco, empty-calorie foods, and binge-watching platforms — that patiently shorten and dilute our lives over years of habitual indulgence.

History shows that society's interaction with these poisons follows a predictable 5-stage process: uninhibited indulgence, risk recognition, risk communication, public concern, and policy action. As the example of smoking shows, this process can take decades to play out despite overwhelming evidence that billions of healthy life years are being lost.

Chronic sleep deprivation is one of the most potent poisons ever to enter this frustratingly slow process. Currently, it’s transitioning between the risk recognition and risk communication stages. We need to speed things up.

Today’s article aims to do just that by summarizing the scary details about the effects of sleep deprivation contained in Matthew Walker’s landmark book pictured below.

This daunting collection of science-backed findings certainly scared me to sleep. I hope it…