Can Lack of Sleep Affect Your Balance?
We all know that lack of sleep can affect our health in a multitude of ways. Chronic sleep deprivation is associated with high blood pressure, diabetes, heart attack, and stroke.
Here’s one more reason why you should get your needed snooze – lack of sleep can affect your ability to walk.
A study published in the journal Scientific Reports showed that both the acute and chronic lack of sleep can affect one’s ability to walk.
The 30 participants in the study were young, college students who have no motor, cognitive, sensory impairment, or sleep disorder issues. The students’ sleep patterns were monitored for a couple of weeks.
As expected, many of the students were a bit short on good quality sleep. However, some of them compensate for that by sleeping in on the weekends. Ten of these students were placed in the Control Group (CG). Ten of those who didn’t compensate for their sleep were placed in the Sleep Chronic Restriction group (SCR). And another group was made for the remaining 10 students – the Sleep Acute Deprivation (SAD).
In the SAD group, students weren’t allowed to sleep from a Thursday evening through the following day without using any form of stimulant (e.g. caffeine).
To test for the effect on their gait, the students were asked to walk on the treadmill and coordinate their steps with the beat of a metronome.
The students in the SAD group had the worst performance in this task. Those who compensated for their lack of sleep (CG) showed better performance than those who didn’t (SCR group).
Overall, it showed that lack of sleep can affect one’s gait and ability to walk, whether you’re talking about acute or chronic sleep deprivation.
Whether your lack of sleep is brought by your shift work or occasional night-outs, it’s important to catch up on your needed snooze.
See a specialist for balance issues
If you still experience gait and balance problems even when you make up for the missed sleep, don’t hesitate to see a specialist. There are other possible causes of balance issues.
Greater Knoxville ENT has board-certified physicians who are well-experienced in diagnosing and treating issues affecting one’s balance. For appointment requests, you may call us at (865) 244-4396.