That's what happens to your brain when you work less than 6 hours of sleep

Too many employees are tired zombies and go to work without sleep. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which recommend to adults between seven and nine hours of sleep a night, have found that one in three adults can not. In a 2016 CareerBuilder survey of 3,200 employees, 1 in 5 said that they slept an average of five hours or less per night.

Yet many of us do not know the effects of sleep deprivation.

"If you slept less than seven hours last night, you're a little sleep deprived. And you'll probably deny it and say, "No, that's okay." But if we take you to one of our sleep labs and do some performance tests, we might see that you're not as good at doing those as you are completely rested, "he said. Jeanne Duffy, a neuroscientist and associate professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School in the Division of Sleep and Circadian Disorders.

Once insomnia becomes a motive, you can not even realize that you are impaired. "Let's say you sleep eight hours a night and suddenly start taking six. You really notice it on the first day or two. And then you stop noticing, "Duffy said of chronic sleep deprivation. "And it's not because it does not bother you. It's because you have a kind of new frame of reference. "

But you make real compromises when you give up sleep. When you stay awake too late in the show, worry about your job or take care of a child, your performance at work the next day is compromised.

Do you repeatedly pass tab tab on your browser, you are unable to focus on your work?

This could be an answer to sleep deprivation, said Duffy. One way your brain is trying to keep you awakeis to constantly look for distractions. It will affect your ability to focus on a task and pay for it, "she said.

Too little sleep and the world can feel like a minefield of danger the next day. If you feel comfortable at work, lack of sleep can be the source.

Researchers at the University of California at Berkeley brought 18 people to their sleep lab for a night of normal rest and then a night of total sleep. After the night of sleep deprivation, anxiety levels among participants were 30% higher, with half of those reaching the levels reported in people with anxiety disorders.

It only takes a few hours of sleep to lose your mood.

In a 2018 study of the Journal of Experimental Psychology conducted by researchers from the state of Iowa, 142 community residents were randomly assigned to either maintain their regular sleep routine (an average of 7 hours of sleep per night) or to sacrifice sleep. The second group, which took about four and a half hours, reported more anger and distress at the daily inconvenience, such as an uncomfortable shirt or barking dog.

"It makes us shy," Duffy said of sleep deprivation.

If you are in charge of others at work, it is imperative that you have enough rest to be a good manager. A study conducted in 2017 by management researchers Cristiano Guarana and Christopher Barnes measured the sleep of 40 managers and their 120 direct reports as well as the quality of the relationships between them during the first three months of collaboration. They found that when the boss was deprived of sleep, the relationships between his managers and his employees suffered. The bosses were less patient and more irritable, and the employees reported worse interactions.

"When people are sleep deprived or have a lower quality of sleep, the prefrontal cortex of their brain is particularly bad. It's the region responsible for self-control, "Barnes said in a video from the Academy of Management Journal on the influence of sleep on workplace behaviors. "People who are sleep deprived or who have a poor quality of sleep use less self-control to guide their own actions."

Chronic sleep restriction may change your behavior in a less obvious way by pushing you to make riskier decisions, according to a 2017 Annals of Neurology study.

The researchers compared the decision-making of men aged 18 to 28 who only got five hours a night for one week with another group of eight hours of restful sleep. They were asked to choose between the safe option of receiving a fixed amount of money or wagering on a higher amount that might not become money if they lost. The poorest participants were more likely to bet on a more risky choice.

Let's be clear: sometimes you want to work too much and you run a risk for yourself and others. In these cases, cleverly call not to go. If you use potentially dangerous machinery or if you need a solid physical balance or a careful hand-eye coordination to be safe, stay home. Even commuting can be dangerous when you're too tired to drive safely.

"If you're in this situation, rather than fighting, you really should stop, even if it's a crazy place, because you're starting to lose your judgment about your disability status," he said. Paul Glovinsky, clinical director of St. Peter's Sleep Center in Albany, New York, and author of "You Get Sleepy: Lifestyle-Based Insomnia Solutions."

But in cases where you are not dangerously deprived of sleep, here are some energizing tips to help you survive a tired day:

Go outside. Before you start your work day, get out in the sun. Being exposed to natural light tells your internal biological clock to be alert. "Our circadian system is very sensitive to light," Glovinsky said.

Move. When you sit at your desk and perform repetitive tasks, you are more likely to feel tired. Take breaks, get up and stretch your legs. "You can move around and do a little exercise. These kinds of things can help you in the short term, "said Duffy.

Have caffeine, but do not overdo it. Drinking coffee can block the chemicals that cause sleep in your brain and provoke temporary vigilance. The National Sleep Foundation said that three 8 oz. cups of coffee over a whole day are considered a moderate amount.

Nap if possible. Duffy said a nap of 20 minutes could be beneficial: "You can often wake up with that feeling, feel really refreshed and live for several hours."

But do not go to sleep too long, you risk falling into the depths of sleep. "It's the kind of sleep you wake up from and you feel groggy," she says.

Sleep that night. Although there is no magic to recover those lost hours, the best way to recover from insomnia is to sleep. "You need to make sleep a priority and set the time to get enough sleep every night," said Duffy.