Tired + Sober But Feel Like You're Drunk? Here's Why. - Women's Health

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We all know the health hazards of not getting enough sleep. Now a new study has found that a lack of shut-eye can affect the brain in the same way as being drunk.

It’s to do with how alert we feel – or don’t feel. After about 17 hours without sleep we’re about as awake and alert as if we had a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05%. Woah there - that’s just under the legal driving limit of 0.08%.

And it’s not difficult to notch up that many hours - if you’re out of bed at 6am for a pre-work gym class, then not hitting the hay until 11pm, your brain will be feeling the effects.

The study, co-authored by Dr Colin Espie, a professor of sleep medicine at the University of Oxford, and the Royal Society for Public Health, says that sleep deprivation affects these three cognitive functions the most: our reaction times, our ability to multi-task and our short-term memory. It can even impair our ability to build new memories.

Worryingly, the research suggests that many of us are under-sleeping by at least an hour a night – that’s a whole night’s sleep per week.

As well as affecting our day-to-day wellbeing, a consistent lack of sleep can be a precursor to diabetes, depression, obesity and even cancer. And more than half of the people polled for the study said they felt stressed because of it.

Here’s how you can put sleep at the top of your priority list:

+ Rethink your P.M beauty routine and choose the products that promote slumber

+ Stop tossing and turning and find the best sleeping position for you

+ If you lose an hours sleep don't freak out. Instead discover the hack to fight off mid-afternoon fatigue

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