Everyone knows that it is good to sleep early at night and to get up early in the morning. In fact we should sleep before 11 pm. Yet there are thousands of reasons that we just can’t do it!

Staying up late is becoming common among modern-day people. There are many reasons for it. Either to work overtime, suffer from insomnia, or simply hate to sleep early. Hence, they spend times playing with handphones, watching drama series or playing games. Another reason is that people want to enjoy the precious “me time” after their long day of work.

As a night owl, do you often comfort yourself: ‘I’m only sleeping less. I can replace my sleep after that!’

But…can you really regain your sleep after staying up late? The answer is NO!

Generally, an adult needs an average of 7-9 hours of sleep daily, to be considered sufficient.
However, if you can only fall asleep at 4am, and get up at 12pm the next day at noon, even though you have an eight-hour sleep, but since this period is not the best sleeping hours, the quality of your sleep is surely not good enough. Therefore, it cannot do away the harms that are caused by staying up late.

Why does staying up late hurt you physically?

As the saying goes, waking up at dawn to work and resting after sunset.
Every organ in our body has its regulation between work and rest, if we damaged the work and rest schedule, such as depriving or giving up our precious sleeping hours, other than having dark circles on your eyes, dozing off, having low energy level and migraine, it also incurs various health issues!

Staying up late will damage our internal organs, especially our heart, liver, intestines, brain
and kidneys. All these damages are irreversible!

Let’s look at the damages caused to our five organs by staying up late!

First, our heart: Sleeping time is the rest time for our heart. Staying up late causes our heart to not get enough rest, causes a disorder in our biological clock and arrhythmia, which will affect our cardiovascular health and increases the risk of sudden death at the same time.

Second, our liver. Our body undergoes its recovery and detoxification process at night, especially between 11pm-3am when the blood circulation of liver and gallbladder are active. This shall be the time for blood production and regulation of the function of the endocrine system. If you are not sleeping at these hours, your liver will have to work overtime and it will not get proper rest. Liver, once damaged, will cause toxins to accumulate in our body, leading to problems like rough skin, yellowish facial complexion, pigmentation, dark circles under our eyes and pimples!

Third, intestines. Our stomach lining will undergo restoration at night, staying up late will affect its restorative process. In addition to this, if we eat during these hours, it will increase the burden of our stomach. Gradually, it might cause stomach problems like stomach ulcer.

Fourth, our brain. Our sympathetic nerve should rest at night, as it should be active during daytime to sustain a day’s work. When we are staying up late, our sympathetic nerve will remain active, and we will be tired the next day. We will feel dizzy, slow in reaction, forgetful and having headache, this can affect our work efficiency. If the situation prolongs, it will cause neurasthenia and insomnia.
Fifth, Kidneys. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Society of Nephrology（JASN）, the statistics discovered that, people who are sleep deprived for long term will experience a decline in their kidneys’ function and having proteinuria, which means excessive protein found in their urine. Eventually, it might cause kidney diseases.

So, do you still want to deceive yourself and say that you can regain your sleep after staying up late?

In life, we need to have 1/3 of our time spent in our sleep. It is considered staying up late if you have not gone to sleep by 11pm. The best sleeping hours are between 10pm to 6am. Quality sleep helps not only to eliminate tiredness, restore our vitality and energy, but also to enhance our immunity, reduce the chances of having cold and sicknesses. If you don’t want to age prematurely or your body to have a lot of sicknesses while you are still young, then you should sleep on time. Don’t misspend your youth!