Today scientists from Harvard, Oxford, Cambridge and other top universities are unanimous that cutting sleep can lead to “serious health problems” as it goes against billions of years of evolution where “humans evolved under a light-dark cycle.”

Edison talked about fishes and horses. But an animal that’s closer to human mammals in genetic, biological and behavioural traits, are rats.

A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience associates sleep-deprivation with permanent brain damage in rats. There are new studies that show how testosterone levels, hormones that give you that manly energy, get affected due to lack of sleep.

Sleep deprived women are less likely to have sex, according to the Journal of Sexual Medicine. Sleep-deprivation can also affect fertility in men, according
to the American Journal of Epidemiology. This is because hormone secretion, which is dictated by our body’s natural cycle, gets disrupted, leading to lower sperm count. Disrupted sleep is also linked to higher risk of erectile dysfunction.

What is the point in slogging to make those extra millions if you can’t enjoy life?

To know more about the link between sleep deprivation and its impact on sexual well being we talked to Dr Lawerence I Sank, a Harvard trained clinician, co-director of Cognitive Therapy Centre, US and a founding member of VVox.

Dr Lawrence I Sank: The more sleep-deprived we are, the lower will be our libido, as it can lead to fluctuations in hormones.

Imagine how well an athlete will be able perform on race-track if he/she doesn’t get the required sleep? It’s the same with sex.

It’s true that individual sleep needs can vary. But people who require less than the desired ideal of seven to eight hours of sleep are the exception rather than the rule.

As we grow older we have to make sleep more routinised, develop it into a habit, because older people find it more difficult to sleep. One way to do this is by avoiding things that can interfere with sleep at night including, caffeine, alcohol, tobacco, late and heavy meals or even long naps in the afternoon.