Lack Of Sleep Effects On Mental Health: What you need to know
Hi, and welcome back to our channel.
Today we're going to talk about the importance of sleep for our body and mind,
How a lack of sleep may impair our body or how it affects it,
As well as ways that it increases anxiety and even plays a role in our stress.
I will also help you understand the way that, or the role that sleep plays on our emotional health
And give you some tips to help improve your cognitive function as well as mental health.
[Video Transcript Below Video - it is the same information]
But before we dig into our topic today, my name is Marcie Vaske and I'm a functional licensed nutritionist with Oswald Digestive Clinic. And at Oswald Digestive Clinic, we see a lot of people obviously with gut health issues, but also people who struggle with a lot of anxiety and or depression.
And if this sounds like you or someone and love, I'm going to link our website here where you can easily make an initial appointment.
I'm also going to link our free guide, which is five ways to Improve your Gut Health.
So if you are kind of the person who likes to learn on their own or just get more information about how to take care of your gut, that's going to be a great resource for you.
So without further ado, let's dig back into our topic.
Lack Of Sleep Effects On Mental Health
So our topic today is all about sleep and mental health. And I talk about sleep a lot on this channel because it really is impactful not only for our mental health like we'll discuss today, but of course our overall wellbeing.
We all know that getting a good night's rest is extremely imperative, but I talk to people all day long who struggle with their sleep.
Either they have trouble falling asleep or maybe they fall asleep, but they're waking up all the time. And how that impacts them during the day.
It seems in this fast-paced world that we live in, sleep is just kind of taking the backseat. We've always got a million things to do, but no time to sleep because of that.
That's why I like to talk about sleep so much. We forget how important it really is. And while we're sleeping, yes, it's something that we all know we need, but you sometimes don't realize exactly what your body is doing while you're sleeping.
How Sleep Affects The Body
During our sleep, our bodies really undergo a lot of physiological changes and just kind of cleanup during the night.
It helps to support our hormone function as well as our immune system.
And with all of that, it also makes a big difference on our cognitive function and our moods.
If you are someone who has struggled with getting good sleep every night full, well, what it feels like to wake up feeling groggy, not very motivated, just don't feel like you have any energy to get the things done that you want to get done.
And in addition to that, a lack of sleep is also going to put you at a risk of getting sick more quickly. I know my daughter just got sick in the first week of school. She gets so run down and it's just getting used to that new schedule again. And I think that happens to a lot of people and bringing down our immune system.
And our body's not tough enough to fight it off when we don't have enough good quality sleep.
But with all of those physical things that can happen and make us feel tired and maybe get sick more quickly, it also takes a toll on our mental health.
And if you're someone who struggles with mental health issues like anxiety or depression or even ADHD, you probably have noticed in the past that if you're not getting enough sleep, those symptoms seem a lot worse.
So one of the questions would be, well, why? Right? And there's a connection between sleep in our brain because at night what our brain is really doing is cleaning up, right?
It's undergoing processes to help us think more clearly by consolidating all our memories from the day before, not only consolidating those memories, but also helping to kind of down-regulate our emotions and keeping our mind more pliable.
No Sleep Side Effects
And the lack of sleep effects on mental health:
When we have disruptions throughout the night, or maybe you're just getting too short of sleep, this is where the brain doesn't have enough time to do all of that and will impact the way that you think the next day, your anxiety level or even your depressive level that you might be experiencing, as well as just plain old brain fog.
So the role that sleep is playing with our mental health or anxiety or even depression is that if the brain doesn't get that time to do all those processes the next day you're going to feel it.
You're going to have an increased impairment in your cognitive thought as well as just maybe feeling more anxious. And this is very clear, and I'm sure, like I mentioned, if you're a person who's not sleeping very well, you've felt this in the past, numerous studies have actually been done on mental health and lack of sleep.
The less sleep we have, the more our symptoms of our mental health come out and become very much exacerbated with this.
It's teaching us that, getting that seven to nine hours of sleep, if you're a lucky one, that without getting that, you're definitely putting yourself at a risk. And there has been studies showing that even with lack of sleep, you can start developing these symptoms.
And so again, really making sure that you are making your sleep a priority.
Sleep not only affects our mental health, but our emotions too. And if you've ever noticed in the past, if you had enough sleep, maybe you're more quick to fire, you have less patience, feeling more irritable, and we can see that in our kids. I know, again, with school starting right now, my kids are feeling kind of tired and there's a few more emotions flying around, but that's understandable.
And what's awesome about it is that you have control of that.
Not only just working on getting enough sleep and knowing that that's going to be a betterment for you overall, but also the way that it's impacting your emotions. You can be more levelheaded and more calm.
Depression And Sleep
Now, I talked a little bit about how lack of sleep increases anxiety symptoms, and also there's an impact with depressive symptoms.
And we know that with depression also, sleep is kind of a big piece of that, meaning that sometimes people who feel very depressed will either want to sleep all the time or they can't sleep at all.
So really digging into the underlying issues of why you're not getting enough sleep or wanting to sleep too much is going to be very impactful on helping with those symptoms. And of course, our cognitive function, our sleep and our cognitive function are very closely related.
And again, I'm sure if any of you out there have had a bad night of sleep or maybe a few in a row, you just feel like you cannot think straight and feeling that brain fog just kind of seeping in on you where you're looking at something trying to get your work done and it's your brain is somewhere else, or it's just this lack of attention, not very able to really dig in and get it going.
And so lack of sleep is definitely going to play a role in that. So all of these things should put sleep as a priority for you, for your health, for your brain health, for your emotions, for just the way that you go about life day to day. I think that oftentimes we do not take enough time and put a lot of stock into our sleep. And once you do, you won't go back because you'll really notice that big difference.
Sometimes we just get into this thing of like, this is the way I sleep. I sleep for six hours a night. And then pretty soon as you work really hard on getting that extra hour or maybe extra two hours and you feel so much better, making that sleep a priority for you becomes a lifelong skill.
So if you're thinking about, yeah, I haven't really put a lot of time into getting good sleep or things were going on a few months ago that I just wasn't getting enough sleep and now I really want to work on this, what are some ways that you can do so?
Ways To Improve Sleep
And I think the number one thing to do is set a consistent bedtime, making sure that you, let's say your bedtime's going to be 10 o'clock, you start winding down at nine o'clock. You do all your sleepy stuff before you jump in bed maybe at 9 45 and you shut the lights off and go to sleep.
Just being very consistent with that is going to help you then turn that around, not only having a consistent bedtime, but another tip is making sure that the environment you're sleeping in is going to be cool.
We know that sleeping in a room 68 degrees or less is going to give you a much better night of sleep. Also, thinking about the covers you have on your bed, do you have a fan blowing that's bugging you?
If your covers are too heavy, maybe you need to get a lighter blankets or just sleep with a sheet, whatever, but do what makes your body comfortable.
Like I said, sleeping in a room that is cool helps you sleep better, and that helps your body temperature stay cooler at night, which helps our cortisol, which helps us stay asleep.
And another tip, which we've heard about for a long time now, is really limiting blue light before you go to bed.
So that means looking on your phone, watching tv, being on your iPad or computer, shutting that stuff down at least an hour, at least 30 minutes before you go to sleep is going to help your brain prepare to fall into those sleepful waves.
Also, some good tips, which we know about too is just get regular exercise using that energy you have through the day and using that up. We always sleep better after we've worked hard during the day.
And I talk to people who, if they have sleep troubles and then sometimes they sleep really good and they can kind of pinpoint it back to, well, I was really busy that day and I just fell asleep and slept through the whole night.
So just getting in that regular exercise activity, walking, running, going to the gym, whatever fits you, is going to be helpful in your sleep patterns throughout the night.
Also, of course, avoiding stimulants like caffeine before bed, especially before bed. But the interesting thing is that caffeine has a very long half life, meaning that you drink a cup of coffee, let's say at 6:30 in the morning when you get up, and some of that coffee is still in your system eight hours later.
So let's say you drink your coffee until like 10:00 AM that coffee and half life of it can actually still be in your system around 8 o'clock at night. And then of course, the later you're drinking your caffeine, the more impact will be on your sleep.
So if you're going to do caffeine, do it early in the morning and be done with it for the day. Having the little coffee in the afternoon could possibly mess up your sleep. I know a lot of people say, well, I try to drink coffee, stop drinking after four, but really it should be more like before eight.
So I think, and obviously depending on what time you go to bed, but thinking about that, just think about your habits and your behaviors.
And lastly, if you've done all of these things, you have a consist sleep pattern, you have a cool room, you're not on your devices with blue light, you've made sure you're not drinking caffeine, you're doing relaxation techniques, you're working out doing all the things, but you're still struggling with sleep. Definitely have that looked at.
Do some work with a practitioner like myself or many others out there that work with people who struggle with sleep and try to find what is underneath that.
So just to wrap this up today, I think again, it's important to think about your sleep, the way you sleep, how much sleep you actually get.
You can be in bed for eight hours, but only get four hours of sleep, and that's not going to be enough.
You're going to feel that for sure, and just understanding it's not only impacting you in terms of feeling fatigued and tired the next day, but it really takes a toll on our body, our immune system, the way we process things, our mental health.
So I hope this helped kind of open up the door to you researching your sleep a little bit more and putting a lot more emphasis in how much sleep you actually get. Thanks for watching.
If you'd like to explore any of this information further or obtain an individualized nutrition plan, you can schedule an initial appointment at our clinic. We also take insurance and some of our clients get full coverage, which is great.
Or you can just start by downloading our FREE GUIDE: 5 WAYS TO IMPROVE GUT HEALTH
