How to Improve Your Sleep and Why it Matters for Your Mental Health: A Look at the Effects of a Lack of Sleep

We can often recognize when someone else has not slept well by observing their physical appearance, energy level, and mood. It is often evident to observe parents of newborns or toddlers who are sleep-deprived. A lack of sleep affects us more than just leaving us tired.

When my kids were young, my husband would say, “Naps are wasted on children. They don’t want them but have to have them, and we want them and can’t have them.” Oh, how would we love to have a nap now and then.

The National Institute of Health and the National Center on Sleep Disorders agree that we sleep or attempt to sleep for one-third of our lives. That is how crucial sleep is to our health, both physically and mentally.

Understanding Sleep

To better understand a lack of sleep, we need to understand the stages of sleep.

Stage 1: Light sleep. This is a short stage, usually not more than 5% of your total sleep, which begins right after you fall asleep.

Stage 2: Deeper sleep. This stage is deeper and makes up about 45% of all the time you spend sleeping (this number goes up as you get older). Research indicates this stage is key in memory storage and learning.

Stage 3: Deepest sleep. This stage makes up about 25% of the time you spend sleeping (this number goes down with age). There’s evidence that this stage is the most important for how your body recovers and maintains itself because the brain prioritizes this stage in people with sleep deprivation. It’s quite hard to wake someone up from this stage, and they’ll usually feel foggy or confused for up to thirty minutes after waking up.

REM sleep: REM stands for “rapid eye movement.” This stage is when you dream. When a person is in REM sleep, you can see their eyes moving beneath their eyelids.

A lack of sleep deprives your body and brain of what they need. Living on a lack of sleep is like driving on fumes. In the same way that doing this to a car causes damage, living with constant sleep deprivation causes damage to our body and brain function.

How much sleep is best for your health? Most of us have pulled an all-nighter to meet a deadline for school or work, but the next day, we don’t function at full capacity, even when we were younger and believed it didn’t affect us. The amount of sleep needed varies according to someone’s life stage. The following is a chart from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute.

Many people believe they need to go to bed eight hours before needing to wake the next morning, but it is important to allow enough time for your bedtime routine and time in bed to actually fall asleep. According to the Cleveland Clinic, “experts estimate between 50 and 70 million adults in the U.S. meet the medical criteria for sleep deprivation at any point in time.”

Benefits of Getting Enough Sleep

Mental Health Benefits

Sleep helps your brain work properly. While you’re sleeping, your brain is getting ready for the next day. It’s forming new pathways to help you learn and remember information. Studies show that a good night’s sleep improves learning and problem-solving skills.

Studies also show that sleep deficiency changes activity in some parts of the brain. If you’re sleep deficient, you may have trouble making decisions, solving problems, controlling your emotions and behavior, and coping with change. Sleep deficiency has also been linked to depression, suicide, and risk-taking behavior.

Children and teens who are sleep deficient may have problems getting along with others. They may feel angry and impulsive, have mood swings, feel sad or depressed, or lack motivation.

Physical Health Benefits

Sleep also plays an important role in your physical health. Good-quality sleep:

Heals and repairs your heart and blood vessels.

Helps support a healthy balance of the hormones that make you feel hungry (ghrelin) or full (leptin): When you don’t get enough sleep, your level of ghrelin goes up and your level of leptin goes down. This makes you feel hungrier than when you’re well-rested.

Affects how your body reacts to insulin: Insulin is the hormone that controls your blood glucose (sugar) level. Sleep deficiency results in a higher-than-normal blood sugar level, which may raise your risk of diabetes.

Supports healthy growth and development: Deep sleep triggers the body to release the hormone that promotes normal growth in children and teens. This hormone also boosts muscle mass and helps repair cells and tissues in children, teens, and adults. Sleep also plays a role in puberty and fertility.

Affects your body’s ability to fight germs and sickness: Ongoing sleep deficiency can change the way your body’s natural defense against germs and sickness responds. For example, if you’re sleep deficient, you may have trouble fighting common infections.

Decreases your risk of health problems, including heart disease, high blood pressure, obesity, and stroke.

Sleep Disorders

There are a number of different sleep disorders.
Insomnia
Insomnia is “characterized by persistent difficulty falling or staying asleep despite having adequate opportunity to do so.” Many people have dealt with some insomnia for short periods, often triggered by stress, and others have dealt with it for their entire lives.

Circadian Rhythm Disorder
Circadian rhythm disorders are a “group of sleep-wake cycle disturbances caused by a mismatch between the body’s internal clock and the desired sleep-wake schedule.”

Movement Disorders
Movement disorders are a “neurological condition characterized by either an increase or decrease in the speed, fluency, quality, and ease of voluntary or involuntary movements.”

Parasomnia
Parasomnia is an “unusual or undesirable behaviors that occur during sleep or between sleep and wakefulness.” They include” sleepwalking, sleep talking, night terrors, and REM sleep behavior disorder.”

Narcolepsy
Narcolepsy is a “chronic neurological disorder that disrupts the brain’s ability to regulate sleep and wakefulness, leading to excessive daytime sleepiness and sudden sleep attacks.”

Restless Leg Syndrome
Restless leg syndrome, or RLS, is “a neurological condition characterized by an overwhelming urge to move the legs, often accompanied by uncomfortable sensations.”

Sleep Apnea
Sleep apnea is “where breathing repeatedly stops and starts during sleep.” According to the National Sleep Foundation, sleep apnea may affect up to 20% of the United States population, and a large percentage of individuals with the condition are unaware they have it. It is estimated that twenty million adults have sleep apnea, and 1-5% of children have sleep apnea.”

Symptoms of sleep apnea

• Snoring loudly
• Teeth Grinding
• Anxiety
• Hot sleeper
• Excessive daytime sleepiness
• Dry mouth and or thirst first thing in the morning or during the night
• Not feeling rested, no matter how much sleep you have had
• Gasping for air, snorts, or choking sounds
• Difficulty concentrating or brain fog
• Morning headaches

Causes of Sleep Apnea Sleep apnea can be “due to a blockage in the airway called obstructive sleep apnea or a problem with the brain’s signal to the breathing muscles called central sleep apnea.” Some have both types of sleep apnea.

Sleep Apnea and Kids Kids are often misdiagnosed with ADHD. Some children with sleep apnea struggle to sit still, focus, struggle academically, and misbehave. Some children don’t struggle in these areas but have some of the ten symptoms listed above.

Effects of Lack of Sleep

Sleep affects focus. A lack of sleep causes brain fog, memory loss, and confusion for both children and adults. According to the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, “The damage from sleep deficiency can happen in an instant (such as a car crash), or it can harm you over time. For example, ongoing sleep deficiency can raise your risk of some chronic health problems. It also can affect how well you think, react, work, learn, and get along with others.”

Here are the results of the Cleveland Clinic’s research about the effects of sleep deprivation.

Heart And Circulatory Systems Sleep deprivation has long-term damaging effects on your heart and circulatory health. People with chronic sleep deprivation are more likely to develop high blood pressure (hypertension) and high cholesterol (hyperlipidemia).

Metabolic Systems People with chronic sleep deprivation are at a much higher risk of developing Type 2 diabetes.

Immune System Your body’s natural defenses against infections can’t work properly if you aren’t getting enough sleep.

Nervous System It’s common for people who aren’t sleeping enough to have higher pain sensitivity, which means they feel pain more easily, the pain is more intense, or both.

Brain Sleep deprivation has quite negative effects on how your brain works. While experts don’t fully understand sleep’s role in brain function, they do know it’s a key part of how people learn and remember. There’s also some evidence that sleep deprivation could play a role in the development of Alzheimer’s disease.

Mental Health Sleep deprivation also negatively affects your mental health, making it harder for you to manage and process your emotions. People with sleep deprivation are more likely to feel symptoms of depression and anxiety.

The effects of sleep deprivation depend on why it happens and how long it lasts. The longer a person has sleep deprivation, the greater and more severe the effects.

Conditions That Can Occur or Worsen Because Of Sleep Deprivation

• Type 2 diabetes
• High blood pressure (hypertension)
• Obesity
• Obstructive sleep apnea
• Vascular disease
• Stroke
• Heart attack
• Depression
• Anxiety
• Conditions that involve psychosis

Small changes in your sleep habits can have a big impact on sleep quality. Stick to a routine, reduce screen time before bed, do calming activities before bed (bath, shower, reading, calm music, set the temperature to a comfortable level), allow yourself time to fall asleep, and not just enough time to sleep.

Calming techniques include:

Counting Down From Ten Or Higher In the same way that we naturally count up quickly, we naturally count down more slowly. By counting down, you are doing two things. First, your brain focuses on the numbers, and you slow your breathing down, which then allows your body and brain to relax to fall asleep.

The other aspect of the numbers is that our brain can’t think of concrete and abstract at the same time, so we make our brain think concretely to avoid the spiral of thoughts that keep us awake. These types of thoughts may include what happened during the day, what was upsetting, what we forgot to do, and the plans for the next day. Other times, our brain just won’t shut off, so counting down can help it focus on the concrete.

Prayer Praise Him for your blessings, confess your sin, and ask Him for guidance and good rest.

Reading Reading gets you away from screens unless you read on an electronic device.

Listening to calming music Music can be calming and make our minds unfocused on the day and the stresses it entails.

What is the next step?

Has this made you more aware of your sleep habits? It can be helpful to log your sleep for a week or two. Write down what time you went to bed, approximate what time you fell asleep, and then how well you feel rested. This will help you see patterns and become more aware of the amount of sleep you are getting regularly.

I can help you in this process of understanding your mental health and sleep to begin making changes for your mental and physical health. We will discuss your sleep, stress, anxiety, depression, and the factors that contribute to your sleep. With the help of your physician and counseling, you can experience better sleep and a healthier you.