Category: Sleep Health

Seven Ways Sleep Affects Your Mental Health

Posted on July 18, 2020 by - Sleep Health

Seven Ways Sleep Affects Your Mental Health

1. Undiagnosed or Misdiagnosed Sleep Disorders

Sleep disturbance can be both a cause and a symptom of mental health problems. But this relationship does not imply that sleep problems are always symptoms of a larger mood disorder. They might be indicative of a standalone sleep disorder, such as narcolepsy, sleep apnea, and more.

Because sleep patterns and mental health disorders are so intertwined, sleep disorders are often underdiagnosed or misdiagnosed as a myriad of other mental health conditions, such as ADHD in adults.

This also means that not all people who experience trouble sleeping have insomnia. What might look like insomnia might actually be delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS). Those with DSPS complain of consistently falling asleep later than desired and difficulty waking up at the desired time. This delay in sleep onset can lead to significant distress or impairment in social and occupational functioning. However, when we’re able to regulate our sleep schedule, the quality of our sleep can improve.

2. Lost Routines

Our body keeps its own routine by regulating our circadian rhythm. Circadian rhythms are biological clocks that regulate our sleep-wake cycle and other bodily functions like digestion and hormone release. Every living thing has a circadian rhythm, including plants, animals, and microbes.

While our body naturally regulates our circadian rhythm, it is strongly influenced by signals in our environment, like light. Most people’s circadian rhythm cycles with the sun: when there is more light, like during the day, we feel more awake. When there is less light, like at night, we feel drowsy.

But in our era of smartphones and easy access to digital information, this constant exposure to light can throw off our body’s natural sleep routine and affect our mental health. A lack of routine can lead us to feel stressed and disorganized.

However, we can structure our environment in ways that help our circadian rhythm do its job. Minimize blue light exposure by turning down your screen brightness, dim your light a few hours before bed, and stay in bright light during the day.

3. Lost Productivity

Understanding your body clock or chronotype can help maximize feelings of restfulness and productivity. Chronotypes are the behavioral manifestations of our natural circadian rhythms, which influences the likelihood that we’ll fall asleep at a particular time during a 24-hour period. Chronotypes depend on genetics, environmental influences, age, and more.

Chronotypes are generally separated into morning types and evening types, but there are variations. Our chronotype dictates when we like to wake up and when we have our greatest energy or feel the most productive.

A mismatch between our chronotype and environment can have detrimental effects and lead to a loss of productivity, which means our chronotype is important to consider when planning activities and tasks. If you know you’re an early riser and feel most productive before lunch, try to plan all your meetings and deadlines during that time, especially if you anticipate a crash in the afternoon. Ensuring a good fit between our chronotype and environment can help increase our productivity.

4. Memory Problems

Think back to when you were in school. Do you remember staying up late cramming for a test? You might have considered pulling an all-nighter, but then you remember someone told you to “just sleep on it” to ensure you remember the material.

During sleep, our brain organizes and consolidates information that we took in throughout the day. This is our brain’s way of making sense of what we’ve learned and influences three specific processes:

  • Acquisition – how our brain receives and learns information
  • Consolidation – the process by which our brain strengthens and extends connections to make our memories more stable and useful
  • Recall – how our brain accesses and uses stored information and memories

Poor sleep negatively affects all three processes. We’re less likely to retain and remember information. It’s almost as if all your teachers telling you not to pull all-nighters were onto something.

5. Decreased Creativity in Problem Solving

Similarly, “sleeping on it” allows us to brainstorm creative solutions to problems. Sleep facilitates creative problem solving by granting us an incubation period, or a period of time spent away from the problem at hand.

Some research on creative problem solving suggests our brain prunes misleading information and dead ends during sleep so that we can later return to the problem at hand with a clear mind.

6. Increased Tension and Irritability

Think about how you feel when you don’t get adequate sleep. Maybe you had trouble falling asleep, tossed and turned all night, or woke up much earlier than you’d like. Are you cheerful and ready to take on the day? Probably not. We’re often pretty cranky when we don’t get enough sleep.

Even small changes in the amount of sleep you’re getting can chip away at a normally cheerful exterior. In fact, the American Psychological Association recognizes a relationship between sleep and stress, whereby a decrease in quantity or quality of sleep can lead to problems with irritability and muscle tension. No wonder it feels like we’re waking up on the wrong side of the bed.

7. Increased Risk of Anxiety and Depression

Sleep disturbances can also increase our risk for developing anxiety and depression. People with insomnia are 10 times more likely to suffer from depression and 17 times more likely to suffer from anxiety. The hypervigilance characteristic of anxiety forces people to stay alert at all times, which makes it difficult to truly relax and have restful sleep. For depression, the relationship between poor sleep and this disorder is so clear that insomnia has long been considered a risk factor for depression.

The relationship between sleep and mental health is clearly complex, but understanding it can help us live better, healthier lives. And that’s something that will help anyone sleep well at night.

Understanding these seven principles and the importance of a good night’s sleep is just the beginning. Schedule a consultation or sign up for my upcoming online course where we will do a deep dive into the science behind a good night’s sleep and help you discover how to make it a regularity in your life.

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From Light To Dark: Transform Your Sleep This Season

Posted on April 10, 2019 by - Sleep Health

From Light To Dark: Transform Your Sleep This Season

Moving from downtown Chicago to the valleys of Marin County, California was a lifestyle change in many ways, but one change was particularly striking: it was dark at night. I was accustomed to the bright lights of Chicago’s many street lamps and neon signs streaming in through my windows as if to call out that the day was not yet over, but in Marin it felt like bedtime at 5:30pm.

Light is a powerful force that affects our sleep cycles and the enveloping darkness of my new environment was like a velvety blanket inviting me to curl up into a deep slumber.

As a psychiatrist and sleep specialist, I am acutely aware of the impact of light exposure on mood and the circadian rhythm. During the daytime, sunlight stimulates light sensitive cells in the retina at the back of the eye. This results in a cascade of information being sent to different brain regions including the suprachiastmatic nucleus (SCN), the clock center of the brain. Peripheral clocks located in other organs interact with the central clock as part of the regulatory system. External cues such as light and temperature reset our body clock, or circadian rhythm. Every living organism, from individual cells to plants and animals have a circadian rhythm, which is set approximately to a 24-hour cycle.

The circadian rhythm is what drives our sleep cycles, hormone secretion, and metabolic processes. Exposure to light, specifically blue light, suppresses our brain’s natural production of the sleep hormone melatonin and stimulates the parts of the brain involved in alertness and attention.

Before the advent of the light bulb, we were exposed to blue light only during the daytime hours and the warm glow of firelight in the evenings encouraged a state of relaxation. Now, we are bombarded by blue light at all hours as it is found almost everywhere, from our televisions to smart phones, to fluorescent bulbs and LED lights. Exposure to blue light wavelengths in the evenings alters our sleep rhythms by inhibiting our brain’s natural production of melatonin, resulting in altered sleep patterns, insomnia, and daytime sleepiness.

Research has shown that people who are exposed to blue light at night, such as shift workers, have higher rates of chronic diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease, cancer, and depression.

In our 24/7 society, there is no getting around technology and artificial lighting. So, what can be done? Regulating the timing of blue light exposure is a simple but critical way to reset our circadian rhythms and sleep cycle.

  • Dim the lights in your home a few hours before bedtime. This may include turning off overhead lights and using table lamps or installing dimmer switches to better control the level of ambient light.
  • Minimize blue light exposure in the evenings by turning down the brightness on cell phone screens, laptops, tablets, and e-book readers. Apps such as Twilight and f.lux filter out blue light from smart phones and computers by changing the color temperature of the screen. Wearing amber colored, blue blocking glasses in the evening is also a safe and effective way to avoid blue light. Keep TVs out of the bedroom and set a curfew for using screens in the evening, preferably 1-2 hours before bed to allow your brain time to start producing melatonin naturally.
  • Keep it dark during your sleep zone. Waking up in the middle of the night is normal and typically not a cause of concern. However, just a little burst of light from looking at screens, opening the fridge, or turning on the lights to use the bathroom during awakenings can make it harder to fall back asleep. Minimize any light exposure during the night by avoiding use of screens and using a nightlight instead of overhead lights if you need to get out of bed.
  • Maintain a consistent wake-up time and expose yourself to bright light at the same time every morning. If it is still very dark in the morning or you struggle with getting up on time, consider using a sunrise alarm that gradually simulates a sunrise in the bedroom.
  • Stay in bright light during the daytime to help with alertness and to keep the circadian rhythm aligned with your daily routines.

Source: TMO
Read the full article -> From Light to Dark: Transform Your Sleep This New Year

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