While we sleep, our brains repair themselves, store memories, and interpret events from the day.<\/p>\n
Light sleep, deep sleep or non-rapid eye movement (NREM) sleep, and REM sleep are the major stages of sleep, with REM being the dream state. During a restful period of sleep, the adult brain cycles through three to five sleep cycles.<\/p>\n
Children, especially babies, need more sleep than adults because their brains are rapidly growing and processing new information. No matter your age, getting a healthy amount of sleep every night is key to your quality of life and overall wellness.<\/p>\n
Being well-rested means you can think clearly, perform complex tasks like driving, learn new information, and even avoid common illnesses with a healthier immune system. Being under stress, getting sick with a fever, suffering a loss or major life change, experiencing poor physical health due to chronic illnesses, or struggling with a mental illness are all ways that the average American may lose sleep.<\/p>\n
Sleep deprivation is common in the modern world, and it can impact your ability to think, regulate your mood, and be in good physical health. The average office worker\u2019s job performance suffers when they do not get enough sleep.<\/p>\n
Each person needs a slightly different amount of sleep every night, but the average adult requires seven to nine hours. It can take some self-mastery to get the highest quality of sleep without oversleeping or struggling with sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n
Good sleep has a huge impact on your ability to learn and remember<\/a>, but the relationship between the two is not fully understood. Sleep researchers do know that both the quantity and quality of sleep impact memory and learning.<\/p>\n Learning and memory are usually described with three functions:<\/p>\n Losing sleep can affect each of these three steps. For example, without sufficient sleep, learning new information is harder, while finding memories of related information is also harder. Sufficient sleep helps your brain move through the whole process of taking in the new information you have learned and turning it into memories, so you can access the information easily. Sleep deprivation causes your conscious focus, vigilance, and attention to all drift.<\/p>\n Sleep specialists have found that there are some mild changes to sleep cycles when study participants attempt to learn new information.<\/p>\n Sleep also helps us achieve \u201ceureka!\u201d moments during research or creative work. People who are tired may be able to go through the motions, but they have a harder time synthesizing information to create a whole thought. Those who get restful sleep are better able to access these high-level, innovative, creative parts of the mind.<\/p>\n You may think you can stay up late and still get up early for a session at the gym, but in the long term, you are hurting your physical health if you deprive yourself of sleep too often. In fact, you are more likely to make your physical health worse by not getting enough quality sleep.<\/p>\n The brain repairs itself and stores memories while you sleep. Similarly, the body repairs tissues and muscles, and synthesizes proteins, almost entirely during sleep. If you are lifting weights to get stronger, it is important to get enough sleep so your muscles can build themselves.<\/p>\n The most common concerns associated with sleep deprivation<\/a>, especially through conditions like chronic insomnia, include:<\/p>\n The greatest potential source of harm from sleep deprivation is associated with slower reaction times. While this may result in feeling clumsy throughout the day, there is another more frightening side effect: poor driving.<\/p>\n Slow reaction times while driving increase the risk of a serious car accident. Even more frightening, a poll from the National Sleep Foundation found that a third of drivers reported that they had nodded off while driving.<\/p>\n Dr. Jennifer Miller, PT, DPT, says, “I have also found that my patients with poor sleep have a difficult time learning new exercises, remembering activities\/exercises we\u2019ve worked on in the past, and slower reaction and coordinating movements.”<\/p>\n It makes sense that you are stressed out or cranky after losing sleep one or two nights in a row, but people who suffer from chronic sleep deprivation will also have a harder time regulating their emotions<\/a>. If you struggle with insomnia, you are more likely to have depression and anxiety. Having these mental illnesses increases your risk of developing insomnia.<\/p>\n Your cognitive and physical performance will be impacted by being sleep deprived, and that can make you feel bad about yourself. Mood changes from being tired will also increase your chances of seeing this negative performance in a poor light since your reactions will be more intense and impulsive.<\/p>\n When our memory of events is impacted, we may interpret and reinterpret these events differently, which can lead us to make poor decisions. It becomes more difficult to assess situations and make plans. With aspects of declarative memory relying on an emotional connection to form stronger memories, it can be harder for a sleep-deprived person to remember and recall information accurately.<\/p>\n Sleep deprivation increases activity in the amygdala, which is the brain\u2019s emotional response center. When this part of your brain is working too hard, you will feel more intense emotions about your experiences throughout the day. This can increase your stress levels, which can increase the activity in your amygdala.<\/p>\n Unfortunately, all this stress, worry, fear, anxiety, and anger can make it harder to go to sleep and get quality rest each night. Since sleep loss hampers the communication between the amygdala and your prefrontal cortex, which helps to regulate emotions, there is less resistance to immediate reactions in emotionally charged situations.<\/p>\n Not getting enough sleep also increases repetitive negative thinking,<\/em>\u00a0so while your amygdala\u2019s emotional response in both positive and negative situations will be larger and less regulated, the focus of much of your emotional experience while tired will be on the negative feelings. It also becomes harder to turn your mind away from ruminating on negative thoughts when you\u2019re tired.<\/p>\n The confluence of mental, physical, and emotional struggles associated with sleep deprivation can hurt your job performance and productivity. \u00a0Sleeping 10 or more hours per night may indicate poor-quality sleep, like waking up several times during the night, so this group may also be suffering from a type of sleep deprivation.<\/p>\n One study<\/a>\u00a0<\/a>found that employees who slept 10 or more hours per night missed an average of 1.6 times more days of work because they got sick and lost 2.2 times more productivity. The study involved 600,000 employees across 66 companies. About 30% of adult employees reported getting fewer than six hours of sleep per night, but even those who slept more than nine hours were at risk of losing productivity.<\/p>\n\n
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Physical Health: Avoiding Illnesses and Building Muscle<\/h2>\n
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Emotional Health: Social Connections and Reactions to Events<\/h2>\n
Productivity at Work<\/h2>\n