why sleep is essential for good mental health

Sleep is imperative to overall health and wellness. But, more specifically, it is one of the most important pieces to optimally supporting your mental health. Let’s explore how sleep is connected to mental health!

Your body is always trying to maintain balance, a homeostasis — so you can imagine, a loss of balance due to the impact of sleep deprivation, will have a direct impact on how you’re feeling from day to day. Not only that, while we sleep, our body and our brain has the opportunity to reset and restore, some may even say ‘detox,’ from the day prior. As it relates to emotional health, the brain takes time to process emotions, to consolidate memories, and more.

Think about it.

How often have you heard the phrase ‘just sleep on it,’ after facing a difficult emotional situation or decision?

There is truth to this! You likely wake up feeling a bit more clear headed, or simply feeling differently than you had upon going to sleep.

Sleep deprivation is an epidemic in and of itself within our world. Not only do we generally have trouble sleeping, which contributes to this issue, we’ve also culturally accepted that ‘not sleeping,’ is glamorous. We’ve decided that sleep is unnecessary and what’s more important is our favorite show, our looming work deadline, or social media and the news — which, all are inherently stressful in and of themselves, promoting further sleep dysfunction.

Sleep deprivation is considered 6.5 hours of sleep or less. Take an audit of your sleep — are you sleeping at least 7 hours each night? Further, if you are in bed for 7 hours (or more), are you sleeping restfully? Are you tossing and turning? Not only do we need to examine your sleep quantity, but most importantly, it’s essential to consider your sleep quality — that is what matters.

When it comes to poor sleep and sleep deprivation, this phenomenon can be very stressful on the body. Your stress response, the sympathetic nervous system, is activated when the body is not given enough rest — which can generate symptoms of anxiety as your body is put into a state of ‘fight or flight.’ Living in a state of chronic sympathetic activation, which many of us are, can lead to a number of issues, not only involving our quality of sleep.

Stress and anxiety are also common drivers of sleep deprivation as rumination, restlessness, racing thoughts, and more typically prevent high quality sleep. With this, there exists a vicious cycle — difficulty sleeping due to stress and anxiety and then further physiological and psychological stress and anxiety due to difficulty sleeping.

Sleep deprivation contributes to:

An inability of the brain to ‘take out the trash’ which inhibits mental stability.

The brain’s cleaning crew, the glymphatic system, is activated while we sleep. Without sleep, the cleaning crew cannot do its job.

An inability to adequately process and regulate emotions.

While we sleep, the brain processes emotions and compartmentalizes memory and experiences. Without rest, this process is impaired and leads us to greater emotional vulnerability.

An inability to cope with stressors, even minor.

Without sleep, our body’s ability to cope with stress, research shows, declines — even the most minor stressors of daily life. We’ve all been there — feeling especially cranky one day after a poor night’s sleep — even the simplest of stressors generate a reaction.

A tendency towards poorer nutritional choices, compromising proper nutrition for brain health

We know that our hunger hormones are impacted by poor sleep and sleep deprivation, which can lead to blood sugar imbalances and generally poorer nutrition choices — nutrition for mental health and supporting the brain is huge! Choosing foods that are less health sustaining can cause imbalance in the body, which can generate symptoms of anxiety and/or depression, with sugar highs and lows, and more.

An increase in sugar, alcohol, caffeine consumption to wake up/get to sleep due to disruption in innate sleep wake cycle.

Over-consuming sugar, alcohol, and caffeine can negatively impact one’s mental health in each of their own way. Consuming sugar can lead to blood sugar crashes which can leave a person feeling irritable, lethargic, anxious, and more. Alcohol promotes a lack of balance within the body which can generate what is most commonly known as “hangover anxiety.” It also impacts our gut health and can promote nutritional deficiencies, which directly impact how we feel emotionally. Lastly, over-consuming caffeine, especially for those who struggle with anxiety, can exacerbate their symptomology and impact one’s heart rate and more.

A triggered stress response, driving up cortisol and adrenaline, impairing digestion, feelings of ease and calm, promoting difficulty sleeping, and more.

As mentioned, sleep deprivation is inherently stressful!

Insomnia and/or difficulty sleeping are diagnostic symptoms of depression, furthering the cyclical nature of poor sleep and symptomology.

Use of sleep medications, too, doesn’t allow your body to experience a complete cycle which can then worse anxiety, depression, brain fog, and more. Traditional Western attempts at treating insomnia are simply making our mental health worse.

Toxic productivity and hustle culture does damage on our mental health, as well, as we oftentimes compromise our sleep in order to perform, to meet deadlines, to define our worth and bolster our self esteem. This is problematic as it is negatively impacting our mental health and increasing both physical and mental health issues.

By examining the impact of sleep on mental health, we can better understand how important it is to address the underlying causes of sleep deprivation and consider this in treatment of common mental health concerns, like depression and anxiety.

A big part of my work with clients includes exploring sleep hygiene and proper sleep routines in order to best support their mental and physical health. Need support in this arena? Let’s chat.