Sleep and Mental Health: The Importance of Good Sleep

Sleep and mental health: Good sleep is for almost about 7-8 hours which should be consistent. It is also known as normal sleep, the metabolic activities and rate decrease, the breathing rate slows down and blood pressure also gets decreased.

What is Sleep?

Sleep is a state of unconsciousness of mind where the very low electrical activity of the brain occurs and when sensory responsiveness becomes very less. Sleep is a kind of behaviour whose presence, quality, intensity, and activities vary from species to species along their lifespan. Every individual or animal uses sleep to maximize their energy by decreasing the body and brain’s energy consumption, releasing some hormones, and to conduct varieties of cellular processes to recover or we can say the recuperative processes.

Melatonin is a hormone that is named the hormone of darkness and is responsible for the sleep that is secreted by the pineal gland and lack of sleep affects the melatonin. Dreams that we see during sleep result in the release of norepinephrine.

Also Read: Types of Dreams: Why Do Some Dreams Reoccur?

Sleep Disorders

Less amount of sleep causes distress and impairment in cellular functions with some stressful medical conditions like depression, anxiety, etc. which leads to sleep disorders or sleep problems. Below are some disorders a person can suffer from, due to bad sleep.

Fatal Familial Insomnia

Sleep disorder such as Fatal Familial Insomnia is the rarest genetic condition found in human beings which happens due to massive brain degeneration. This disorder happens due to lack of sleep which leads to changes in the behaviour and brain state.

Sleep Apnea

Sleep apnea is a disorder when restlessness or difficulties are faced in breathing during sleep; symptoms like snoring are noticed.

Restless leg syndrome

Where uncontrollable sensation happens in the legs, and Narcolepsy occurs due to excessive amount of sleep during the biological clock.

The Importance of Sleep and Mental Health

If a person is having less sleep, leads to bad or poor mental health, depression, anxiety, hypertension, short-temperedness, psychotic problems, etc. Sleep causes two major types of physiological effects on the nervous system and on another functional system of the body.

The impact of poor sleep quality

Poor or bad sleep affects mental health negatively. Poor sleep may trigger:

1. Mania, a bipolar disorder that causes the extreme level of mood swings, temperateness, etc.;
2. Psychotic disorders like delusion and hallucinations, etc. that contains a very small difference in the definition of both, delusion mean when a person cannot differentiate between what is real and what is imagined; on the other hand, hallucination is whatever a person feels to be real but this only exists in the mind. Their cognition level which includes perception, learning ability, memory, and decision-making power also went down.

Cellular Activities During Sleep

There are also some cellular activities that happen in the brain during sleep. Some terms that record the activities of the brain and neurons are as follows:

1. Electroencephalograph: records the brain’s electrical activity.
2. Electroencephalogram: records various neurons’ electrical activities in the region of the brain. 

Sleeping patterns are different in all species human beings sleeps according to their biological clock every day having two major states of sleep REM which are also known as desynchronized sleep and Non- REM which shows a decrease in sensory neurons responsiveness; but some animals case, they do not sleep or go without sleep for a long period of time. For example, Sleep pattern does not exist in unicellular organisms; In the case of insects, sleep’s anatomical and neurochemical properties don’t exist cause of the structural difference in the nervous system, etc.

Good sleep tips

There are several ways to get proper sleep:

Exercise

we should have done exercise daily so that the muscles of our body feel run out of energy causing muscle fatigue after a heavy workout after that we got tired and then fall asleep. It also includes some daytime physical activities etc.

Meditation

Sometimes we do not feel sleepy because of some worries that happen due to our personal life. So, we should do meditation that creates a peaceful environment. 

Eat healthily

We should eat properly and healthily. If you are hungry then it is hard to get a good sleep. We should eat fibrous food to get easy digestion.

Make your room dark

Black sleeping and meditation bands are formed for better concentration and good sleep because we can fall asleep soon in darkness in comparison to light.

Avoid heavy foods and caffeine before sleep

Some foods that we must avoid before sleep like caffeine consumption, alcohol, spicy foods, etc.

Avoid mobiles and TV before sleep

We should also avoid the use of technological appliances before sleep such as mobile phones which lead to dark circles under the eyes because of their blue ray emission on the face. So, whenever we use mobile at the night, turn on the light and then use it.

Also Read: Sleep Tips: Can 4-7-8 breathing really help you fall asleep faster?