Many people like to tell us "It just takes some willpower." Or "You just need more self-regulation." The fact is our brains and biology are simply not that simple! We like to think we are in control, but are we?
Sleep - for better or worse - has the ability to change our perceptions, our desires, and our state-of-mind; it shapes our daily choices. Good sleep helps us restore normalcy and self-regulation. Poor sleep can make us feel like we've fallen into Alice's Wonderland, a scary place where it's hard to make sense of everything.
This post highlights some of the most dramatic recent findings about essential functions of sleep that influence our choices and behavior when we miss important stages of sleep.
Choices, Patience & Perception
Sleep directly influences our choices by influencing signals to the brain through hormones and other processes. Here are a few of high-impact examples.
#1. Releasing our Inner Cookie Monster!
With poor sleep, the hunger hormone Ghrelin goes up, telling our brain we need more food long after we should feel full. Poor sleep also drives cravings for sugary comfort foods. Our inner Cookie Monster is chanting "Eat more! Better yet, get that bag of sugar loaded chocolate chip cookies. They'll make you feel so much better!"
At the same time, the satiety (fullness) sensing hormone Leptin goes down so no one is telling the brain we've had enough, time to stop eating.
To further challenge our rational decision making capabilities, the connections between our rational brain areas (like the pre-frontal cortex) and our reactive reptilian brain areas (like the amygdala), are weakened with lack of sleep. Weaker connections make it harder to override the wrong messages being sent by hormones like Ghrelin and Leptin. Impulse control is under attack from all sides!
#2. Losing Our Patience - Losing Intentional Choice
REM sleep helps us regulate our emotional state and impulse control. It helps restore emotional balance, making everything feel more manageable in the light of the new day.
With too little REM sleep, the brain doesn't have enough time to fully recalibrate our mind-state. Impatience is a natural bi-product; irritability goes up and when combined with reduced impulse control as noted above, intentional choice becomes the victim of poor sleep.
I see this in me on those days when I don't get my REM sleep. I'm more easily agitated, say more that I regret, and am far less pleasant to be around!
#3. Perception - Reading and Responding to Social Cues.
When sleep deprived, we start losing the ability to properly perceive and accurately read the people around us. Matt Walker explains how his sleep lab's research shows individuals lose this perception ability. Those who could "effortlessly" distinguish between positive or menacing signals after a good night's sleep could no longer do so with any accuracy after a bad night's sleep. Walker further explains how this misread leads people to seeing the world as a more hostile place by triggering the brain to operate under a 'default of fear bias.' (Learn more in 'Why We Sleep', pages 214 -215.
If everyone understood this function of sleep, I suspect many more people would take sleep more seriously. I also suspect many would find more patience and compassion for those who appear to be experiencing this side effect of poor sleep - including themselves - as I did after learning all this.
Emotional Balance, Depression and Anxiety
REM sleep gives us a free nightly therapy session! It helps us to deal with our emotions and keeps our perception skills well tuned for reading the people around us. We're better able to make rational choices appropriate to the situation.
Conversely, lack of REM sleep prevents us from working through our emotions, and can make us hyper-reactive or hyper-emotional and reactive. At the same time, it compounds matters by taking away our ability to accurately perceive other people's emotions and intent. Consider these two examples.
#1 REM Sleep - The Best Therapist
REM sleep provides a safe space to revisit and work through difficult or traumatic events. Production of the stress-related, anxiety producing neuro-chemical noradrenaline is effectively shut off during the REM sleep dream state, which is key to creating this safe space. Even our heart rate doesn't rise as one would expect when reliving traumatic events.
This mechanism allows us to process our lives and reduce the emotional intensity of our experiences so everything feels more manageable the next day. Without this opportunity, we are more likely to become hyper-emotional and predisposed to depression and anxiety and emotion laden choices.
#2. Emotional Responses
When the brain loses REM sleep's therapy session, the dream state in particular, we lose the opportunity to create distance from, and take the edge off upsetting events. We can get stuck living in a hyper-emotional state where we over-react and get upset with people or situations we would normally brush off or not even register as upsetting.
Once again, we see a loss of connections between our rational brain area and our more emotional, primitive brain areas which reduces impulse control. It's no wonder a loss of REM sleep will make it more difficult to keep emotion-laden reactions in check.
Final Word
These functions are the reason I made sleep my first priority. I believe it is the foundation for wellbeing and for building new habits for health, vitality and resilience. How can anyone follow recommendations for eating, movement, being social or managing stress if they have no energy, their rational brain's impulse control function is degrading, and they're struggling for emotional balance or fighting depression and anxiety made worse through poor sleep?
If you struggle with any of these challenges, do check out of resources in the Sleep Hub. I hope you find these insights useful on your path to building more health, vitality and resilience.
Wishing you all the best,
Janice
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