Do you sleep well? You may not imagine how important sleep is to our physical and mental health.
Researchers have found that just a few nights without a good night’s sleep can interfere with the normal functioning of your brain.
More and more studies show that deliberately reducing sleep has a serious impact on people’s minds and bodies.
At the same time, researchers have also found that a few nights of poor sleep can disrupt the body’s blood sugar, which can result in people eating more and can even affect DNA.
One hour less sleep per night can affect about 500 genes in the body, some of which are related to inflammation and diabetes.
Poor sleep
Poor sleep not only affects people’s physical health, but also their mental health.
Oxford University once called four volunteers who usually sleep very well, so that they sleep the first three nights for 8 hours, without any disturbance.
But the next three nights they were only allowed to sleep for four hours, while their sleep was monitored with sophisticated equipment.
The volunteers were asked to fill out questionnaires about their mental and emotional well-being and to record their daily moods in a video diary.
The researchers were surprised to find that after three nights of poor sleep, the volunteers’ moods changed rapidly.
Their anxiety, depression, and stress began to rise, and they became suspicious and distrustful of others.
Although one of the volunteers said that he did not seem to feel much from the reduced sleep.
However, the researchers found that his positive emotions began to decline and his negative thoughts began to rise. Although he himself did not feel any difference.
Falling into negative emotions
Researchers also conducted another experiment in which they recruited thousands of students with sleep problems and divided them into two groups.
One group received cognitive-behavioral therapy designed to improve their sleep quality, while the other group received general advice.
After 10 weeks, it was found that the group of students who received cognitive behavioral therapy had a 50% reduction in insomnia, as well as an improvement in their anxiety and depression scores.
There was also a significant reduction in the rate of hallucinations and paranoia.
This experiment shows that insomnia can lead to mental health problems, which means that insomnia is a cause and not a consequence.
Freeman, a professor of psychology at the University of Oxford, said that sleep deprivation interferes with the human brain because it causes people to have constant negative thinking.
Professor Freeman said that a poor night’s sleep will increase negative thoughts.
Many people around the world suffer from insomnia, and most people try to live and work as normally as possible without being too affected. However, insomnia does increase the risk of a range of mental illnesses.
Therefore, improving the quality of sleep can improve a person’s overall health and well-being.
A psychology professor at the University of Southern California even said that earning more money is not as good as sleeping well, because an extra hour of sleep each night can increase people’s sense of satisfaction.
This shows how important sleep is.
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