Many of us know that “a good night’s sleep” makes us feel better and that lack of sleep makes us grumpy or confused. There is now strong evidence showing the importance of sleep for both our mental and physical health. It has been discovered that little or poor sleep decreases happy feelings and increases negative emotions.
Physical and mental functions in understanding everyday events and controlling emotions and actions depend on our sleep. Poor sleep can make it very difficult for you to handle small conflicts and can even affect your ability to see the world accurately. Sleep helps maintain our thinking abilities, such as attention, learning, and memory.
Poor or insufficient sleep might increase the chance of developing mental health problems. It is proven that sleep issues can also lead to and worsen many mental health problems, including sadness, stress, and even self-harming thinking.
Studies on lack of sleep show that even normally healthy people might become more nervous and upset after a night of poor sleep. Researches done on sleep suggest that if you have insomnia (a disorder that makes it difficult for you to sleep), you are 10 to 17 times more likely to experience high levels of sadness and stress. Sleeping more had a positive impact on stress, mood, nervousness, and overthinking.
Age influences how much a person needs to sleep. Children and teenagers typically require more sleep than adults do.
The American Academy of Sleep Medicine (AASM) recommends that adults sleep at least 7 hours to maintain healthy functioning, with the majority of adults needing between 7-9 hours. Teenagers normally require 8 to 10 hours of sleep, whereas older people (65 and older) require 7-8 hours. It is important to note that even if the quantity of sleep you get matters, the quality of your sleep is equally important.
CBT-I is a form of therapy that treats insomnia, which is a type of sleeping disorder that makes it difficult for you to sleep. CBT-I focuses on studying the connection between our behavior, thoughts, and sleeping patterns. A trained CBT-I will help you to identify the troubled thoughts and feelings you are are facing that is causing you insomnia. CBT-I combines several approaches including
The main goal of CBT therapy in the mental part is to try to challenge your negative thoughts and turn them into positive ones. According to this type of therapy, changing the way you think, will change your emotions, and your sleeping pattern.
There are 3 steps to this:
If you suffer from a sleep problem like insomnia, you might overestimate the difficulties you have in getting a good night's sleep. For example, you might convince yourself that you need to take a sleeping pill in order to sleep. If you don't take a medication, you'll feel worried and find it difficult to go asleep.
Therapists can help you to look out for wrong beliefs, identify when you are thinking negatively, and deciding whether bad thoughts can come true.
You can change your negative ideas with fresh ones that are more joyful and inspiring once you've noticed that they are wrong. You will work on creating calming, relaxing sentences that you can repeat to yourself as you get ready for bed.
Your body’s clock is set by daylight exposure. Trying to exercise outdoors will help your body to tell you when to be awake, and when to rest down, which will create you a healthy sleeping cycle.
The biggest enemies of sleep are stress and anxiety. However, exercising can help you relax and control the problems that keep you up at night. Exercise is a great treatment to stress. Your brain releases feel-good hormones during exercise that helps to reduce stress. Also, activity makes your body tired, which will increase the desire to sleep at night.
Sleep is important for the body to function correctly. It allows the body and brain to relax and recover in order to maintain a healthy body weight.
A balanced diet consisting of a range of fruits and vegetables is able to give the daily amount needed of vitamins and nutrients, improving sleep and encouraging a healthy weight. Lack of important nutrients, including vitamins A, C, D, E, and K, calcium, magnesium, and other minerals, is linked to sleeping problems.
It is commonly known that eating meals high in carbohydrates can frequently make you feel sleepy. Meals that are high in carbohydrates might also affect how well you sleep.
In fact, it has been proven that eating a lot of carbohydrates makes you wake up more often at night and gets in the way of getting enough deep sleep. Also, drinking energy drinks and other drinks with added sugar frequently is linked to poor sleep.
Consulting with a nutritionist is a great place to start if you want to improve your sleep and diet. They can detect your sleeping problems, including potential sleep disorders, and suggest the best nutrition plan for you.
A good night’s sleep helps in supporting emotional and social strength, according to studies done on brain structures. If you usually have sleep issues it can lead to negative thinking and emotional weakness, which creates problems with psychological well-being.
The relationship between sleep and mental health is connected, as poor sleep is often a sign of mental health problems. Also, a lack of good sleep, can lead to and worsen mental health problems. If you find it difficult to sleep at night, it may take some time to find the habits that work best for you to sleep, but continuing through the process can help you fall asleep more easily and sleep through the night.
Change requires effort, but it doesn’t have to be hard if you have the right knowledge and tools. We believe the first step in being your best healthy version is knowledge. We encourage everyone to be informed about their health and understand how nutrients, supplements, and products affect the overall wellness. And we are here to do just that. We are committed to educating the world about what wellness truly means.
