So, Why Do I Feel Awful When I Don't Get Enough Sleep?

Good Sleep Promotes Good Health 

Welcome back to our Outside and In Series, where we discuss how the world outside you affects the one inside you. Last time, we talked about the Fascinating Connection Between Gut Health and Brain Power, and today, we’re diving deep into the role of sleep on mental health. 

On some level, we all know how necessary sleep is to our brain living its “best life.” We feel crummy when we’ve barely slept or slept poorly. It’s hard to be chipper, alert, creative, and focused when we’re sleep-deprived. Not only that, our memory suffers when we’re tired, as does our ability to think creatively. In a nutshell: good sleep promotes health.
But how? 

Sleep Supports Basic Cognitive Capacities 

Sleepy drivers are involved in 100,000 car accidents each year. And there’s a reason for that. One of the central cognitive capacities that sleep supports is multitasking… and driving is full of it! From paying attention to road signs and street lights and other cars, to using your hands to steer, putting your blinker on, to operating the gear shift, to using your foot to pump the gas and hit the brakes – driving requires a great deal of multitasking.

Good sleep (defined both in terms of quantity and quality) prepares your brain to execute essential neurobehavioral tasks that demand focused attention, quick reaction times, sharp short-term memory, and the ability to think clearly while multitasking. The exhausted mind is at a significant disadvantage in terms of these basic cognitive capacities, making it a challenge merely to function, much less thrive.

Sleep Declutters Your Mind and Consolidates Memory 

Do you ever feel like you have 100 tabs open in your mind? Like you’re so scatter-brained that you can’t remember things you know you ought to yet can’t seem to forget random, irrelevant bits of information you don’t need anymore? Well, insufficient or poor sleep might be to blame. While you sleep, your brain declutters and consolidates information and experiences that it took in the day before… tossing out some as unimportant and solidifying others as very important, thus readying you to remember what you need to be able to recall for the day ahead, as well making room for the new memories and information that each day brings.

Sleep Facilitates Creativity 

Did you know that creative pursuits improve mental health? Whether you enjoy decorating your home or office, cooking, baking, trying out new hairstyles or makeup techniques, gardening, landscaping, thrifting, writing, drawing, painting, singing, or playing an instrument, studies show that creative pursuits boost serotonin levels, thus making us happier, kinder, less-anxious people. Well, good sleep is tied to this gold mine of creativity! When our brains dream during REM sleep (or, Rapid Eye Movement sleep), we re-process memories and experiences. This allows us to see them from new angles, make new connections, and recognize patterns we missed before. It’s no wonder good sleep makes us more creative; so much of creativity is connection-based and pattern-oriented! 

Not only that—remember those cognitive capacities that sleep aids and strengthens? It’s pretty hard to think creatively without them! And on a slightly less scientific level… Don’t most of us opt to reach for the remote when we’re wiped out, rather than picking up the guitar, or the pen, or the paintbrush? Good sleep not only enables us to cognitively engage in creative pursuits; it also gives us the energy and motivation to want to in the first place! 

But what exactly is “good sleep,” anyway? What makes sleep good, and how can I improve mine? These are great questions—and exactly the ones we’ll unpack next week! We’ll see you back here then.

Verified sources for content in this article: WebMd, EachNight, and The Sleep Foundation

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Luke Lewallen, Mental Health Counselor