Poor sleep can make you prickly.

Here’s what to do
edition.cnn.com/2022/12/01/health/sleep-deficit-emotions-study-wellness/index.html

Sandee LaMotte December 1, 2022

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Holiday stress. Work problems. Money concerns. Family issues — the worries that can
keep you up at night are infinite. Develop a sleep debt from those worries, and you’ll pay
a price in your ability to think, plan and manage your emotions.

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Sleep deprivation affects nearly half of American adults, study finds

“Sleep debt, also called a sleep deficit, is the difference between the amount of sleep
someone needs and the amount they actually get,” said sleep specialist Dr. Raj
Dasgupta, an associate professor of clinical medicine at the University of Southern
California’s Keck School of Medicine. “Sleep affects our ability to think, react, remember
and solve problems.”

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Symptoms of daytime fatigue include a lack of motivation to accomplish everyday tasks, a
lack of productivity at work, memory problems and a low interest in being social,
Dasgupta said. There’s another side effect as well: You may find yourself going ballistic
over the slightest slight.

“Sleep loss is strongly associated with reduced empathy and emotional regulation,”
Dasgupta said, “often resulting in miscommunication and retaliation during conflict.”

Mood regulation occurs in the frontal lobe of the brain, where thinking, problem-solving
and memory consolidation also occur.

“The frontal lobe is the highest energy user in the brain and the first to go offline or
malfunction when deprived of energy by a lack of sleep,” said stress management expert
Dr. Cynthia Ackrill, an editor for Contentment magazine, produced by the American
Institute of Stress.

Beautiful woman sitting at the table working with laptop at home around christmas tree
rubbing eyes for fatigue and headache, sleepy and tired expression. Vision problem

Without enough sleep, your brain functions less efficiently, affecting yourcoping skills,
according to Ackrill.

“We don’t have the bandwidth to recognize our choices, get creative or just see that we
can choose not to be irritated or irritating,” she said. “Irritability is one of the key signs of
stress and poor sleep.”

Unfortunately, it doesn’t take long for sleep to affect our emotional stability, Dasgupta
said: “Just one night of sleep loss impairs the ability to regulate emotions and the
expression of them.”

We may be unaware
Perhaps you are living with a sleep deficit and believe you are making it though the day
with no real impact. Experts, however, beg to differ. Research has found many people
have little idea how much poor sleep has affected their mood and coping skills, said Dr.
Bhanu Prakash Kolla, a sleep medicine specialist in the Center for Sleep Medicine at the
Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

“In experimental studies where they have partially sleep-deprived subjects, the subjective
awareness of sleepiness and deterioration tends to plateau after a little while, but
objective sleepiness and other performance-related measures continue to deteriorate,”
Kolla said.

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Loss of sleep can directly affect your ability to control emotions and manage expectations,
said Dr. Bhanu Prakash Kolla of the Mayo Clinic.

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Therefore, don’t assume that if you “feel fine that you are fine,” said sleep specialist
Kristen Knutson, an associate professor of neurology and preventive medicine at
Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago.

“There is no exact formula, but the longer you have been depriving yourself of sleep, the
longer it will take to recover,” Knutson said. “If you deprive yourself of sleep for a week or
more, it’ll take more than a day or two to fully compensate.”

To recoverall of your cognition and mood regulation, however, you may need more than
two days of sleep recovery, Kolla said.

What to do?
First, don’t reach for a sleeping aid to fix the problem, Dasgupta said.

“Sleep medications are seldom the solution for chronically poor sleep and impaired
daytime functioning,” he said. “Long-term use of certain sleeping aids can lead to
dependency, making users unable to sleep without pills, and there are withdrawal effects
that impair cognition even after the drugs have been stopped.”

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Instead, start with making sure that you don’t have an underlying illness or are taking a
medication that might affect your ability to sleep.

“In addition to primary sleep disorders such asobstructive sleep apnea and insomnia,
there are many other issues that can cause daytime fatigue, such as diabetes, heart
disease and chronic pain issues,” Dasgupta said.

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Then prioritize sleep — make it as important as eating, exercising, showering and all the
other things you do on a daily basis.

“Consider sleep to be a pillar of health,” Kolla said. “Make sure your bedroom
environment is quiet, dark and comfortable. If you are consistently sleeping poorly and
this is impacting your daytime functioning, consider speaking to a sleep specialist.”

The American Academy of Sleep Medicine advises that if you’re an adult between the
ages of 18 and 60, you are supposed to get seven or more hours of sleep each night. But
according to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, a third of US adults get
fewer than seven hours of sleep per night.

“We should set healthy sleep goals, including trying to go to bed at the same time most
nights and aiming for seven to eight hours of sleep,” Knutson said. “Also, we should allow
ourselves a transition period to unwind and relax between active wake and sleep.”

When it comes to all those worries, stress management expert Ackrill has some tips for
coping: Don’t leave your mind to ruminate on something while you sleep — close the day
by capturing what you need to remember in a list. Write down worries so you can dump
them out before bed.

“Recognize when you are layering worriesand don’t beat yourself up,” she said. “Don’t
worry about not sleeping or feeling worried. Instead, consider some sort of ‘active
relaxation’ practice, such as breath work, progressive relaxation or meditation.”

Practice positivity, but not the toxic version that is really denial, she added.

“Instead, find some way to continually bring your attention to what is working, what or who
really matters to you, what habits support your feeling positive and grounded, and how to
leverage your unique strengths to handle the pressures of life. There are tons of apps to
help,” Ackrill said.

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