15- Yara A: Sleep Deprivation

 Blog #15- Sleep Deprivation

Ideally, most adults need 7 to 9 hours of sleep every night. Although, some people may only need as few as 6 hours or as many as 10. There are many factors that play into how much sleep you receive every night ranging from stress, school, or simply poor sleeping habits. It is important to establish a healthy sleeping cycle so that you feel energized and not drowsy throughout the day. Some of the positives of sleeping include getting sick less often, remaining at a healthy weight, less stress, an improvement in your mood and it lowers the risk of acquiring serious health problems. A negative outcome of not sleeping enough is it affects your mental abilities and emotional state; this means you are more likely to be impatient or prone to mood swings. 

In the Ted Talk, How Sleep Affects Your Emotions Matt Walker a sleep scientist, professor, and author explains what lack of sleep does to our emotions as well as explaining how acquiring those 8 hours of sleep everyday can only benefit us, not hurt us. Matt Walker explains that when a healthy human being does not receive enough sleep it makes us more emotionally irrational as well as hyperactive. From personal experience I can vouch that this is true (at least for me). When I don’t feel as if my body received the full amount of sleep (8 hours) I tend to notice I go through mood swings. Whether that is being really energized one moment to sad then next or significantly feeling drowsy without the means to do anything. Comparing it to when I do sleep for the full 8 hours I tend to feel better and more prepared to take on the challenges the day will bring. 

While my personal experience is not enough Matt Walker provides evidence and goes on to say that it all has to do with two of the biggest regions that control our emotions one is the amygdala and the other is the prefrontal cortex. He explains that the prefrontal cortex is what controls the amygdala and when our bodies don’t get enough sleep, the connection between the two becomes essentially severed and responds far more reactively due to the lack of sleep. The Ted Talk was very intriguing to watch as it enlightened me as to what goes on in my head when I don’t receive enough sleep. It was a good reminder to establish good sleeping habits to avoid mood swings. 

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