'Sleeping on it' might be better for your mental health than you think

Getting a good night's sleep can work wonders for improving our mental health. It can also improve our memory, attention, physical health, including our weight and heart, and other thought processes.

Instead of lying awake worrying, we're often told to "sleep on it" when making decisions both big and small. And there's actually a scientific basis for this advice. Sleep can influence our response to emotional situations and helps us to manage our mental health. To understand why sleep and emotions are so connected, it's important to first understand what happens in the brain when we encounter something emotive.

Two main brain regions interact to create emotional responses. The first is the limbic system, which is located deep in our brain. This acts as our emotion centre. But, most of the time we need to adjust our initial emotional response. This is where the second region-the pre frontal cortex - comes in. It helps us to increase or decrease our emotional responses as necessary.

These regions need to be well-connected in order to effectively generate and adjust our emotional responses. This is where sleep comes in. When we're sleep-deprived, the connections between these areas weaken, making the reaction in the limbic system stronger.

Sleep loss not only increases our reaction to stressful events during the day but also makes these reactions harder to change. This may be particularly pronounced if you lose REM (rapid eye movement) sleep. Studies show that getting poor sleep makes us more likely to choose less effective ways of managing our emotions which could have a knock-on effect on our mental health. Imagine you're experiencing a difficult work problem.

Sleep is also crucial for processing and consolidating memories from our day. When we have emotional experiences, sleep helps us remember these events and remove the associated feelings. This happens in REM sleep when activity in most brain regions is similar to when we're awake. By reactivating memories during REM sleep, the associated feelings can be removed from the content of the memory. This is why "sleeping on it" really can help you feel better in the morning. Indeed, studies have shown that, over time, improving sleep can lead to less anxiety, depression, and stress, and increased life satisfaction.

(Joanne Bower is a lecturer in Psychology, University of East Anglia, London.)

Published on: Tuesday, March 22, 2022, 12:30 PM IST