Lt. Gen. (Retd) Mahmud Ahmed Akhtar Former Surgeon General Pakistan Army
Preventive Medicine- Promotion of Health
When people are deprived of sleep, they have slower response time, impaired decision making, difficulty paying attention and worst memory. People are most likely to feel anxious, depressed and anti-social. Studies typically show these effects when people are forced to stay awake for 24 hours, but Eti Ben Simon, a researcher at the center of Human Sleep Science at the University of California, Berkeley said that if you “just take away an hour or two for a couple of nights, you end of seeing the same profile emerging”. In the brain, these changes show up as less activity in the prefrontal cortex, which is incharge of planning, decision making and other executive functions. At the sametime, there is more activity at amygdala, an area of brain involved in feelings of fear and anxiety.
Sleep deprivation can also ramp up the sympathetic nervous system which controls the “fight or flight response” causing to feel stressed. Salvaging the day after a restless night, sleep is more important for a healthy life. Diet, sleep and exercise / activity are equally important for healthy life and well-being. Hippocrates, the father of medicine, gave importance to all the three. About diet he said “diet is health – health is diet”. In prescription, he first prescribed these and then other remedies.
Lt. Gen. (Retd) Mahmud Ahmed Akhtar
Most of us have had a night (or many nights) when it all went side-ways. Maybe you stayed out late and got only four hours instead of recommended seven to nine hours. May be your racing brain would not stop, woke up every one to two hours. Or may be missed a whole night’s rest cramming on a deadline.
A night’s bad sleep spoils the next day. Here is how the sleep deprivation affects and how to mitigate the fall-out and on edge “blood pressure and heart rate response and cortisol response, all of these components of the sympathetic nervous system” are increased without sleep. People suffering from anxiety and depression disorders may show these symptoms and signs.
How to Clear the Fog?
The first thing is taking a nap. It can not only make you feel less sleepy but it can also improve your performance on many of the cognitive processes that are impaired by insomnia. To avoid the sleep inertia some people feel after-napping; try to limit yourself to 30 minutes. You may not feel like you fall sleep, but even getting a little bit of that tight sleep can help your brain get some rest and have a boost in performance.
Caffeine can enhance a little alertness and cognition. Too much caffeine can make people anxious and jittery and increase heart rate, all of which can also be experienced due to lack of sleep. Regular exercise counteracts the health consequences of loss of sleep in the long-term and there is some evidence that it improves performance immediately after a night of bad sleep too. A 2022 study found that college students who exercised after a night of total sleep deprivation performed better on a test of cognitive control than those who did not exercise. Exposing to bright natural light is another way to increase alertness. To take the benefits of both light and exercise, take a mid-day walk. A walk after lunch is reported to enhance afternoon performance.
Doing Damage Control
While these strategies can help but these do not completely offset the effects of a night of bad sleep. Make a few adjustments to your day to help you avoid any serious mistakes. First things first, if you have pulled an all-nighter, do not get behind the wheel. “If you have been awake all night, your performance is as bad as if you are legally drunk”, said Professor Kenneth P. Wright Jr., a professor of integrative physiology of the University of Colorado, Boulder who studies sleep. Lack of sleep is a major cause of vehicular accidents. When it comes to work, it is recommended to give more time to finish task and avoid multi-tasking. One can schedule the day around his circadian rhythm, for most people, energy naturally rises in the mid-morning, dips in the early afternoon and then rises again late afternoon or early evening. Do your harder tasks when you are feeling a little better. And when you have that pull which is going to feel even worse when you are sleep-deprived, try to do something that may be a little bit less cognitively straining.
If possible, avoid having important conversations since lack of sleep can make one more emotionally reactive and not making big-life or financial moves. One may not be able to strategize effectively about all the pieces of information that are necessary to make a decision. Children suffer from lack of sleep due to attending school in earlier hours. Experts have recommended to start school in later hours of the day in order to provide better sleep and prevent harmful effect of insomnia. All this said, the only real cure of a bad night’s rest is to get a good night’s rest the following night. The magical solution of sleep loss is sleep.
Sleep is essential for life. For a lack of sleep, one needs to adjust for short-comings and take a well-timed nap. For good sleep, better sleep hygiene should be observed. A room free from noise, light pollution, proper room temperature, avoiding blue light at sleep timings, sleep stimulants, liquor, heavy meal, bad thoughts etc. makes a person healthy, wealthy and wise.
“Early to bed and early to rise is a meaningful adage for a cognitive and a purposeful life”.
