![]() “A caffeinated beverage early in the day will almost certainly help keep you more alert for a few hours,” she says. Believe it or not, when you listen to music, your entire brain lights up with neuronal activity, getting the entire brain ‘online.' Cook says: “While all the parts are awake and working, music’s vibrational energy will inevitably sync your own body's internal energy to match the faster, higher and happy vibrations.”Īlthough turning to too much caffeine habitually to make up for poor sleep isn’t wise, there’s little downside to using it as a wakefulness tool every now and then, says Valerie Ulene, MD, MPH, cofounder of Boom Home Medical. When you need an energy boost on sleepy mornings, turn up the volume on your favorite, upbeat playlist while driving or taking a shower. Taylor Swift can get you through a breakup, and she might also help your brain power through a tough day. “It can be as easy as sitting on your porch for your morning coffee.” “ Serotonin, in particular, is a melatonin precursor and can help fight insomnia together,” she says. You might want to crawl under the covers and hide from the world after a restless night, but you should do the opposite, as sunlight and fresh air are both great for triggering endorphins and serotonin, Avena says. But don't rely on these tips as an excuse to skimp on sleep! They're temporary bandages, not the final fix for sleepiness. Here are some of the healthiest and most effective ways to power through and compensate for any mental glitches that come with occasional sleep deprivation. We all have our reasons for sleepless nights once in a while, and in these cases, while making sure to prioritize your sleep again is the best solution, it's not always an immediate possibility. How to Cope if You're Running on Little Sleep The Mental Health Effects of Sleep Deprivation If you're sleeping for 10 hours every night, but not waking up feeling refreshed, you’re getting poor sleep quality.” She adds that it can be helpful to visit a clinic for a sleep study to identify and fix the problems in your sleep cycle. “Our brains need around four to six full sleep cycles a night to wake rested. “The only way of knowing if you’re getting ‘quality sleep’ is if you typically wake up feeling rested, refreshed, and revitalized,” Cook says. Quality and quantity of hours sleep do matter, but so does how you feel in the morning. Though without undergoing formal sleep analysis, it’s difficult to know exactly how much sleep you need, there are a few things that can help guide your body’s natural cues. However, since this estimate is a bell curve, some people need more, and some need less to feel great. Generally speaking, Cook says, scientists have found that most adults need around 8 or 9 hours of sleep to perform and feel their best. Because of this, the specific amount of optimal sleep one brain needs isn’t the same for everyone, says licensed clinical psychologist Bethany Cook, PsyD. The human brain is as different from one person to the next as fingerprints. Though it seems like a straightforward question, it’s somewhat complicated to understand how much sleep your mind needs to perform well and stay well. How Much Sleep Do You Need for Optimal Brain Health? So what happens to your brain health and mental capacities if you consistently don’t get enough sleep? And how can you power through on days when you didn’t get enough shut-eye the night before? We asked sleep specialists and mental health experts to weigh in. “Sleep has long been thought to be a passive process, but it’s actually an active state, and the quality and duration of our sleep impacts crucial brain functions,” she says, including memory storage, attention maintenance and arousal, learning new material/tasks, mood stability, the ability to read social cues, problem-solving, executive functioning, and impulse control. Sleep is essential for brain development, wellness, and functioning, explains Heidi Riney, MD, board-certified sleep medicine and neurology psychologist and the chief medical officer of Nox Health. Though it’s normal to have trouble falling asleep and/or staying asleep occasionally, prolonged periods of sleepless nights and chronic sleep deprivation can harm not only our bodies, but our minds. Parents of newborns, students cramming for exams, overworked professionals pushed to their max, insomniacs, caffeine dependents, night-shift workers, and menstruating people-at some point, we all know how getting less than enough sleep feels (very bad).
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