Every year, the third Friday in the month of March is observed as ‘World Sleep Day’ in order to increase the awareness about the importance of proper sleep and emphasize the adverse effects of improper sleep including lack of sleep, insomnia, disturbed sleep, etc. This year the theme for World Sleep Day is ‘Sleep is Essential for Health’. The theme propagates that good sleep is a foundation to one’s physical and mental health and social well-being.
In recent times there is no dearth of information for various topics related to the importance of sleep. Some commonly discussed topics include:
- Understanding sleep cycle
- Tips to have a good quality sleep
- The relation between sleep and metabolism/weight loss
- Sleep disorder topics such as lack of sleep (sleeping for less hours than the average required hours), inability to sleep or sleep deprivation (insomnia), sleep apnea, snoring, etc.
In today’s health article we bring forward to you a sleep related topic that is usually discussed less frequently, ‘How lack of sleep affects your brain health and cognition?’ Read further to know more…
Why is sleep important for Brain?
A proper undisturbed sleep for adequate hours ensures that your brain gets enough rest. This is vital for maintaining the neurons and enhancing the cognitive functions of the brain. During sleep the brain activities slow down and undergoes a significant change in the levels of its activity. The brain activity keeps varying in each of the sleep stages (rapid eye movement or REM and non-REM or NREM sleep).
- In cases of disturbed or improper sleep, the brain does not rest well and struggles to function properly, subsequently affecting concentration and attention which are a prerequisite for most learning and other cognitive activities.
- Furthermore an unrested brain may also meddle with several other aspects of thinking including memory, creativity, productivity, logical thinking and reasoning, decision making ability, and emotional processing.
- Studies have also shown that poor sleep also puts the brain at higher risk of developing neurodegenerative conditions such as dementia and Alzheimer’s.
What are the short-term impacts of disturbed and poor quality sleep on cognition?
- Feeling of restlessness and lack of energy during the day
- Drowsiness and lethargy
- Easy and excessive fatigue
- Lack of concentration
- Slowed down thinking and reaction time
- Diminished place-keeping which means inability to carry out instructions
- Compromised motor coordination
- Dysregulated emotional response Impaired judgment
- Failure to absorb new information
- Deficits in memory or fragmented memory
What are the long-term impacts of disturbed and poor quality sleep on cognition?
In addition to the above mentioned short-term impacts, long-term disturbed and poor quality sleep are related to:
- Cognitive decline, dementia, and Alzheimer’s disease
- Altered memory consolidation or failure to reinforce information in the brain so that it can be recalled when needed
- Impaired formation of declarative memory, which includes things like basic facts or statistics
- Declined procedural memory such as remembering a sequence of steps
- Formation of false memories
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