Any resolution to improve health, seek happiness, be more productive, or otherwise enhance life is best accomplished when coupled with sufficient, quality sleep. Good sleep is a foundational element of well-being, promoting physical health, mental sharpness and emotional stability.
We know this not just from many large studies of self-reported information on sleep and mood coupled with clinical health and mortality data, but thanks to volunteers who go into sleep labs and agree to be deprived of shut-eye, so scientists can gauge what happens the next day.
It’s not pretty.
A single bad night of sleep fuels next-day anxiety, curbs joy, hinders decision-making and slashes productivity — based on scientific findings I detail in my book, Make Sleep Your Superpower. Chronic poor sleep, night after night, damages the mind and body like a slowly sinking foundation eventually destroys a home, leading to high blood pressure, chronic disease, depression, cognitive decline and early death.
Multiple new studies illustrate the long-term physical, mental and emotional effects of poor sleep, and how one bad night can ruin your day.
In one new analysis, researchers reviewed 154 clinical studies from the past 50 years in which scientists forced volunteers to sleep less than usual and/or woke them up during the night, then recorded next-day emotional effects by objective measures of anxiety and depressive symptoms, responses to emotional stimuli, and self-reported mood.
Any amount or type of sleep loss — even just staying up an hour later than normal — resulted in more anxiety and less joy, happiness, and contentment, the researchers conclude in the journal Psychological Bulletin (PDF).
“Even when sleep is only mildly deficient, there are measurable negative changes in how we react to everyday events,” said study team member Candice Alfano, PhD, a clinical psychologist and director of the Sleep and…