How does Stress affect Sleep?

 
What keeps you up at night? In this article, you will read about stress and its effects on your sleep, such as quality and quantity and some tips to enhance your sleeping environment and help you get to sleep. 

What is Stress? 

Stress is an essential mechanism, that helps you when faced with problems. The stress reaction, otherwise known as the “fight or flight response”, can save your life and motivate you to do more than you usually would, when working correctly. However, it can be dangerous when you are too stressed or stressed for too long. therefore, it depends on the person as stress affects people differently. It will eventually cause or worsen problems with your body and mind. Examples of health problems caused or aggravated by stress are: 

Stress’s effects on sleep quantity? 

Everyone has experienced not getting to sleep as quickly as they usually would, and many things can keep you awake at night, such as caffeine and blue light. Insomnia, which causes you not to sleep at night when given adequate time to do so, can also cause not being able to remain asleep at night. In addition to this, insomnia can also be more severe depending on the person’s circumstances and current coping mechanisms whilst dealing with a stressful situation. Which in turn causes more stress due to lack of sleep. So, to manage stress and help you get to sleep there are tips down below. 

How does Stress affect Sleep quality? 

Stress affects not only the quantity of sleep but also the quality. The other way you can determine the quality of your sleep is by looking at your: 

• Sleep continuity: the ability to stay asleep after falling asleep, which can be affected by stress-induced insomnia. 
• Sleep onset Latency: the ability to fall quickly and easily asleep, which can also be affected by insomnia. 
• Sleep efficiency: the amount of time you spend asleep versus the amount of time you spend trying to sleep; this could be affected by stress as if you are stressed, it takes you longer to sleep, decreasing sleep efficiency. 
• Sleep timing: this is about what time you sleep in the 24 hours in a day; This affects sleep quality as we have something called a circadian rhythm which dictates our internal clock and makes us feel awake and vigilant at times, usually daytime, and tired at other times, usually night-time. Sleeping when the circadian rhythm tells you, you are tired is what you need to have a good quality sleep. So, in most cases, this means sleeping at night and waking up in the day at the same time; however, when stressed, it can take you longer to get to sleep and, in some cases, fragment your sleep which then makes it so you do not wake up when you should. 

These four things are what you need to determine whether sleep is of high or low quality, so to have a high-quality sleep, you need to have enough sleep; if you are an adult, between 7 to 9 hours of sleep depending on the person, preferably at night.  

How sleep quality affects us: 

When tired, you have both physical and mental limitations, such as not being able to exert strength or think calmly as quickly as usual. Other ways you can tell your sleep quality is not good is by looking at: 

• How alert and reactive your body is. If you cannot use your total cognitive and physical capacity, then the quality of your sleep is terrible  
• How well-rested or tired you feel upon waking up and throughout the day. 

You not only feel the effects of stress when you are awake but also when you are asleep. It affects what you dream about and the emotions in the dream. 

Why Is Sleep Important? 

You use sleep to cope with emotional stress and physical fatigue every day; however, trying to sleep while stressed can cause sleep disturbances, affecting your daily life. Not only does emotion affect sleep, but sleep plays a crucial role in keeping you emotionally stable. Stressful events during the day affect sleep, while rest depending on the quality and quantity, affect the way we react and behave during these stressful and emotional events, affecting our general well-being. 

Not getting enough sleep causes you to be irritable and emotionally unstable and can cause problems for your body. Lack of sleep regularly can cause coronary heart disease, obesity, diabetes, and high blood pressure (hypertension). 

 Insufficient regular sleep can cause lots of problems for your body, such as: 

• Shorter life expectancy 
• disrupted immune system 
• easier weight gain 
• being less fertile (both men and women) 
• reduced sex drive 

Tips on how to manage stress so you can Sleep well: 

1. Practicing Relaxation techniques: doing light exercises can help reduce stress before going to bed but be careful as doing vigorous activities can cause issues with sleep onset latency, total sleep time, and sleep efficiency. Therefore, if done just before going to bed, make sure to have enough time to relax before going to bed. Some light exercises that can be done before bed are yoga, tai chi, and qigong. 

2. Reduce exposure to screens before bed, as most electronic devices emit blue light. If exposed to blue light before bedtime, it can increase how long it takes to sleep and throw your circadian rhythm off, making it hard to sleep at the exact times, reducing sleep quality. 

3. Do not eat a meal before bed: overeating before bed can increase how long it takes you to get to sleep. In addition to this, it can also cause your sleep duration to be lower and increases the risk of waking up early, all of which decreases the quality of your sleep. If you need to eat before going to sleep, having a small nutrient-rich snack is better. 

4. Take a warm shower or bath: before bedtime, taking a warm shower or bath helps you get to sleep because it emulates the body’s natural process. As the warm bath or shower increase your body temperature after you get out of the tub or shower and go to bed, your body will cool down, the same way it does when you fall asleep. 

However, if you are still struggling to sleep or always feel tired then contact your doctor (GP).