Sleep and Health
Sleep plays a really important role in our health and well-being. When we haven’t slept well, most of us simply do not function as well as we usually do. In the short term, lack of sleep can affect our mood, judgment, ability to learn and retain information, and affect reaction times (thus leaving us more susceptible to accidents and injury). Long term, lack of sleep has more serious implications for our health, weakening our immune system and potentially affecting many of the systems necessary for the body to function.
In recent years, the Japanese Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare has produced guidelines concerning the ideal average amount of sleep for different ages, and also published the 良い睡眠の概要 (Good Sleep Overview). In spite of this new focus on sleep though, a 2021 OECD study showed that Japanese people were getting the least sleep out of participants of all 33 countries surveyed, with 52.2% of Japanese respondents saying they could not get their stated ideal amount of sleep (7 hours) on work days, leaving them with an ever growing sleep debt.
Yet while we are all aware of the “need” for sleep, and the often quoted average requirement for 7-9 hours a night for optimal functioning, this doesn’t make it any easier for us to achieve consistently and can in fact increase our anxiety about getting a good night’s rest. Lack of sleep or disrupted sleep has been found to decrease positive emotions and increase our negative responses to stressors. Research into sleep deprivation has also shown that “otherwise healthy people can experience increased anxiety and distress levels following poor sleep”. Additionally, not getting enough sleep or poor-quality sleep can increase our risk of developing mental health disorders. Scientists used to believe that poor sleep or insomnia were a consequence of poor mental health, but research has shown that there seems to be a bidirectional relationship between sleep and mental health problems, with sleep problems having the potential to contribute to the onset of some mental health problems, including depression and anxiety, and also have the potential to exacerbate psychiatric symptoms.
Sleep can be interrupted and disrupted by myriad factors, ranging from environmental (noise, light, temperature), to physical (age, hormonal fluctuations, pain etc) to behavioural (diet, exercise, napping etc) to emotional (stress, anxiety, mental health concerns etc). With all these possible disruptors it is amazing any of us get any sleep at all! But when we are struggling with sleep, there may be changes we can make to improve our sleep hygiene. We can alter our sleeping environment, our daily routine, our diet, and even devise a consistent night time routine to follow. Different factors have more impact for some people and we may find that what works changes across time. You can read more about things to try that may positively impact sleep here https://telljp.com/tips-for-better-sleep-hygiene/.
However, sometimes our sleep can be affected by factors in our lives that are out of our control. We may have to fit in with shift patterns that do not naturally suit our bodies. We may have caring responsibilities that make it hard to relax into sleep or leave us with heavily disrupted sleep. We may also be in physical pain, dealing with health conditions that make insomnia or other sleep conditions more prevalent, or feeling stress from myriad areas of our lives. Improving sleep is not necessarily as easy as changing to black out blinds or avoiding late night heavy meals, and if the things we try don’t work, it is not a failure. We can try other options until we find something that does work, even if only temporarily, so that we can hopefully catch up on some of the sleep debt.
When issues with sleep are persistent, and making changes to sleep hygiene provides no relief, seeking medical advice is advisable to check whether there are any underlying reasons or conditions that may be contributing to the sleep problems.