7 psychological signals that indicate that you are not getting enough sleep
Unfortunately, psychological disorders associated with inadequate rest are very common. And it is not strange, since we live in a society very different from the one of decades ago, where everything goes very fast and technology has burst into our homes.
Are not you sleeping enough?
Bad habits, hurry, hellish schedules and other variables can make us rest much less hours than would be necessary.
Sleeping a few hours harms our psychological health
For this reason, it is very important to know how to detect some warning signs in our behavior or in our daily life that make us think about whether it is necessary to dedicate some more time to rest correctly . In this article we suggest seven of these signs that can warn you that you should spend more time in sleep.
1. It's hard for you to make decisions
One of the most unmistakable signs of a bad break is the difficulty in making decisions , since it directly affects the ability to be effective in our jobs or in the study. If you have noticed that it is harder for you to think clearly or make decisions, your rest may not be entirely complete. Devoting more time to work during the nights is not usually highly recommended, since in the end our cognitive capacity and concentration are resented.
As it is well known, rest the due hours is very important when it comes to consolidate learning and take care of our cognitive skills , and the lack of hours of sleep hinders this process. It leaves us in a state in which we are less productive.
2. Memory fails you
There are people who are extraordinary when it comes to storing memories and learning, while others are very forgetful. The memory of each one is something very personal. However, If we begin to feel that it is hard for us to rescue memories or learning, it is possible that something may not go well . Maybe we should sleep more hours.
According to what we have explained in the previous point, and although there is still a lot of literature on the REM phase of sleep, multiple investigations maintain that during this sleep cycle our brain processes the information captured during the day and helps to consolidate and store it properly. , that is, it constitutes the information packages we call memories. In consecuense, If we do not rest properly or do not experience a REM phase in optimal conditions, this consolidation of memories may be affected , our brain will be unable to reorganize the information and the next day we will have the feeling that we do not remember well what we experienced the previous day. If this insufficient rest were maintained over time, the deterioration of the capacity to recover information (memories) would be accentuated.
3. You feel irritable and depressed
One has been reported association between sleep deprivation and the possibility of suffering depression. In fact, it is quite common to notice that when we have not rested enough hours we are more likely to be more irritable, to have a worse mood, and so on.
In fact, an investigation carried out in the University of Pennsylvania showed that limiting rest hours to 4.5 hours per day for a period of a week caused stress, irritability, sadness and psychic exhaustion in the participants. These problems, however, are easily remedied if we resume the usual patterns of sleep.
4. Sexual inability
It is true: Lack of sexual desire is also linked to lack of rest . If you are noticing that you begin to suffer some type of alteration of the sexual behavior or a simple lack of sexual appetite, it would be advisable that you will be silvered if you are resting properly. Sleeping badly affects many areas of your life. Several studies show that men and women deprived of sleep have their sexual desire diminished, because they feel exhausted and drowsy, and their blood pressure increases.
In addition, men who suffer Sleep apnea (a respiratory disorder that occurs during the night) also report below-average testosterone levels.
5. Increased appetite (eat more)
Another benefit that comes into play when we rest properly is the ability to prevent diabetes, as it optimizes our response to insulin and keeps us from suffering from metabolic disorders. Eating well also helps us sleep better. It is a circle that complements and that we must take care of.
So, if you notice that your appetite increases inexplicably and you do not understand what the cause is, one of the possible reasons is that you are not carrying a healthy sleep rhythm.You can deduce this relationship by pure logic: while we keep more hours awake, we are more physically active and therefore we eat more . People with insomnia tend to eat more food than is due to the associated anxiety, and this can lead to an increase in body mass.
6. You can not adequately manage stress
According to the points above, if Usually we feel stressed by lack of sleep, reducing our rest time can aggravate the situation . In addition, the same reduction of rest tends to feed stress, so it is necessary to cut this spiral starting by resting more hours.
If we let this situation persist, the snowball gets bigger: we suffer more stress because we sleep a few hours and, at the same time, we sleep a few hours because of stress.
7. Difficulties in vision
Finally, we encounter problems in our most precious sense: the view . It is logical that the lack of sleep ends up affecting this sense, since if our eyes are fatigued they can not be cleaned and refreshed properly, the quality of vision is compromised .
It is something similar to when we spend hours and hours in front of a PC screen, Smartphone or similar. The effects of this are evident in the difficulty to concentrate and an effect fog in the visual field. It is what is usually called tired eyesight .
It may interest you: "10 basic principles for good sleep hygiene"
