7 Psychological Signs That Indicate 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 that of decades ago, where everything moves very fast and technology has burst into our homes.
Bad habits, rush, hellish schedules and other variables can cause us to rest many fewer hours than would be necessary for our body.
Sleeping few hours damages 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 reflect on whether it is necessary for us to dedicate some more time to rest properly In this article we propose seven of these signs that can warn you that you should dedicate more time to sleep.
1. You find it difficult to make decisions
One of the most unequivocal signs of a bad rest is difficulty making decisions, since it directly affects the ability to be effective in our jobs or in study. If you have noticed that it is more difficult for you to think clearly or make decisions, it is possible that your rest is not being completely complete. Spending more time working at night is not usually highly recommended, since in the end our cognitive ability and concentration suffer.
As it is well known, Resting enough hours is very important when it comes to consolidating learning and taking care of our cognitive skills, and lack of sleep hinders this process. It leaves us in a state where we are less productive.
2. Your memory fails you
There are people who are extraordinary when it comes to storing memories and learning, while others are very forgetful. Each person’s memory is something very personal. Nevertheless, If we begin to feel that it is difficult for us to rescue memories or learning, it is possible that something is not quite right Maybe we should sleep more hours.
In accordance with 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, constitutes the information packages that we call memories.
Consequently, If we do not rest adequately or do not experience a REM phase in optimal conditions, this consolidation of memories can 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 day before.
If this insufficient rest were maintained over time, the deterioration of the ability to recover information (memories) would become more accentuated.
3. You feel irritable and depressed
It has been reported a 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, have a worse mood, etc.
In fact, an investigation carried out in the University of Pennsylvania showed that limiting rest hours to 4.5 hours a day for a period of one week caused stress, irritability, sadness and psychological exhaustion in the participants. These problems, however, are easily remedied if we resume normal sleeping patterns.
4. Sexual inappetence
It’s true: lack of sexual desire is also linked to lack of rest If you are noticing that you are beginning to suffer from some type of alteration in sexual behavior or a simple lack of sexual appetite, it would be advisable for you to consider whether you are resting adequately. Poor sleep affects many areas of your life. Several studies show that sleep-deprived men and women have a reduced sexual desire, because they feel exhausted and sleepy, and their blood pressure increases.
Furthermore, men who suffer Sleep apnea (a respiratory disorder that occurs at night) also report below-average testosterone levels.
5. Increased appetite (eat more)
Another benefit that comes into play when we rest correctly is the ability to prevent diabetes, since 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 each other and that we must take care of.
So, if you notice that your appetite increases inexplicably and you don’t understand what the cause is, one of the possible reasons is that you are not having a healthy sleep rhythm. You can deduce this relationship by pure logic: As we stay awake for longer hours, we are more physically active and therefore eat more People who suffer from insomnia tend to eat more food than they should due to the associated anxiety, and this can lead to an increase in body mass.
In accordance with the points stated above, if We usually feel stressed due to lack of sleep, reducing our rest time can aggravate the situation Furthermore, the same reduction in rest tends to fuel stress, therefore it is necessary to stop this spiral by starting to rest more hours.
If we let this situation persist, the snowball gets bigger: we suffer more stress because we sleep few hours and, at the same time, we sleep few hours because of the stress.
7. Vision difficulties
Finally, we find problems in our most precious sense: the vision It is logical that lack of sleep ends up affecting this sense, since if our eyes are tired they cannot clean and refresh themselves properly, vision quality is compromised
It is something similar to when we spend hours and hours in front of a PC, Smartphone or similar screen. The effects of this are evident in difficulty concentrating and an effect fog in the visual field. This is what is usually called tired eyesight
