The importance of sleep for your physical health cannot be overstated. Did you know that sleep is equally crucial for your mental health? We’re not just talking about those occasional nights where racing thoughts keep you awake, leading to a grumpy mood the next day. Long-term sleep health has profound effects on your mental well-being. It can change your overall happiness and contentment versus feelings of low mood and depression.
Consistently getting quality sleep is vital for maintaining mental health. Poor sleep can exacerbate mental health issues, while good sleep can improve emotional resilience and cognitive function. Understanding the intricate relationship between sleep and mental health is essential for taking proactive steps toward a healthier, happier life. This means you need to enjoy welcome the need for white noise, custom bedding or even a mattress. Your sleep environment needs to match exactly what you need to have a great night's sleep.
Let’s explore how sleep influences your mental health and the steps you can take to improve your sleep for better overall well-being.
Why Bad Sleep Messes with Your Mood
There are three major things that happen when you’re working with a night of subpar sleep:
- Emotional Regulation: When you don’t cycle through sleep stages correctly or sufficiently, your brain struggles to regulate emotions effectively. This disruption can lead to increased irritability and a generally low mood. This makes it harder to manage everyday stress and interactions. It's like going every morning without a cup of coffee!
- Serotonin Production: Poor or insufficient sleep interferes with your body's production of serotonin. It's a neurotransmitter directly involved in regulating mood. This disruption can lead to feelings of depression and anxiety, as serotonin plays a crucial role in maintaining a balanced emotional state. Your bedroom should be a happy place where you can unwind and relax.
- Cortisol Levels: Sleep deprivation increases levels of cortisol, the stress hormone. A lack of quality sleep results in a chronic, low-level stress response the following day. Elevated cortisol levels can make you feel anxious, irritable, and generally unwell, contributing to a negative cycle of poor mental health.
Now multiply that for years and years of time. What happens? Problems.
Healthy Sleep Leads to Happier People: the Evidence
Sleep health is a huge issue in our country – and a bunch of other ones, too. As a result, there’s been a lot of exploration into how sleep affects mood and mental health. And it certainly points to quality sleep directly contributing to a happier life. Here are a few recent studies to support that claim:
A 2021 cross-sectional study on inadequate sleep and frequent mental distress used data from the 2018 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System’s information on 273,695 people aged 18-64. They found that people who got inadequate sleep, meaning less than 6 hours per night, were 2.5x more likely to experience frequent mental distress than people who routinely got more than 6 hours’ sleep per night.
A 2021 meta-analysis of 65 randomized, controlled trials (total of 8608 people) on the effects sleep health has on mental health found several strong implications:
- Improving sleep had a medium statistically significant positive impact on overall mental health, rumination, anxiety, and depression.
- Improving sleep had small-to-medium statistically significant effect on stress levels.
- Effects of sleep improvement are dose-dependent, meaning bigger improvements lead to bigger positive mood changes.
- Sleep is directly related to the experience of mental health struggles.
A 2015 sleep study was the first one of its kind to ask the question of the role sleep delay plays in mood vs the role of sleep architecture (read: how sound or disrupted your sleep is). They did this by comparing one group, whose sleep was delayed, and another group, who was awakened several times during the night. And they had some pretty interesting results:
- Disrupted sleep resulted in significantly less slow-wave sleep (the good, restorative stuff) than delaying sleep.
- Positive mood worsened with more nights of poor sleep.
- With comparably-reducing sleep times, sleep disruption had a significantly larger negative effect on mood than sleep delay.
A Custom-Made Mattress Can Help You Sleep More Soundly
A big factor in whether or not you’ll sleep well tonight is the bed you’re sleeping on. And if your mattress is old, unsupportive, low-quality, or simply not tailored to you – it’s not helping your sleepless situation. You’d be surprise the wonders accomplished by a bed that was made to fit you.
At CustomMattress.com, we specialize in hand-crafting custom mattresses in any size, shape, and firmness to suit any sleep environment. Our work covers anything from custom sofa bed mattresses to giant family XL mattresses that are 12 feet wide. Using high-quality materials like memory foam, natural latex, and organic cotton, we create mattresses that provide the perfect support and comfort tailored to your specific needs.
When your head hits the pillow each night, having a mattress designed just for you can make all the difference. A custom mattress ensures that you are set up for a successful sleep, improving your health and well-being. If you're not ready to start on your bespoke bed journey yet, you can start off with custom bedding to see the difference that tailor made options can make.
Take a look at our mattress selection to get started. Happy customizing!