How sleep impacts your mood (The effects of a good (or bad) night’s rest on how you feel)
Have you ever been in a bad mood and wondered why? It may have been tied to how well (or rather, how poorly) you slept the night before.
“Sleep and mood are intimately connected,” says Monisha Bhanote, MD, FCAP, a triple board-certified physician and Yoga Medicine® teacher. “True restful sleep can improve well-being, while poor, inadequate sleep may cause irritability, moodiness, and make you vulnerable to stressors. This also is observed in the opposite direction, where mental stress, mood and anxiety affect sleep by keeping the body aroused. In fact, individuals with sleep problems tend [to have] exaggerated responses to stress.”
Bhanote points out that “Researchers at the University of Pennsylvania found that individuals who limited their sleep to 4.5 hours per night for a week displayed [feelings of being] stressed, angry, sad, and mentally exhausted. When they resumed adequate sleep hours, their mood improved dramatically.”