Mood, Cognition and Sleep

Today I wanted to talk about mood, cognition and sleep and how they are all connected, affected by each other and why they are all important. Do you tend to feel better and happier after you have had a good night’s sleep? Maybe you find that you are able to concentrate better at work or school or that you fall to sleep easier when you are in a good mood. Is this just a coincidence or is there a connection between them all? As always, I will be discussing these points by using fact based research as well as my own opinions.

Everybody wants to be happy and in a good mood as much of the time as they can because that is the most enjoyable way to experience life. But does being in a good mood give us any other benefits? Research shows that being happy and in a positive mindset actually helps to lower blood pressure and in turn, reduce the risk of cardio vascular disease (coronary heart disease, stroke, peripheral arterial disease and aortic disease). This is an amazing benefit that would help many people. In our current world, our lives tend to be constantly filled with stresses and deadlines we need to meet, leading most of us to be running at full speed the whole day. The increase in stress releases hormones into your body such as adrenaline, this makes your heart beat faster and your blood pressure rise. Once you are no longer stressed your blood pressure should go back to its normal level however, for as long as it lasts, your blood pressure will be elevated. Stress is unfortunately a part of life, there will normally be times or things that make us stressed in life that is out of our control. Long-term exposure to stress can elevate our levels of anxiety and depression as well as effecting our ability to sleep properly.

There are many ways that we can try to help us manage our stresses and not let them get to us. For example, I like doing 10 to 15 minutes of yoga and meditation in the morning when I get up. I personally find that it nicely sets me up for my day and if I woke up worrying about something then it settles me and clears my head. Other ways that have been shown to improve people’s mood and reduce stress are going for a walk in a green space like a park or some woodland, going to the gym or doing exercise and our diet can actually affect our mental health too. Studies show these can actually help to improve our alertness, concentration and attention span. There are many ways that people find to make them feel happier and de-stress, these are just a few, if you are looking for something to work for you why not try a few of them on different days and see what you enjoy doing. I believe it is vital to actually enjoy activities that you do, there is no point forcing yourself to do something that is “supposed” to make you feel better because you will adapt a negative association with it and likely will experience reduced or no beneficial effects from it.

Cognition I touched on in the previous segment but let’s go into it in more depth. By cognition I mean the mental processes that our brain conducts such as memory, attention span, ability to think and learn and our perception of the world around us. So I previously mentioned that being stressed and in a bad mood can negatively affect our body in many ways but that trying to improve our mood and stress can lead to an increase in cognitive effectiveness. Alongside our mood another factor that impacts our cognition is our outlook on the world around us and how we perceive situations throughout the day. Being able to improve your cognitive performance does not just stop here however as research shows that getting an optimal amount of good sleep can improve it as well.

Improving the amount and/or the quality of your sleep has been shown to help improve your attention span, ability to think and learn and it is even possible that it can reduce the likelihood of age-related cognitive decline. We often hear that we should be getting a good amount of sleep but what does that mean, 6 hours, 8 hours, 10 hours? It is often suggested that for optimal amounts of sleep we should aim to get 7.5 hours to 8 hours of sleep a night. An interesting tangent here is that recent research looking into people who monitor their sleep using a fitness watch can be helpful for some people. However, they have also found that people can become fixated on what it says their “sleep score”, “sleep regeneration” and other factors tell them. These watches are not the most accurate with research showing that they are accurate about 78% of the time and are only about 38% accurate when determining when you went to sleep. You may have had a good sleep when in-fact your watch tells you differently, you then read the information telling you that you did not sleep well which then makes you believe this is the case and can actually affect how you are now feeling. It can make you go from feeling rested and refreshed to tired, frustrated and can negatively affect your mood. This being said, if you are not fixating on the numbers and are not too bothered with the readings then it is still fine to have. Personally I have a smartwatch that tracks my sleep, occasionally I look at what it thinks my sleep was like and just acknowledge it, I don’t let it determine how I feel after waking up. I felt that I wanted to address this as research suggests 1 in 3 people use smartwatches, right back to the point. So getting enough good quality sleep can reduce the risk of health problems by reducing stress, improving your mood and cognitive performance.

Hopefully this article has shown the connections between mood, cognition and sleep and why they are fundamental to our health and well-being. Our mood affects our cognitive performance and ability to sleep well, sleep affects our mood and cognition, it is like a circle of well-being. Hopefully this article has highlighted the importance these factors can have on your health. Did you know about these areas of well-being? Let me know in the comments! This topic is vast and there is lots that can be said in this area, I could not cover it all here so I may have missed something, let me know if you think there is something interesting that I have missed! I would love to hear what you think. Anyway, I hope you have enjoyed this article. Let me know if there is a specific topic that you would like to see me discuss!  Stay happy and healthy, ciao!