We know that most people in the typical Western lifestyle do not get enough good quality sleep. Our jobs are too demanding, our phones are too entertaining and our minds are too preoccupied with the events of the day to settle down and relax.
There are still many, however, who experience the negative consequences of too much sleep. Here are the biggest reasons why too much sleep can hamper your overall well-being.
Your brain needs a balance between periods of activity and rest
By looking at the body, we can easily understand the importance of a good balance between work and rest. Too much exercise leads to overtraining. This happens when the body is subjected to more physical exercise than what it can recover from, and starts to break down instead of strengthen. Athletes, people with self-image disorders and exercise enthusiasts are the most susceptible to overtraining. We know that on the other hand, too little exercise is also detrimental to your health.
By looking at the above example, it is easy to understand that the brain works in the same way. The brain needs enough stimulation to stay healthy. This is why playing chess regularly is linked to decreased mental illness occurrence like Alzheimer’s disease. Our brains were made to think, discover, solve problems and learn.
Since we are living beings, we are constantly adapting to the stimulus that we receive. You can’t think of your brain as a tool that you leave in the shed for a few months and find in the same condition that you left it, because the brain is constantly adapting to change. If it is not used and exercised, it will diminish in ability. Our body’s constant adaption to stimulus is called homeostasis. Homeostasis is a survival mechanism where the body responds to stimulus.
Your brain uses neurons to process information. It does this by transferring information form one neuron to the other. The connections between these neurons thrive or wither according to the activities that you do regularly. This is why you can’t remember everything that you have ever learned. Doing less mental work allows the brain to clean up the connections between these neurons, giving you lower processing power. Since you have less processing power, your brain will tire sooner. Mental fatigue sets in prematurely and signals the need for even more sleep.
Varied stimulation
We’ve established how a stimulated brain is a healthy brain. Subjecting your brain to too few forms of stimulation also leads to a decline in mental function. Variety allows some brain functions to rest while still being stimulated enough to strengthen.
If we return to the physical exercise example, runners who add variety to their exercises will improve running performance more than those who don’t. For example, stretching the leg muscles increase their ability to run.
Falling into a simple cycle of work and rest decreases the brain’s ability to cope with work. By doing other activities, the brain will be strengthen and improve its overall processing power. For example, doing a hobby that you enjoy will release a hormone called dopamine, your brains enjoyment (or reward) hormone. This hormone has positive effects on the brain. It has been shown to increase learning ability and focus length. This could explain why adding humor to learning experiences increase information retention.
Sleep quality
Have you heard the saying, ‘there is nothing like good rest after good work?’
Good activity leads to good rest, while lack of activity leads to a decreased need (and therefore quality) of rest. This is why exercise gives people more energy. Their bodies respond to the lack of energy from exercise by creating even more energy. When we rest while still having a lot of energy, our bodies respond by decreasing overall energy levels.
Our bodies rest when they are not exercising, but get the most rest during sleep. Our brains work in the same way: they get some rest while doing relaxing activities, but get the most rest from sleep. If sleep time increases while activity (being awake) decreases, your brain balances this out by lowering the amount of recovery that it goes through per sleep cycle. This ultimately means that when you sleep more, your brain learns to require more sleep for the same recovery functions that typically requires less sleep.
Sleep addiction
By what we have seen above, your brain will adjust to too much sleep and start to require more sleep for less mental output. This starts a negative cycle where more sleep leads to even more sleep. Since you are tired all the time (as a result of unintentionally training yourself to sleep so much), you think that you need even more sleep. You feel better after sleep, but this is short-lived because your brain will want to return to its new normal after a short period of mental effort. This is how sleeping too much is very similar to addiction.
Many argue that you cannot be addicted to a biological need like breathing and eating. We all know that we can be addicted to eating too much or too little. The inability (or extreme difficulty) to breathe too much does not take away from the fact that eating food can become an addiction.
If you give your body too much or too little of what it needs, problems arise. It is as simple as that.
How much sleep do we really need?
Easy ways to keep oversleeping in check
Get a hobby
If you are using sleep as a way to escape from reality, find a good hobby that you enjoy. This will teach your brain that it can cope with stress while still being awake. By enjoying your wakeful hours, your brain won’t associate wakefulness with negativity. Teach yourself to deal with stress in ways that don’t require sleep. When you do sleep, being in a more relaxed and calm state will increase sleep quality and therefore reduce your total sleep need. Finding something that you enjoy doing while you are awake will reduce your emotional need to run to sleep. You will find it easier to stay awake during the times that you should be.
These hobbies can include reading, painting, spending time for friends and family and gardening.
Exercise
When you exercise, your body adapts by creating more energy. This energy surplus will make you feel better for longer. If you are already trapped in the cycle of low energy and too much sleep, start off with short, low-intensity exercises to build up your energy gradually. By doing too much too soon, you risk re-enforcing the false idea that exercise is draining or excruciating. By increasing your exercise efforts slowly and incrementally, you will start to enjoy it and experience the beneficial health effects that exercise brings you.
Stick to the same sleep schedule
Our bodies work on a sleep clock called the circadian rhythm. This allows us to learn when to sleep and when to stay awake. Certain things influence the circadian rhythm, like as sunlight, stress and physical activity. By going to bed at the same time, you increase your sleep quality because when you think you should sleep and when you actually do start to synchronize. If you go to bed and wake up at the same time every day, you give your brain a chance to adapt to something useful; you will end up feeling tired when it is time to sleep, but wakeful for the rest of the day.
Make sure that you are getting the best quality sleep
Sleep quality refers to how much benefit you get from sleep within a certain period of time. If you sleep for a long period of time but do not recover sufficiently from mental and physical strain, you did not get enough good quality sleep. By increasing sleep quality, you reduce the amount of time that you need to sleep while increasing the amount of energy that you have when you are awake.
Here are some of the most common causes of poor sleep quality:
• Snoring and sleep apnea (inability to maintain deep sleep due to a lack of oxygen)
• Poor room light (not dark enough for the brain to associate sleep time with night-time)
• Room temperature (too hot or too cold to relax)
• Mental stress (brain feels too threatened to calm down)
Don’t sleep your life away. Learn that life can feel really good when you are awake if you make the effort to experience it. As with any major change, start small and build up progress over time to make that change sustainable. STAY STRONG!
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Great blog. All posts have something to learn. Your work is very good and I appreciate you and hopping for some more informative posts. Functions and Mechanisms of Sleep
ReplyDeleteThanks Micheal
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