How Sleep Deprivation Skyrockets Your Anxiety Levels
According to UT Southwestern, it's a common misconception that we need more rest as we age. The truth is that quality sleep is harder to get as we age due to a variety of factors. These factors include insomnia, sleep apnea, cardiac conditions, and more.
Unfortunately, this sparks an unpleasant cycle where the inability to sleep makes it harder to sleep. But what are the effects of sleep deprivation on the elderly?
If you're curious about how sleep deprivation impacts your golden years, we're here to help. Read on to learn more about sleep deprivation and mental health, how lack of sleep affects anxiety, and what you can do for a remedy.
More Sleep For Seniors
As we age, many factors in our sleep will change. According to a paper titled Impact of Poor Sleep on Physical and Mental Health in Older Women, "older adults usually experience decreases in sleep duration and efficiency."
In essence, this means that we sleep worse as we age. That's led to the belief that older people need more sleep when it's just that we're struggling to get good sleep.
We can try to curtail the negative effects by looking after our sleep. That involves chasing down ways to improve our rest, get as much as we can, and to improve our overall health.
Cognitive Impacts
When we're talking about the effects of sleep deprivation, it's crucial to look at all cognitive effects. Many of these effects will induce or worsen anxiety.
Many of the effects that we deal with as we age are cognitive effects. According to the paper Effects of Sleep Deprivation on Cognition, sleep deprivation can impact our response speed, alertness, attention, memory, and perception.
To that end, let's dive into some of the cognitive impacts you should expect. These will help inform us on how lack of sleep affects anxiety. We'll use the aforementioned paper as our source for this information.
Alertness
One of the primary impacts of sleep deprivation is a drop in alertness, which is our ability to stay aware of and attentive to our surroundings.
Mentally, this can cause anxiety by adding to feelings of confusion. If we don't feel alert or aware, it's harder for us to feel safe.
Such issues become particularly prevalent if we're battling other cognitive disorders. Conditions like Alzheimer's or dementia are worsened considerably by a lack of sleep.
Furthering this is that dementia is often linked to a lack of sleep. According to Medical News Today, researchers found that sleep deprivation for people over the age of 60 equals a 27% increase in the likelihood of developing dementia.
Emotional Processing
Emotional processing is another factor in our anxiety. Just as the name implies, this is our mind's ability to handle our emotions.
As we age, we'll deal with plenty of emotionally taxing events. Bereavement, loneliness, grief, and many more become common as we age. These are difficult for anyone to handle, no matter what the state of their mind is.
If you're lacking sleep, your mind may struggle to process these emotions. That can lead to a number of detrimental effects, as well as the unfortunate side effect of dwelling on your emotions.
Do your best to get an adequate amount of sleep to battle this issue. That way, you're able to handle all the trials coming your way.
Memory
Memory is one of the most important things to care for as we age. As our previous Medical News Today article mentioned, sleep deprivation is one of the quickest ways to hasten mental deterioration.
As our memory begins to fade, feelings of confusion and anxiety are amplified. Trying and failing to remember something or forgetting crucial information will only worsen your feelings of anxiety. Defend against this with proper rest.
Handling Executive Functions
What are executive functions? These are the qualities of our mind to handle problem-solving, emotional control, and more. An example of some qualities include:
- Memory
- Problem-solving and sequencing
- Regulating our thoughts and memories
- Self-control
According to a paper from Nature, lack of sleep can worsen these functions in any adult, much less the elderly. Handling sleep deprivation is best done quickly so that you don't begin to experience such deterioration.
Heightened Anxiety
Finally, the most important of all effects of sleep deprivation is that not getting enough sleep will heighten your anxiety. That creates a rough Cache-22, where poor sleep causes anxiety, while anxiety causes worse sleep.
Finding ways to alleviate your anxiety will help you sleep. According to Harvard, you can do so with some tricks like:
- Avoiding caffeine
- Review any medications and speak with your doctor
- Avoid alcohol, large meals, smoking, and too many fluids
- Exercise regularly and keep naps short
- Try to go to bed at a reasonable time
These are all great tips, but they won't always fix your problem. You may want to speak to your doctor about improving sleep for anxiety reduction. That way, you can get some good advice on beating the consequences of poor sleep.
Tackling Anxiety
The best way to tackle your anxiety is to look at what behaviors may cause it. At times, this isn't possible - you may have a condition that's causing the anxiety, for example.
To that end, it's important to speak to a medical professional. We especially suggest this if you intend to make any large, sweeping changes to your lifestyle. Smaller changes like an organized sleep schedule aren't as crucial to discuss.
Never change a medication without speaking to a doctor. Other large changes like a new workout regimen or a large dietary change should also be discussed.
Understanding Sleep Deprivation
Sleep deprivation is detrimental to anyone but can have profound effects on the elderly. Understanding the effects of sleep deprivation, as well as the link between sleep deprivation and mental health, is integral. Speak to a doctor and work to balance your sleep schedule to keep your anxiety in check.
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