How Does Lack of Sleep Affect Mental Health?

Video – VLog #29

How does sleep affect stress? Is there any side effects?

Do you feel stressed when you don’t get a good night’s sleep?

During this conversation, it is discussed how the two are intertwined – lack of sleep and stress.

Script – VLog #29

David Logan: Hi and welcome to another week: The Techno Dinosaur Meets the IT Geek. My name is David Logan based here in Annan, South West of Scotland. I am known as the IT geek. I am the guy, for the home worker, takes the jargon out of technology so they can work efficiently. Along with me today, who is going to be questioned, is my partner in crime, Willie Nicol. Nearly forgot your name there Willie. So, how are you? And, where are you Willie?

Willie Nicol: I’m very well David, you must be getting stressed so it’s good we’re going to be talking a wee bit about that. I’m Willie Nicol, The Techno Dinosaur, also the life coach. I’m based in Troon, South Ayrshire, Scotland.

David Logan: Fantastic. I think I’ve got, what you call it? Zoom fatigue. Been zooming all morning. That might be a slight factor in me forgetting your name or it might be getting back into the coffee. This week, Willie, I have a question for you. How does sleep … maybe this is my problem … How does sleep affect stress? Is there any side effects?

Willie Nicol: That’s a good question David and you won’t be surprised to hear that I’ve done a bit of research. Nothing I really didn’t know before but sleep and stress are linked. They are almost intertwined and it’s a catch 22, chicken and egg situation. So, if you’re stressed it’s likely you won’t get deep restful sleep or not enough of it and if you don’t get enough sleep it’s liable to increase your stress levels. So, it’s a double whammy, if you like.

David Logan: A double whammy? So, can you just repeat that again? So, if you get too much stress… So, the too much sleep you can be overstressed but if you get too little you can still get stressed?

Willie Nicol: No. Too little sleep is liable to increase your stress and stress can lead to getting too little sleep. So, if you stressed, you’re probably not going to sleep well at night. So, you won’t wake up refreshed and rested and your stress levels or your stress tolerance level is probably going to be lower and then you get more stressed during the day.

Willie Nicol: Then you go to sleep, go to bed at night, can’t sleep again, get more stressed and so on and so on. That’s why I say it’s a double whammy. It’s a kind of double-edged sword if you like.

David Logan: So, when you go to bed you’re stressed, you can’t sleep. Is that you … called the conscious or the subconscious working on your brain?

Willie Nicol: I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t classify it like that. It’s just that your mind is probably … because of your elevated stress, your mind is probably working overtime and you can’t get to sleep. So, if I came back to old ground we’ve covered before – stress is perfectly normal. Small amounts of it are perfectly normal. They keep us on our toes. They keep us alert to danger and they protect us. Our stress protects us. However, stress generates the fight or flight syndrome, where our autonomic nervous system floods our bodies with chemicals we’ve already discussed, cortisol, adrenalin. Excuse Me.

Willie Nicol: To prepare us for fight or flight and I won’t get into all that again but once the danger or the stress disappears, these chemicals are supposed to reduce again to the normal levels and it’s all good. However, if the stress is prolonged or elevated these chemicals remain in our body and do bad things to us effectively. Right, so, if we’re stressed, we can’t sleep … if we can’t sleep, you get more stressed so it’s a vicious circle. And lack of sleep and excessive stress can lead to quite severe mental and physical problems: depression, anxiety etc, etc.

Willie Nicol: Physical problems can include heart disease, kidney problems, obesity and so on and so forth. But I don’t want to be too doom and gloom here, right. The odd restless night or the odd sleepless night or whatever is perfect natural. As is stress but it only is, or can become, a problem when it is prolonged. Too much stress, can’t sleep. Can’t sleep, too much stress. And, with all the chemical and physiological things that happen within our bodies, we can end up in bad shape.

David Logan: Anything else we should know?

Willie Nicol: Well, we’ve also touched on stress management. So, the breathing exercises, mindfulness, meditation, physical exercise and so on are good at reducing stress levels and if you maybe, doing physical exercise you may become more naturally tired and more likely to sleep better.

Willie Nicol: Stress management can feed into, if you like, the sleep management and believe it or not you can find all sorts of information on the web, on the Internet about sleep management. So things like … don’t drink coffee too late at night cause it’ll keep you awake cause it stimulates you, right.

Willie Nicol: Don’t watch too much television or engage with your mobile, go onto social media because it stimulates your brain and then when you get to bed, your brain can’t switch off and let you go to sleep.

Willie Nicol: So, sleep management and stress management kind of go together. If you knock both of these on the head, you’re more liable to get better sleep and be less stressed. It’s fairly simplistic but there’s a lot more to it as you can probably imagine which I don’t have time to go into at this point.

David Logan: Fantastic. Great. We’ll leave it at that then for now but for future, we can maybe talk about that for future videos.

Willie Nicol: Of course.

David Logan: Combination of sleep management and stress management. So, we’ll finish there. Keep it nice, simple and short this week. So, to the viewer, if you can’t sleep maybe it’s stress. If it is, speak to my crime in partner, my partner in crime, Willie Nicol. I am totally off the cock here today.

David Logan: Speak to my partner in crime Willie Nicol. Please if you’ve got any suggestions, any questions, stress related, phobias, technical, drop a comment below. Technology, computers, they’re great but if they don’t work you get stressed. Between the two of us, we can help you. So, please drop comments below. Send us a private message to either of us. Connect to us, feel free, give us a shout.

David Logan: One last thing, before I let you talk Willie. YouTube, we’re looking for that 100 subscribers. Please subscribe down here. We are increasing week in week out. We’re still looking for that 100 subscribers. Remember, Twitter Facebook, we’ve got a website now, LinkedIn – get yourselves there, see the videos. Have a great weekend. Cheerio. I’m out. Over to you Willie.

Willie Nicol: Thank you David. When you said YouTube … back in my day in the police in Glasgow a term of derision was “you tube”, however, that was a long time ago! So, to the viewer stay safe, keep well, bye for now.