HH290: Sleep-Stress Management & Mood Regulation

Welcome back to another episode of health hack as I continue talking about sleep, and today I'm talking about the correlation between sleep, stress management and mood regulation. improved sleep leads to improve mood regulation and emotional stability. And you've all experienced this, that you're much more likely to fly off the handle and react to something that's triggered you, when you're sleep deprived, then when you've had good quality sleep, and as a result, improved sleep also helps to reduce the risk of depression and anxiety disorders. And there's another factor involved there as well. And that has to do with the gut brain connection. serotonin and dopamine, our feel good hormones are happiness hormones are made in our gut. And two episodes ago, I was talking about the fact that when we don't get enough sleep, we create imbalance in our gut because we kill off our good healthy microbes and end up with too many of the bad microbes, and we want to balance between them. And when our gut is unhealthy, it then can't produce enough serotonin and dopamine, and then we can end up feeling anxious, depressed, and not ourselves. And we go to the doctor, and we're very often prescribed a medication, and no one's looking at your gut and the health of your gut. And that, to me is a really great starting point, Let's heal the gut first, or at least discover if there's imbalances through lab testing. First, before we start using prescription medications, sleep also helps us to better manage our stress. And we have far greater resilience when we are getting the right amount of sleep every single night. And if you're wondering what is the right amount of sleep that you want to get, you want to go back to my episode 391 I believe it is it came out on April the first and check that out because I go through that for all the different age groups. And good quality sleep also results in increased creativity and innovation. And when we're in that creative and innovative state, that is a place of happiness, we are in our rest and digest system, we're out of our fight or flight system. And it's actually a great creativity and doing something like even adult coloring books etc. actually helped to calm the nervous system as well and get us out of that stress state. And we enjoy it even more when well when we are well rested. So sleep has so many different benefits on our health. And I'm literally going through out the month of April highlighting what they all are. Because I want people to realize the importance of good quality sleep, getting enough sleep, and stop taking their sleep for granted. And then wondering why they're not able to function at their very best each and every day. I know I love my sleep. And as I started learning all of this myself many years ago, I started implementing changes so that I could improve the quality of my sleep and wake up feeling refreshed every single day.