Problems with sleep cause anxiety
Last reviewed: 23.04.2024
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We are used to believe that mental stress, stressful situations entail a violation of sleep. As it turned out, the very problems with sleep can cause mental disorders.
The feeling of unreasonable anxiety, fast fatigue means that you just need a full sleep. According to researchers at the Berkeley Institute in California, an insufficient amount of sleep causes excessive restlessness. This is due to the activation of the amygdala (amygdala / amygdala), which plays a key role in the formation of emotions, and the islet area of the cerebral cortex.
Scientists tested eighteen young people. During the experiment, a neutral and disturbing type of picture was shown, as well as their combination. Subjects studied images twice - initially after a full night's sleep, and then after insomnia. Encephalography was used to assess the quality of sleep. From the participants of the study it was required to describe their feelings from what they saw. Before testing, each person was tested for anxiety, resulting in no critical values found in any of the experimental subjects.
Showing each image was reinforced with a comment, as if setting the psyche to a certain harmony. For example, an illustration with a large red minus was characterized by negative situations (foreshadowing the fear of death), and before the demonstration of the yellow circle, the subjects were tuned to positive perception. The image of the white question mark was called the most stressful symbol, as it was not known which picture would be after it (positive or negative coloration).
It was the question mark with greater power that awakened the emotional parts of the brain of young people after a night without sleep. Most of all, the amygdala responded, which is usually called the center of fear, and the islet zone of the cerebral cortex. Emotional spike was observed in all young people, regardless of the initial indices of anxiety. Of course, the power of emotions was different and higher in those subjects whose initial figures also stood out from the general mass.
Scientists made an unambiguous conclusion that panic anxiety causes sleep disorders or its lack. It should be noted that the risk factors include: a bad or restless sleep, frequent spills, the inability to sleep with irritating causes (noise, light, gastric disorders, etc.). All this leads to an increase in anxiety, which is fraught with more serious problems - depression, other psycho-neurological ailments.
The connection between high-grade sleep and mental health was noted earlier. Diseases such as panic attacks or bipolar disorders have been treated and treated by the sleep state correction method, which has a positive effect. The neurological course of the process and the characteristics of the connection between sleep and the state of the psyche still remained a mystery. There were only suggestions about the violation of sleep, as a symptom arising from a mental imbalance. Only now, after the experiment, physicians can talk about the reverse process and interaction.
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