While mood swings have many different causes, sleeping problems and sleeping disorders are known to be one of the major factors in rapid mood changes. In fact, not only does lack of sleep and constant sleep deprivation affect your mood, getting high quality sleep on a regular basis can have a significant positive effect on your overall mood and sense of well-being.
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Driving while drowsy might be just as dangerous as driving under the influence of drugs or alcohol. A sleep study in which 241 volunteers allowed their cars to be wired with five cameras during the course of one year found that when the drivers hadn’t gotten enough sleep, they were bleary-eyed and unfocused, leading to risky behavior and an inability to concentrate on the road. In fact, the study found that being sleep-deprived might be the riskiest possible condition for a driver. It only goes to follow that sleep problems and sleep disorders can lead to terrible car accidents if left unchecked.
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As part of a study performed by the University of Pennsylvania, four paid volunteers spent a week and a half sequestered in a dimly lit hospital suite. They were required to stay awake until 4:00am, then they were woken up at 8:00am for five days in a row. Afterwards, the volunteers were tested to measure the effects of what is called “chronic partial sleep deprivation.” Essentially, this is what happens to people who have sleeping problems or sleep disorders.
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It it is a well known fact that a good night’s sleep can improve your memory; and conversely, suffering from sleep disorders can have a negative effect on your ability to learn and recall information. For instance, one sleep study of more than four hundred college students found that if they memorized a sequence of numbers immediately prior to getting a full night’s sleep, their performance was 20-30% better than those who memorized the same sequence but didn’t sleep directly afterwards. Gives a whole new perspective to the concept of cramming for exams, doesn’t it?
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“Whatever the functions of sleep are, they seem to be so important that evolution is willing to put us in that place of potential danger by losing consciousness,” said Matthew Walker, a professor at University of California, Berkeley. Despite the best efforts of many top scientists, it has proven difficult to figure out what exactly it is about sleep that makes it so essential and worth the risk, in evolutionary terms.
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One thing is clear from years of scientific research and sleep studies - getting enough sleep is essential, and sleep problems and sleep disorders can be extremely detrimental to your overall health and wellbeing. For instance, in the 1960’s a group of scientists performed a series of sleep studies on rats that involved total sleep deprivation. After only five days without sleep the rats started dying. They learned that sleep is as essential as food or oxygen, because those rats succumbed to sleep deprivation just as quickly as they would have from starvation.
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