Healthy Sleep Helps Us Process Our Emotions

Healthy sleep always makes us feel better the next day. Find out how a recent discovery may lead to more effective treatments for mood disorders, PTSD and other mental illnesses.

I used to have a job that involved a lot of travel. I’d be flying all over North America. Once I had vital, in-person tasks to complete in LA, Chicago and New York City all in one week.

The trouble I’d have with travel on that scale was crossing time zones. Jet lag interrupts our healthy sleep patterns and other circadian rhythms.

I always found that the stress of those business trips combined with the lack of sleep made me cranky. I’d be more irritable, nervous, dim-witted and generally out of sorts if I lost too much sleep during a road trip.

One-Quarter to One-Third of Our Lives Spent Asleep

We used to think that the the one-quarter to one-third of our lives spent asleep was just downtime. However, starting around the middle of the twentieth century, scientists have come to understand that our brains do a lot of important work while we’re in bed.