A new study finds that people who don't get adequate sleep are at a higher risk of being irritated and irrational during the day.
Lack of sleep has many ill effects on a person's physical and mental health. A new study found that it can also hamper a person's mood, making them irritated quickly. The study was conducted by researchers from the Taylor & Francis .
"Over the years I noticed that whenever I had a bad night's sleep, my perception and memory seemed to get fuzzy until I had a good recovery sleep," psychological scientist Steven J. Frenda, lead author of the study said. "I was surprised to find that there were so few empirical studies connecting sleep deprivation with memory distortion in an eyewitness context. The studies that do exist look mostly at sleep deprived people's ability to accurately remember lists of words-not real people, places and events."
For the study, researchers looked into the negative effects sleep deprivation had on teenagers and the reason behind this. It is a proven fact that the human biological clock is very different from the education and social measure of time. This new study explains the importance of considering biological measure of time as a significant factor, which made students were healthier and learn better. It also affected their mood.
"Shifts in our body clocks push optimal sleep later into the evening, making it extremely difficult for most teenagers to fall asleep before 11.00pm," the paper stated.
Researchers said that the findings of this study is important taking into consideration early school timings and the need to change it so that kids perform better in school. Researchers found that when teenagers slept later than 11 in the night, waking up early for school would result in a lack of sleep. This affects the teen's mood and their ability to function normally. Since they are unable to concentrate and feel lethargic, this takes a toll on their academic performance as well, resulting in lower grades.
"Recent studies are suggesting that people are getting fewer hours of sleep on average, and chronic sleep deprivation is on the rise," said Frenda. "Our findings have implications for the reliability of eyewitnesses who may have experienced long periods of restricted or deprived sleep. We are running new experiments now, in order to better understand the influence of sleep deprivation on processes related to false memory."
Earlier this week, researchers from Michigan State University reported similar findings. They stated that people who don't get adequate sleep are at a higher risk of memory distortion.
Most of us need around eight hours of good quality sleep at night to function properly - but some need more and some less. What matters is that you find out how much sleep you need and then try to achieve it. CDC has issued general guidelines on how much sleep a person needs, depending on age.
As a general rule, if you wake up tired and spend the day longing for a chance to have a nap, it's likely that you're not getting enough sleep. A variety of factors can cause poor sleep, including health conditions such as sleep apnoea. But in most cases it's a matter of bad sleeping habits.
Not getting adequate sleep also has many health consequences like diabetes, heart diseases, depression, anxiety and low fertility. According to a Harvard University study, getting enough sleep keeps obesity at bay.
The current study was published online in the journal Psychological Science.
