You may watch time tick away as you lay in bed unable to fall asleep or keep waking up during the night. For every minute you stay awake, you know you will pay the price the next day in the form of fatigue and irritability.

Everyone knows they need sleep, but many don’t seek help for sleep disorders, often because they’re not interested in the sleep medications typically prescribed. The team at MindSet has another solution that can safely restore your sleep without side effects: transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

Here’s a quick rundown covering the ways sleep affects your mental, cognitive, and physical health, along with some information about how TMS helps you get the sleep you need.

How sleep improves health

You need to get enough sleep every night, but the total time you snooze isn’t the only factor affecting your health. To get restorative sleep and protect your health, you also need to sleep through all the stages.

During each stage of sleep, your brain and body perform different tasks. Disrupting a stage by waking up stops that task, which affects your mental, cognitive, and physical health.

In various sleep stages, your body:

  • Clears away brain wastes
  • Stores memories
  • Builds bone and muscle
  • Processes emotional information
  • Repairs and regenerates tissues
  • Strengthens the immune system

For example, while you sleep, your immune system produces infection-fighting cells. If that’s interrupted, you’re more likely to get sick.

Most adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night. If you don’t get that much, or your sleep is interrupted during the night, you’re not getting the sleep you need to stay healthy.

Changes in cognitive health

Disrupted sleep or lack of sleep affects neurotransmitters that are essential for memory, learning, and thinking. As a result, the next day you can’t remember things, feel like you have brain fog, can’t make decisions, or find it impossible to concentrate.

Changes in mental health

Having a sleep disorder significantly raises your risk of developing a mental health disorder, such as depression, anxiety,and post-traumatic stress disorder.

At the same time, insomnia and other sleep disorders can contribute to or cause mental health disorders. Sleep problems can also interfere with your response to treatment for a psychological condition or make your symptoms worse.

In the worst case, sleep deprivation may lead to psychosis with symptoms including delusions and hallucinations.

How big is the problem? It turns out that 75% of people with depression and 50%-80% of patients seeing psychiatrists have sleep problems.

Changes in physical health

Sleep protects nearly every aspect of your physical health. For example, during one stage of sleep, your heart slows down and blood pressure drops. This reduces the strain on your heart and gives it a much needed rest.

If you don’t get enough sleep, you’re at risk of developing chronic diseases, such as:

  • Hypertension
  • Insulin resistance
  • Type 2 diabetes
  • Heart attack
  • Heart arrhythmias
  • Congestive heart failure
  • Stroke
  • Obesity

Losing sleep also affects many hormones, including those that control hunger, fullness, and fat storage. As a result, sleep deprivation often leads to weight gain.

How TMS improves sleep

TMS improves your sleep two ways. First, we use TMS to directly treat sleep disorders. And second, TMS improves the mental health conditions that cause insomnia.

Sleep disorders, such as insomnia, restless legs syndrome, and narcolepsy, cause irregular brain waves. We map the unusual brainwaves using an electroencephalogram (EEG) and then we precisely target the underperforming area with TMS.

As TMS sends magnetic waves into that brain area, the waves stimulate nerves, increase brain chemicals (neurotransmitters), and restore normal brain activity. As your brain’s neural activity improves, so does your sleep disorder.

To learn more about TMS and how it can help you finally get a good night’s sleep, call MindSet or book an appointment online.