Night without sleep: 8 tips to restore physical strength and mental clarity

The opti­mal sleep dura­tion for adults is 7–8 hours every day. A good night’s rest has a good effect on health, per­for­mance and helps to stay in a good mood. But what if you didn’t man­age to sleep nor­mal­ly, or you had to spend the whole night on the road or in enter­tain­ment? It is not nec­es­sary to suf­fer from headaches, fatigue and irri­tabil­i­ty. We have col­lect­ed 8 best tips and tell you how to deal with the con­se­quences of lack of sleep with the help of sim­ple actions. You need very lit­tle: start the morn­ing right, add a lit­tle bit of exer­cise, choose invig­o­rat­ing and sup­port­ive foods.

1. Exercise is important!

Yes, after lack of sleep, I don’t even want to think about vol­un­tary phys­i­cal activ­i­ty, I would like to get out of bed. But exer­cise does make you feel bet­ter, and it’s not just about improv­ing blood cir­cu­la­tion or oxy­genat­ing your tis­sues. There is an impor­tant con­nec­tion between the brain and mus­cle fibers: when mus­cle tis­sues come into tone, they send sig­nals to the brain that it is time to real­ly wake up. And the brain reacts by switch­ing to an active beta rhythm.

Just 30 min­utes of exer­cise will replace sev­er­al hours of night­ly rest. And although exer­cise is the last thing we are usu­al­ly capa­ble of after sleep­less nights, it real­ly helps to feel not only bet­ter phys­i­cal­ly, but also increase con­cen­tra­tion, enhance cog­ni­tive abil­i­ties and start study­ing or work­ing at full strength.

2. Cold shower: cheerfulness and weight loss

Cool or cold water — to choose from — helps to wake up and improves mood. Such water pro­ce­dures strength­en the immune sys­tem (and the immune sys­tem also suf­fers from lack of sleep), improve blood cir­cu­la­tion and fill the body with ener­gy. An addi­tion­al bonus of a cold show­er: it helps to lose weight by acti­vat­ing the process­es of pro­cess­ing fats. And this is also impor­tant, since lack of sleep affects the pro­duc­tion of the hor­mone ghre­lin, which is respon­si­ble for sati­ety, and after lack of sleep, you want to eat more often and more. So the body tries to make up for the lack of strength. So pre­ven­tion in the form of a cold show­er does not hurt at all!

3. Cheer up with morning coffee

The main thing is not to over­do it. Mod­er­ate dos­es of caf­feine help increase con­cen­tra­tion and activ­i­ty, but if you drink too much, then a state of overex­ci­ta­tion will come. It can also wors­en due to the loss of mag­ne­sium: cof­fee con­tributes to the removal of flu­id from the body and the loss of impor­tant trace ele­ments, and after lack of sleep, we already suf­fer from an imbal­ance of flu­id in the tis­sues. There­fore, one or two cups of cof­fee, and no more!

If cof­fee is not your favorite drink, you can suc­cess­ful­ly replace it with green tea. But ener­gy drinks and oth­er stim­u­lat­ing drinks are not the best choice.

4. Distribute the amount of work correctly

Sleep is impor­tant for all aspects of life, this can­not be ignored. And if in the morn­ing after a sleep­less night you can still cheer up quite well with the help of exer­cis­es, a cold show­er and caf­feine, then the sec­ond half of the day will def­i­nite­ly pass with a feel­ing of a lack of ener­gy, strength and the abil­i­ty to con­cen­trate on work mat­ters. There­fore, plan­ning should be the first step before start­ing the work­flow, and the most impor­tant cas­es and issues should be resolved in the morn­ing, leav­ing the sim­pler ones for the after­noon.

5. Nutrition as an energy source for sleep deprivation

The worst thing you can do after a sleep­less night is to eat heavy food mixed with fast car­bo­hy­drates. Such nutri­tion is suit­able only for those who want to lim­it them­selves to a cou­ple of min­utes of vig­or and a long, painful sleepy state after eat­ing. But to get the miss­ing ener­gy from food and not fall asleep, you need to switch to com­plex car­bo­hy­drates and pro­tein. For exam­ple, an “ener­gy” meal might con­sist of fish, lean meats, eggs, oat­meal, berries, and nuts. It is bet­ter to post­pone fried foods and canned food until the next day.

Soups are also a great option, liq­uid food with a lack of sleep is more rel­e­vant than ever. Flu­id in gen­er­al is espe­cial­ly nec­es­sary for those who do not sleep well, this is due to a vio­la­tion of the pro­duc­tion of vaso­pressin dur­ing insom­nia. There­fore, it is nec­es­sary to drink water, juices, fruit drinks, and more dur­ing the day.

6. More light!

Under the influ­ence of bright light in our body, the pro­duc­tion of the sleep hor­mone mela­tonin is sup­pressed. The less mela­tonin, the weak­er the desire to lie down and sleep. The best option is a sun­ny day and a work­place next to the win­dow. But even if it is cloudy out­side, dif­fused nat­ur­al light is more effec­tive than any arti­fi­cial source. So the cur­tains and blinds on the win­dows need to be moved apart, and if it starts to make you sleepy, then you should go out­side and take a walk in the fresh air for 10–15 min­utes. More light and oxy­gen will help you feel more alert and ener­gized.

7. Some Afternoon Sleep

It is not for noth­ing that in Asian coun­tries, where the major­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion suf­fers from chron­ic lack of sleep, it is cus­tom­ary to sleep in the after­noon. And although this is not a full-fledged sies­ta, but only 20–30 min­utes, sci­en­tists have proven that even such a short sleep in the mid­dle of the day helps to reduce the effects of a lack of night­time rest and restore work­ing capac­i­ty. Even if you can’t fall asleep, sit­ting with your eyes closed can also help you feel bet­ter.

8. Don’t try to do everything

Think about it: is it pos­si­ble to post­pone some of the cas­es for tomor­row? Sure­ly there will be items on the to-do list that will not be urgent and not par­tic­u­lar­ly pri­or­i­ty. It’s def­i­nite­ly bet­ter to move them to the future. The best option is to do the most impor­tant work before lunch break, and return home to relax and reju­ve­nate. Oth­er­wise, there is a chance of mis­takes, wrong deci­sions and lack of strength even the next day.

Sleep­less nights, vol­un­tary or forced, hap­pen to every­one. Ade­quate sleep dur­ing the work week is more of a rar­i­ty than a rule in today’s world. Although it is worth striv­ing for a nor­mal reg­i­men, in rare cas­es, the con­se­quences of lack of sleep can be dealt with. It’s good if you can fol­low all of the self-help strate­gies list­ed, but even a few steps can also help restore vig­or and well-being.