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A lack of sleep could have an impact on your emotional control and your ability to stay calm and rational according to research that was recently published in the medical journal Journal of Neuroscience. In fact insufficient sleep has been named by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention as posing a public health problem. Statistics show that in the USA alone 3 out of 10 adults do not even get 6 hours of sleep each night, and this can lead to chronic sleep deprivation that can be dangerous to your emotional, mental, and even physical health. A lack of sleep can lead to vehicle accidents, industrial accidents, and errors in occupations that can include medical care and legal services. In addition not getting enough sleep each night can contribute to cancer, depression, anxiety, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, and other diseases.

Recent research on lack of sleep, emotional control, and cognitive processing was performed by Tel Aviv University Professor Talma Hendler, and the research haas identified the neurological mechanism and actions that cause emotional regulation to become disturbed and anxiety levels to increase with lack of sleep. According to Prof. Hendler “These results reveal that, without sleep, the mere recognition of what is an emotional and what is a neutral event is disrupted. We may experience similar emotional provocations from all incoming events, even neutral ones, and lose our ability to sort out more or less important information. This can lead to biased cognitive processing and poor judgment as well as anxiety.”