Poor sleep habits are directly intertwined to both stroke risk and traumatic brain injury (TBI) recovery. Sleep is essential for blood pressure control, brain repair, memory, and preventing inflammation—all crucial for stroke prevention and TBI healing. How’s this for proof if you may have a stroke?
- Lack of sleep increases inflammation, which can trigger blood clots and lead to an ischemic or hemorrhagic stroke.
- If you don’t get enough quality sleep, your body goes into stress mode, increasing the risk of a stroke.
- Sleep helps regulate blood pressure. So chronic poor sleep keeps the pressure elevated, increasing stroke risk.
- Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a major risk factor for stroke when the oxygen drops while you’re sleeping, causing reduced oxygen to the brain and damaging vessels.
- Poor sleep can disrupt heart rhythms, increasing the risk of blood clots that move to the brain.
And how’s this for TBI and its recovery?
- Poor sleep slows recovery and worsens symptoms.
- Sleep deprivation increases inflammation and tension, leading to worse post-TBI headaches and dizziness.
- Without sleep which process and store new information, you’ll struggle more with brain fog and forgetfulness.
- TBI survivors often have chronic fatigue, and poor sleep makes it worse.
- Without deep sleep, the brain struggles to regenerate energy for thinking and movement.
- Sleep is when your brain cleans out toxins and repairs damaged neurons. Poor sleep prevents this, slowing brain healing.
Poor sleep makes anxiety, depression, and emotional outbursts more common, especially after a brain injury. If you struggle with sleep, the research suggests ways to improve sleep after a stroke or TBI:
- Use blackout curtains and white noise to create a dark and quiet sleep environment.
- Set a sleep routine going to bed and waking up at the same time, even for weekends.
- Limit screens before bed because blue light reduces melatonin, the sleep hormone.
- Get tested for sleep apnea if you snore or stop breathing at night to lessen stroke risk.
- To calm the nervous system after a brain injury, use a weighted blanket.
- To stop blood pressure spikes, limit caffeine and heavy meals before bed.
- Try gentle stretching or meditation to help you relax your brain before bed.
If you have severe insomnia that won’t improve, daytime sleepiness, gasping for air at night, and/or extreme fatigue WITHOUT strenuous tasks affecting daily function, speak to your doctor or a sleep specialist as soon as possible.
As Matthew Walker, the sleep scientists, says, sleep benefits are: “7-9 hours per night for most adults, continuous sleep with few awakenings, consistent bedtime/wake-up schedule, even on weekends, and aligning sleep with your genetically-determined chronotype, that is, natural inclination of your body to sleep at a certain time.”
Ah, it reminds me of Paris in 1966 with my friends strolling about past the cafes at 3am. We were fully awake, but that was before I injured my brain via stroke close to 50 years ago.
Holy crap! School districts should align with what Walker’s saying. What if you’re not ready, for example, genetic chronotype speaking, for high school algebra at 7:30 am? What a clusterf***!
