Why does acute sleep deprivation cause euphoria/hypomania?

hatrickpatrick

I've been a bit down lately about life, just some BS I'm dealing with as everyone does at some point, nothing all that major! Anyway I've been sort of wearily wandering through life for the last while, not exactly depressed but more sort of aimless and robbed of motivation. It's not that I haven't been enjoying life, I've just had zero enthusiasm for things which I usually get excited about, not sure if anyone here will relate to this.

Anyway, I have college at 9AM every Monday and after a weekend of staying up far too late, I just couldn't get to sleep on sunday night. At 4AM I suddenly thought to myself "Look, you have to get up in about 3 hours anyway and experience denotes that getting no sleep is worse than being woken up after just 3 hours. Ride it out, go to college, and sleep in the afternoon when you get home". So I did.

The surprising thing? I assumed I'd be a dead zombie all morning. I got up, had my breakfast, had a shower and jumped on the Dart. It was the first day of the epic weather. And what happened? I was WIRED! Literally got a blast of energy, almost a mania like feeling. The world was just epic. Everything I did that morning seemed to flow, it was fun, it was enjoyable, absolutely nothing felt like a drag and the things which had been getting me down felt ridiculously insignificant. I hadn't felt like that in months.

This lasted all day, after a good night of sleep that night I dropped back down into the sort of "meh" mood I'd been in, lost the motivation I'd had, but my God I got so much done that day it's just unbelievable.

Now this seems to be documented, I did some googling and I found tons of references to sleep deprivation and short term hypomania. In fact moreso, I actually found suggestions that real depression itself might actually be caused by a wonky cicardian rhythm, apparently people who are depressed don't experience the sleep cycle in the normal way and have far more REM sleep and other such oddities. But I'm not looking for the detailed analysis here, I'm more looking for the answer to the following:

WHY does sleep deprivation cause this massive mood uplift? WHY is there a connection between lack of sleep and dopamine release etc? Is there any study out there which doesn't just prove that these observations are true, but actually explains the mechanics behind it? I''ve noticed this phenomenon for years, when I am acutely sleep deprived I just get this blast of optimism and motivation (ever get that feeling when the 4AM alarm goes off to wake you for a trip to the airport, for instance?)

Are there any explanations, or is this just an unexplained mystery?

(NB: I'm not looking for medical advice nor do I advocate deliberately depriving one's self of sleep to cheer yourself up, it's not worth it as you will be tired as hell for a couple of days afterwards. I'm just incredibly curious, if sleep is so vital and important for our mind and body, why would blocking it cause such incredibly positive moods and experiences?)

fred99

Hypomania and REM sleep is closely linked. If one looks at a graph (EEG) of a "normal" sleeping human, one notices 5 types of graph. One is markedly different from the other 4. Its REM sleep when dreams occur. Its more of awake-ness rather than sleep. Most of us dream in REM phase. In hypomania/hyperactivity, there is a reduction in sleep BUT this reduction is primarily in the REM part of the sleep. As a result, there is a decrease in dream in hypomanic episode of say a Bipolar patient. Since both of these are inter-linked, acute sleep deprivation can lead to hypomanic tendencies/behavior/attitude.

Whispered

I work nights and would regularly go 24 hours with no sleep. 4 days a week I get an average of 4-5 hours broken sleep during the day.

The first night is so hard. But, after the first night the feeling of well being kicks in and I tend to get through the rest of the week easily enough. I'm on my 4th night in a row now and feeling great despite getting hardly any sleep yesterday. (too bright).

I think it's a sort of self preservation thing, I have to keep going so my body obliges you're not alone OP.

I'll go to bed early tonight and sleep for at least 12 hours though.