Going through trauma? Sleep can help you process your experiences!

(Image for representational purposes only)

London: Even though sleep is hard to come by in these days when a modern lifestyle has won the world's preference, an appropriate amount of it is of huge essence.

Sleep is considered to be one of the best paths to recovery and is meant to be healing, whereas the lack of it can negatively impact your health.

A study has now discovered that apart from other problems, sleep can also play a huge part for people going through a trauma.

As per the study, a sound sleep within 24 hours of suffering a trauma can help individuals with post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) to process the horrific experiences.

People with PTSD experience highly emotional and distressing memories or even flashbacks where they feel as if they were experiencing the trauma all over again. Sleep could play a key role in processing what they have suffered.

"Our approach offers an important non-invasive alternative to the current attempts to erase traumatic memories or treat them with medication," said lead author Birgit Kleim from the University of Zurich.

The findings showed that a good sleep can help weaken emotions connected to an existing memory, such as fear caused by traumatic experiences.

In addition, sleep also helps contextualise the recollections, processing them as information and storing the memories.

However, the process may take several nights, the researchers said.

"The use of sleep might prove to be a suitable and natural early prevention strategy," Kleim added.

"This supports the assumption that sleep may have a protective effect in the aftermath of traumatic experiences," Kleim said, in the study published in the journal Sleep.

(With IANS inputs)