Dr. Micaela

There is a function where my brain says, I can overcome this.

I know we're a little low on energy today, but I can actually push through and keep everything functioning at optimal levels.

As the original poster mentions, this doesn't work if I do it multiple days in a row, right?

So your brain can kind of do this like super mode, apply a bandaid and say, let's keep going as if I have enough energy, right?

But it can't do that forever.

Right.

So it's very adaptive to be able to say, hey, I had one day of bad sleep or I didn't get the nutrition I needed today, et cetera.

But I can still operate at this like pretty decent level of functioning.

But you can't do that forever.

And then the bigger problem with this is if we have chronically disturbed sleep, right?

If you're always not getting enough sleep, not only is it practically impossible for your brain to do this like patch mode, right?

But also sleep deprivation after...

don't quote me on this, but I want to say it's like five or four days in a row, begins to mimic clinically significant signs of ADHD.

Because your brain, when you're not getting enough energy to make it through the day, right, your brain starts triaging systems.

So it starts saying, oh, you know, the cherry on top, don't need that.

The whipped cream, let's get rid of that.

We bring that brain functioning down to the most basic.

And the cherry on top of our brain function is all of those executive functions.

So prioritizing, planning, organizing, impulse control, the ability to understand the consequences to my reactions or the consequences to my actions in real time.

All of those things are executive level functioning.