Dr. Micaela

And so if I'm chronically sleep deprived, whether I was born with ADHD or not, my brain is now operating essentially at the same level that another brain that was born with ADHD is.

So that can really complicate things.

The other things that we don't often talk about in executive function deficits are emotion regulation.

So one of the most important functions that our frontal lobe has for us is that it works in as a balancing factor to our emotion center of our brain.

And the emotion center of our brain is the second most important function if we go like order of operations of our brain functions, right?

So this first most important function is basic life support, right?

My heart beats, my lungs open and close.

I don't have to tell them to do all those things.

Everybody just does it automatically.

The second most important function is our emotions.

And so if we are chronically sleep deprived, yes, we have all those executive functioning deficits, but one of those deficits is the ability to regulate our emotions.

Now that is adaptive because if I don't have enough energy to respond to the things that are happening in my environment, then

then I need my emotions to be on high level, very reactive, right?

Very ready to go because I can't sacrifice the time it's going to take me to process like, oh, hmm, that is actually a real danger in my environment.

Maybe I should do something about that.

When we're at that lower level of functioning in our brains, our brains need to be reflexive almost.

And so it's supposed to help us to be ready to react more quickly so that we can preserve our functioning or preserve our safety.

So all that rant being said, one of the things that we don't talk enough about in any of these things, right?

I'm sure everybody knows you're supposed to have eight hours of sleep to be prime functioning because that's what we all hear.

And every body is different.