Study Claims 1 Sleepless Night Can Improve Mood, Thanks to Dopamine Boost—Should You Try It?

For the past few years, having enough sleep has been considered to be among the essential factors in having a healthy lifestyle.

Many parents always tell their kids to sleep eight hours per day if they want to grow tall, avoid getting sick, and have enough energy for the following days.

Study Claims 1 Sleepless Night Can Improve Mood, Thanks to Dopamine Boost—Should You Try It?

(Photo: Sean Gallup/Getty Images) A student naps in a lecture hall at the Freie Universitaet on January 13, 2003, in Berlin, Germany. The German university system is facing cuts of EUR 75 million in state funding over the next four years as the German government pushes through financial reforms.

Adults are also encouraged to prioritize their sleep instead even if they have lots of work to do. But, a new study claimed that having one sleepless night may actually do good to people.

Study Claims 1 Sleepless Night Can Improve Mood

According to Fortune's latest report, a new study claimed that people can actually benefit from pulling an all-nighter.

For those who usually avoid sleeping to play games, go to parties, or do numerous jobs, there are some days when having no sleep at all can make you super-energized the next morning.

Now, researchers from Northwestern University in Chicago discovered the reason behind this mystery after they conducted a new study involving sleep-deprived mice.

Based on their findings, these rodents were pretty lively despite having no sleep for a day. They discovered that the mice's brains released more dopamine during sleep loss.

Since dopamine is a neurotransmitter and hormone that leads to pleasure, scientists believe that this short-term dopamine boost could improve one's mood.

"Chronic sleep loss is well studied, and its uniformly detrimental effects are widely documented," said Prof. Yevgenia Kozorovitskiy, a corresponding author of the study, via Interesting Engineering.

"But brief sleep loss - like the equivalent of a student pulling an all-nighter before an exam - is less understood," she added.

Is It Okay To Have 1 Sleepless Night?

(Photo: BERTHA WANG/AFP via Getty Images) This picture taken November 14, 2021, shows a passenger sleeping on a bus operated by a Hong Kong travel agency offering a five-hour "quiet bus" tour marketed as a "route to nowhere" for travel-craving and restless residents to snooze on board in Hong Kong.

Many people are already having all-nighters; some of them even do it more than once each week.

However, scientists reiterated that even if their new study showed that a sleepless night can lead to a dopamine boost, they don't recommend doing it just to improve people's mood.

They clarified that this brain activity doesn't work for everyone (for all animals) since some involved mice didn't experience a dopamine boost.

"The antidepressant effect is transient, and we know the importance of a good night's sleep. I would say you are better off hitting the gym or going for a nice walk," said Kozorovitskiy.