- Can cause lower cognitive abilities, short attention spans and low moods
- Parents may develop feelings of anger towards infant and then feel guilty
- The negative effects of disrupted sleep accumulate over months
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As parents of young babies will testify, regularly waking in the night can leave you feeling drained.
Now experts say that interrupted sleep can be as physically detrimental as having no sleep at all.
A new study links interrupted sleep patterns and compromised cognitive abilities, shortened attention spans, and negative moods.
Exhaustion: Parents of babies who wake frequently during the night are at risk of reduced cognitive abilities and low moods
‘The sleep of many parents is often
disrupted by external sources such as a crying baby demanding care
during the night,’ said Professor Sadeh, who led the study, conducted at Tel Aviv University’s School of Psychological Sciences.
‘Doctors on call, who may receive several phone calls a
night, also experience disruptions.
‘These night wakings could be
relatively short — only five to ten minutes — but they disrupt the
natural sleep rhythm.
‘The impact of such night wakings on an
individual’s daytime alertness, mood, and cognitive abilities had never
been studied.’
The researchers discovered that interrupted sleep is equivalent to no more than four consecutive hours of sleep.
‘Our study is the first to demonstrate seriously
deleterious cognitive and emotional effects,’ said Professor Sadeh.
‘In
the process of advising these parents, it struck me that the role of
multiple night wakings had never been systematically assessed.
Even short night wakings disrupt the natural sleep rhythm
‘Our study shows the impact of only
one disrupted night.
‘But we know that these effects
accumulate and therefore the functional price new parents – who awaken
three to ten times a night for months on end – pay for common infant
sleep disturbance is enormous.
‘Besides the physical effects of
interrupted sleep, parents often develop feelings of anger toward their
infants and then feel guilty about these negative feelings.
‘Sleep
research has focused in the last 50 years on sleep deprivation, and
practically ignored the impact of night-wakings, which is a pervasive
phenomenon for people from many walks of life.
‘I hope that our study
will bring this to the attention of scientists and clinicians, who
should recognize the price paid by individuals who have to endure
frequent night-wakings.’
Prefessor Sadeh, who directs a sleep clinic, said that the study demonstrated that induced night wakings, in otherwise normal
individuals, clearly lead to compromised attention and negative mood.
The study was conducted on student volunteers at TAU’s School of Psychological Sciences.
Their sleep patterns were monitored at home using wristwatch-like devices that detected when they were asleep and when they were awake.
The students slept a normal eight-hour night, then experienced a night in which they were awakened four times by phone calls and told to complete a short computer task before going back to sleep after 10-15 minutes of wakefulness.
The students were asked each following morning to complete certain computer tasks to assess alertness and attention, as well as to fill out questionnaires to determine their mood.
The experiment showed a direct link between compromised attention, negative mood, and disrupted sleep — after only one night of frequent interruptions.
The study was published in the journal Sleep Medicine.
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