Most of the population believes that sleeping few hours is more harmful than sleeping during many hours but interrupting the rest. Sometimes, concerns, work, nerves and obligations don’t let us sleeping properly.
We have nightmares, tossing and turning in bed and our mind seems that cannot stop thinking. We are not able to disconnect from our external reality to rest and load our energies. And, according to a recent study that interrupted sleep is even worse than to sleep a few hours. According to scientists, waking up several times during the night damages our mood and productivity.
The study was developed by researchers at Johns Hopkins University Hospital, Baltimore (Maryland, United States). Published in the journal Sleep, research focused their experiments on 62 men and women, who spent three nights in a row receiving continuous interruptions, delays at the time of going to bed or forced awakenings. The results of this experiment were enlightening: sleep fragmentation is especially detrimental to the positive mood. After the second night, people who had been awaken forcedly recorded a 31%-reduction in its positive mood, while the mood of the group that went to bed later than normally , decreased a 12%.
Patrick Finan, author of the study and Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences of the Faculty of Medicine from the Johns Hopkins University, explained to the digital newspaper 20 minutos that “when the dream is interrupted during the night, the body doesn’t have the opportunity to go through the different sleeping stages to get the amount of slow wave sleep which is necessary for the recovery”. Although anyone can get them, Finan suggests that those who suffer from insomnia are more likely to have disruptions while sleeping: “many people with insomnia manage to sleep stumbled all night and do not have the feeling of a good night’s sleep“.
The authors of this study state that the consequences of sleeping interruptedly are cumulative. If we sleep stumbled more than two days in a row, our mood and our body will feel it. However, we also recognize that there is still a lack of research in this field and, especially, research that focuses on those people who suffer from insomnia. Velfont experts recommend getting the bedding products that better meet each person’s needs providing a good rest.
