Despite how common it is for parents of young children to be awakened many times during the night, the effects have never been systematically investigated.
Parents are not the only ones who suffer, explains Prof. Avi Sadeh, who led the new research:
"Doctors on call, who may receive several phone calls a night, also experience disruptions.Each time they had to complete a computer task that took 10-15 minutes before they went back to bed.
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.
Our study is the first to demonstrate seriously deleterious cognitive and emotional effects."๏ปฟIn their study participants were awakened four times during a normal 8-hour night (Kahn et al., 2014).
In the morning they took tests of alertness, attention and mood. These were compared with results from two other nights when they'd had either:
- An uninterrupted 8 hours.
- An artificially restricted 4 hours.
In comparison to the uninterrupted 8 hours, people felt more depressed, fatigued, confused and lower in vigour.
And this was the effect of just one interrupted night.
These deleterious effects can snowball, as Sadeh explained:
"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."
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