December 25, 2015 – Sleep Integrity

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Anchor lead: What are the health effects of interrupted sleep? Elizabeth Tracey reports

Have you had the experience of having your sleep interrupted multiple times in a night?  If you’re a parent or a health care worker, the answer is probably yes, and perhaps you’ve noticed that not only are you tired, you’re crabby.  Now a Johns Hopkins study led by Patrick Finan, a sleep expert, confirms such observations, but Finan says the implications go beyond mood.

Finan: I think there is a growing sort of buzz both in the academic community and in the general population about sleep. I think people are starting to realize and I think the literature is sort of finally catching up with this, that sleep problems are not simply by-products of other problems but in some cases drivers of health problems.  And in particular a lot of the work that our lab is interested in is looking at the association of sleep and pain.   :25

Finan says this study suggested a cumulative effect of more than one night of interrupted sleep, and says future studies will attempt to assess the role chronic sleep interruption, such as that seen in insomnia, has on chronic health problems.  At Johns Hopkins, I’m Elizabeth Tracey.