Sleep interruptions not good for your mood

A new study has revealed that sleep interruptions are worse for the mood than overall reduced amount of sleep.

In the study, participants were subjected to eight forced awakenings and those with delayed bedtimes showed similar low positive mood and high negative mood after the first night.

Participants were asked to rate how strongly they felt a variety of positive and negative emotions, such as cheerfulness or anger.

However, the researchers stated that significant differences emerged after the second night. The forced awakening group had a reduction of 31 percent in positive mood, while the delayed bedtime group had a decline of 12 percent compared to the first day.

They did not find significant differences in negative mood between the two groups on any of the three days, which suggested that sleep fragmentation was especially detrimental to positive mood.

Lead author Patrick Finan Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said that when your sleep was disrupted throughout the night, you don't have the opportunity to progress through the sleep stages to get the amount of slow-wave sleep that was key to the feeling of restoration.

They also found that the forced awakening group had shorter periods of deep, slow-wave sleep and that interrupted sleep affected different domains of positive mood; it reduced not only energy levels, but also feelings of sympathy and friendliness.

The study is published in the Journal Sleep.