Interrupted sleep makes you grumpier than a lack of shut-eye

An uninterrupted night's sleep is better than a longer night's sleep

AN INTERRUPTED night’s sleep makes you more irritable than an overall lack of shut-eye, a study has revealed.

 

Scientists conducting sleep experiments proved that being woken at intervals during the night is more detrimental to people’s moods than getting a shortened amount of sleep without interruption.

They studied 62 healthy men and women who were randomly subjected to three consecutive nights of either forced awakenings, delayed bedtimes or uninterrupted sleep

 

The research was performed using 62 sleepy adults

 

When you sleep is disturbed thorughout the night you cannot progress through sleep stages

Dr Patrick Finan, an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioural sciences at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, in Baltimore, US, said: “When your sleep is 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 is key to the feeling of restoration.”

The researchers’ findings are published in the journal Sleep..