Losing Sleep Wrecks Lives
Reported August 3, 2009
(Ivanhoe Newswire) -- A new study confirms that losing sleep takes a heavy toll on the quality of your life. Researchers reported that a decline in the ability to initiate and maintain sleep over a five-year period was significantly associated with poorer mental quality of life, and increasing daytime sleepiness was associated with poorer physical and mental quality of life.
Adjusted models showed that increased difficulty in initiating and maintaining sleep was associated with a change in Mental Component Summary (MCS) scales, while increasing severity of daytime sleepiness measured by the Epworth Sleepiness Scale was associated with a change in both MCS and Physical Component Summary (PCS) scales.
Although severity of sleep disordered breathing (SDB) measured
by mean respiratory disturbance index (RDI) increased over the period of the
study, regression models showed no significant association between change in RDI
and changes in PCS or MCS. The authors suggested that in patients with SDB, the
presence of excessive daytime sleepiness determines whether there will be an
impact on quality of life.
According to lead author Graciela E. Silva, PhD, assistant professor in the
College of Nursing and Health Innovation at Arizona State University, the
results provide important insights regarding the relationship between sleep and
quality of life.
"While we were expecting an association between quality of sleep and quality of life, it was surprising that we did not find a significant association between objective measures of quality of sleep and quality of life, but that only subjective measures of sleep were associated with quality of life," Silva was quoted as saying. "These findings signal to the importance of perception of quality of sleep on quality of life."
The cross-sectional, retrospective study obtained polysomnographic and clinical data from 3,078 patients who were included in the baseline examination of the Sleep Heart Health Study (SHHS). The mean age of participants was 62 years at baseline and 67 years at follow-up. Fifty-five percent were women, and most were Caucasian (75 percent) and married (77 percent). Coronary heart disease was more prevalent in men, and respiratory disease was more prominent in women. Measures of quality of life were obtained using the PCS and MCS scales.
Findings suggest that physical limitations imposed by the presence of obesity, coronary heart disease and respiratory disease adversely impact physical components of quality of life. The authors state that primary treatment to reduce morbidity and symptoms related to these conditions would ultimately improve sleep quality.
SOURCE: Sleep, Aug. 1, 2009
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