Interrupted sleep involves frequent awakenings during the night, disrupting the sleep cycle. Effects include daytime sleepiness, cognitive decline, mood disturbances, and health risks. Factors unique to the individual's situation can interrupt sleep, like age, stress, and lifestyle.
Jaime Tartar, PhD, a professor of neuroscience at Nova Southeastern University and sleep expert for the National Academy of Sports Medicine, says that other factors that contribute to fragmented sleep include health issues or conditions such as sleep apnea, waking from anxiety, drinking caffeine too close to bedtime or ...
But for the most part, studies suggest biphasic sleep patterns are relatively harmless. So long as you're still getting approximately seven to nine hours of sleep a night, most research suggests it's fine if that sleep happens in two sessions.
Common symptoms associated with sleep fragmentation and sleep deprivation include increased objective sleepiness (as measured by the Multiple Sleep Latency Test); decreased psychomotor performance on a number of tasks including tasks involving short term memory, reaction time, or vigilance; and degraded mood.
Your Brain Isn't as Sharp
After a night of interrupted sleep, your mental sharpness, focus, and attention span all suffer, as if you hadn't slept at all.
Frequent awakenings and poor-quality sleep have been known to cause obesity, hypertension, and even diabetes. Most of us wake up three to four times during the night for varied reasons, and this is considered a part of a normal sleep pattern.
Regarding continuity, sleep fragmentation, characterized by repeated episodes interrupting sleep that do not systematically lead to awakenings but prevent the brain from entering consolidated sleep stages, was shown to impair sleep restorative effects [10] and exert deleterious consequences on daytime cognitive ...
Some people divide their sleep into a schedule of naps around the clock, sometimes called polyphasic sleeping. It's often designed to let you get by on less total rest. That's a bad idea, Kushida says, since adults need at least 7 hours of sleep in 24 hours.
These can include masturbation, thrusting, intercourse, or spontaneous orgasm. To be classified as sexsomnia, the person engaging in these acts needs to be unable to wake up, very difficult to wake up, or unresponsive to conversation during the acts.
Many conditions can make you tired during the day regardless of how well you slept at night. Examples are very low blood pressure (especially after eating), low thyroid activity, vitamin D or B12 deficiency, anemia, low blood sugar, depression, narcolepsy (sudden episodes of deep sleep), and even obesity.
If you have short sleeper syndrome (SSS), you need less sleep than a person typically needs. Most natural short sleepers get six or fewer hours of sleep on most nights. When you wake up, you feel that you got a full night of sleep and have the energy you need. SSS doesn't pose any known health risks.
Sexsomnia, also known as sleep sex, is a type of sleep disorder known as a parasomnia. Parasomnias refer to unusual sensations and behaviors, such as sleepwalking, that people may experience or exhibit while asleep, falling asleep, or waking up. In the case of sexsomnia, people engage in sexual behaviors.
Environmental factors, sleep disorders, and health conditions can contribute to waking at 3 a.m. Daytime disruptions to circadian rhythm or lifestyle may influence the risk of waking from sleep. A consistent sleep schedule and bedtime routine helps to promote sleep quality and duration.
Sleep deprivation:
One of the main causes of falling asleep when sitting down is you're not getting enough sleep at night. According to the National Institute on Aging, adults need 7-9 hours of sleep each night for optimal health.
Sleeping too much puts you at greater risk of coronary heart disease, stroke and diabetes than sleeping too little. If you wake up feeling exhausted, see your doctor. He or she may refer you to a sleep specialist to diagnose your specific problem and begin a course of treatment.
Sometimes insomnia is caused by a medical condition such as sleep apnea, restless legs syndrome or long-term pain. Insomnia also can be caused by a mental health condition such as depression. Treatment for one of these underlying conditions may be needed for insomnia to get better.
But it's important to follow the guidelines (above) for afternoon sleep. “With what I call 'optimal napping,' there are very few downsides,” Schneeberg says. “Naps can often provide a reset to the day. As long as you're napping in an optimal way, they are a great addition to your healthy behaviors.”
Lifestyle: Scattered sleep schedules, excess consumption of alcohol or caffeine, and using electronic devices like cell phones in bed can disrupt a person's sleep patterns. Too much light in the bedroom or excess noise, including from a partner's snoring, may interfere with sleep.
Both groups had the same total amount of sleep but the interrupted sleepers reported worse changes in mood. The researchers concluded that a lack of slow-wave sleep, which is the deepest type of sleep, was to blame.
Magnesium is a mineral involved in hundreds of processes in our bodies. One of the things that it does is to help relax our muscles, so magnesium can be effective in promoting relaxation before sleep.
The culprit often responsible for this unwelcome early morning awakening is cortisol, the “stress hormone.” Cortisol earned its moniker as the “stress hormone” due to its pivotal role in our body's response to stress and danger.
Drinking too much fluid during the evening can cause you to urinate more often during the night. Caffeine and alcohol with or after dinner can also lead to this problem. Other common causes of urination at night include: Infection of the bladder or urinary tract.