Study: Sleep for extra 29 minutes each night to improve mindfulness

Photo by Vladislav Muslakov on Unsplash

Sleep for extra 29 minutes each night to improve mindfulness, according to a study led by the University of South Florida.

Findings reveal the positive impact of better sleep on next-day mindfulness. Moreover, mindfulness is what helps reduce sleepiness during the day.

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The study, published in Sleep Health, explored how multiple dimensions of sleep affect daily mindfulness, rather than just delving into sleep quality or duration.

The researchers focused on the sleeping habits of nurses, the biggest group of healthcare professionals whose need for optimal sleep and mindful attention are particularly high.

They often encounter sleep problems due to long shifts, lack of situational control, and exposure to serious health conditions. Nurses, who work on the front lines of the coronavirus pandemic, need optimal sleep health and mindful attention.

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“One can be awake and alert, but not necessarily mindful. Similarly, one can be tired or in low arousal but still can be mindful,” said lead author Soomi Lee, assistant professor of ageing studies at USF.

“Mindful attention is beyond being just being awake. It indicates attentional control and self-regulation that facilitates sensitivity and adaptive adjustment to environmental and internal cues, which are essential when providing mindful care to patients and effectively dealing with stressful situations,” she said.

The team from USF and Moffitt Cancer Center observed 61 nurses for two weeks and analyzed different characteristics of sleep health. The study showed that their mindful attention was greater than their usual after nights. This happens because of better sleep quality, greater sleep sufficiency, lower efficiency, and longer sleep duration or an extra half-hour longer.

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Data indicates that people with greater mindful attention were 66% less likely to suffer from insomnia during the two-week study period.

The researchers employed several tools to assess how much participants were mindful of each daily moment and how sleep affects their mental states. The respondents answered daily mindfulness and sleepiness questions three times a day for two weeks with the smartphone application, RealLife Exp.

Daily mindfulness was monitored by the Mindful Attention Awareness Scale, which presented questions such as, “I was doing something automatically, without being aware of what I was doing,” and “I was finding it difficult to stay focused on what was happening.” Participants had an Actiwatch Spectrum device on them for the same two weeks that traced wrist movement activity to quantify sleep and wake patterns.

The study’s results could be used in creating a behavioral health intervention strategy for other populations in health care who need mindful attention and better sleep. Researchers suggest that improving sleep in their sector may also be beneficial for patient health outcomes.

Sleep loss

A preliminary study has discovered that the loss of one night’s sleep in healthy young men may lead to an increased risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease.

The study, published in Neurology, the medical journal of the American Academy of Neurology, indicated that the loss of one night’s sleep may increase the risk of developing Alzheimer’s disease because it raises the levels of tau protein in healthy young men’s blood.

Study author Dr. Jonathan Cedernaes, a neurologist at Uppsala University in Sweden, said: “Our exploratory study shows that even in young, healthy individuals, missing one night of sleep increases the level of tau in blood suggesting that over time, such sleep deprivation could possibly have detrimental effects.”

The Alzheimer’s Association defines tau as a protein that helps stabilize the internal makeup of brain nerve cells and an abnormal form of tau builds up in Alzheimer’s and causes the interior of the cell to fall apart.

When these abnormal tau proteins clump together, they form “tangles” which are a key sign of Alzheimer’s, frontal lobe dementia, and Lewy body disease.