Saturday, July 30, 2011

Poor sleep ruins marriages, study says

For the study, presented today at Sleep 2011, the 25th anniversary meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies in Minneapolis, 35 healthy, married couples wore actigraphs -- bracelets that measured the time it took each partner to fall asleep after going to bed and the total time each slept over 10 days. The couples also kept a diary in which they recorded positive and negative interactions with their spouse, says ABC News.

Women have a new reason to get help with their insomnia - poor sleep might be damaging their marriages.

After a bad night's sleep women - but not men - tend to have more negative interactions with their spouses, a new study shows.

"Other research has shown that sleep disturbance and deprivation has profound effects on mood, irritability and frustration tolerance," said the study's lead author, Wendy Troxel, an assistant professor of psychiatry and psychology at the University of Pittsburgh. "And the person you're most likely to take it out on is not your boss or some random person, but your spouse", reports msnbc.com.