Even in the depths of sleep, your brain is not completely excluded from those around you.
The sound of snoring, pulling blankets and hitting limbs is registered at a certain level, and yet far from disturbing your sleep, new research suggests that sharing a bed could actually make you feel like you had a better night. relax.
At least, that is, when you sleep with your spouse or partner; if someone sleeps regularly with their child, they generally report more insomnia than those who sleep alone.
The findings are based on survey responses and sleep results from more than 1,000 able-bodied adults in the United States, and they suggest that whoever we sleep with may affect how well we feel when we wake up.
Compared with those who slept alone, participants who shared a bed with their partner reported less fatigue and the ability to fall asleep faster and sleep longer.
This group also had lower scores on depression, anxiety and stress than those who slept alone.
“Sleeping with a romantic partner or spouse shows great benefits for sleep health, including reducing the risk of sleep apnea, the severity of insomnia and improving overall sleep quality,” said psychiatrist Brendon Fuentes of the University of Arizona.
It is unclear whether the improvements in mental health are due to the benefits of sleeping together or the quality of the romantic relationship in general. It could even be both.
In general, people in committed relationships show better physical and mental health than those who are single.
It is difficult to decipher why this is so. There are so many variables that affect the body and mind throughout life. Immerse yourself in the mysterious nature of the dream, and the picture becomes even more cloudy.
Most studies that investigated the benefits of sleeping alone or sharing a bed relied on the quality of sleep they reported, just like this one.
Only a few studies have investigated how sleeping with a romantic partner actually affects key neurological phases of sleep, such as sleep with fast eye movements (REM).
Interestingly, limited research on this topic has found that couples not only synchronize their movements during sleep, but also synchronize their sleep phases. When couples slept in the same bed, their REM sleep increased by 10 percent and was less interrupted than when they slept alone.
Interpersonal synchronization is associated with prosocial behavior, social connections, and positive influence, all of which have benefits for mental health.
This could be part of the reason why research continues to find evidence that couples feel better when they sleep when they do it with each other.
Another study published only this year showed that respondents think they fall asleep faster at night if they share a bed with a long-term partner.
Unfortunately, this kind of research can’t tell us how sleeping with a partner actually improves a person’s sleep, only that there is a correlation.
It may be that the person just thinks they slept better, when in fact they didn’t.
To circumvent this, some research has relied on smartwatches that record movement during sleep.
One such study showed that movement at night increases when a person sleeps next to his partner, falls in sync with another person. But just because more movement is registered at night does not necessarily mean that sleep was worse.
Without further research, the jury decided whether sleeping with a partner is better for you, or simply different from sleeping alone.
The research was presented at the annual meeting of the United Professional Sleep Societies.