Getting enough sleep is crucial to your physical and mental well-being. Yet, lack of sleep is something many of us experience. New findings published in the American Journal of Industrial Medicine state that 1 in 7 adults have difficulty falling asleep, while 1 in 6 adults have trouble staying asleep. There can be several reasons for this, according to the Harvard Medical School. These include poor diet and lack of exercise, along with sleep disorders such as sleep apnea.
However, one major issue is stress. According to experts from Johns Hopkins, about 44 percent of adults claimed that stress lead to one or more sleepless nights. While many factors can cause stress in our lives, such as money, health, and relationships, recent findings indicate that job stress is causing some U.S. adults to sleep poorly.
How No Sleep Impacts Work
Having a stressful job is nothing new. Around 65 percent of working adults in the U.S. consider their jobs a form of stress in their lives, according to the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). This stress can be harmful to an employee's physical and mental health, especially if they aren’t getting enough sleep.
According to the new study, lack of sleep was associated with hypertension, cardiovascular disease, obesity, and premature death. The study authors also noted that workers with little sleep performed poorly at their jobs, and even led to some workplace injuries.
Read More: The Importance of Sleep for Your Body
What is Job Strain?
The study characterizes job strain as high job demands with little job control. Job demands can include work overload, repetitive tasks, burnout, and role conflict. These characterizations come from Karasek's Job‐Demand‐Control model, which the researchers used to analyze their data.
Researchers analyzed data collected from the last nine years through the Midlife in the United States (MIDUS) study and ranked study participants based on four different sleep-related disturbances.
These disturbances include trouble falling asleep, waking up in the middle of the night and not being able to fall back asleep, waking up too early and not being able to fall back asleep, and feeling exhausted during the day, no matter how much sleep they got.
The results indicate that higher job stress leads to more sleep disturbances over time.
“Our findings also suggest that the continuous formulations of job strain demonstrate better model performance with consistent and robust results, offering empirical evidence for future psychosocial occupational health research in the United States,” said the first author, Yijia Sun, an MS candidate at the University of California, Los Angeles, in a press release.
Read More: Lack of Sleep Could be Causing an Increase in Mental Health Disorders
Improving Job Strain
With the study results, the authors are pushing for workplace changes or interventions to reduce stress.
“Strategies such as redesigning workloads and promoting worker autonomy could play an important role in improving sleep health and workers’ well-being,” said corresponding author Jian Li, MD, PhD, a professor of Work and Health at the University of California, Los Angeles, in the release.
Sleep is crucial to your health and may need to take precedence in certain situations. If stress is keeping you awake at night, there are some methods that may help you fall asleep and stay asleep.
According to Johns Hopkins, gentle breathing exercises can help your body and mind relax before bed. You can also practice tai chi or yoga to help remove stress and tension from your body. Cutting back on alcohol and caffeine intake can help you feel less restless as you try to sleep, along with staying physically active.
Try putting your phone and other devices away an hour before going to bed and set boundaries with your working hours. Don’t answer the phone or respond to emails after a certain time. Prioritize sleep to prioritize your health.
This article is not offering medical advice and should be used for informational purposes only.
Read More: Can't Sleep? Try These Tips to Get a Better Night's Rest
Article Sources
Our writers at Discovermagazine.com use peer-reviewed studies and high-quality sources for our articles, and our editors review for scientific accuracy and editorial standards. Review the sources used below for this article:
American Journal of Industrial Medicine. Alternative Formulations of Job Strain and Sleep Disturbances: A Longitudinal Study in the United States
Harvard Medical School. 8 reasons why you're not sleeping
Johns Hopkins. Sleepless Nights? Try Stress Relief Techniques
OSHA. Workplace Stress
JSTOR. Job Demands, Job Decision Latitude, and Mental Strain: Implications for Job Redesign
A graduate of UW-Whitewater, Monica Cull wrote for several organizations, including one that focused on bees and the natural world, before coming to Discover Magazine. Her current work also appears on her travel blog and Common State Magazine. Her love of science came from watching PBS shows as a kid with her mom and spending too much time binging Doctor Who.
