Love, the word seems so simple but it has various shades which unfold as the relationship progresses. Love is not only expressing and saying ‘I Love You’ but it is much more than that. There are multiple ways in which your partner helps in making you feel healthy and happy. Be it through physical comfort or emotional intimacy. Recently, a study has shown that sleeping next to your partner helps in improving sleep quality and boosts mental health. A study published in Sleep, the official journal of the Sleep Research Society, has found that people who sleep with their partners have a strong relationship, “lower depression, anxiety, and stress scores, and greater social support.”
The study was conducted on 1,000 adults hailing from south-eastern Pennsylvania. The research tried to find out the connection between sleeping partners, sleep quality, and sleep diseases. According to Brandon Fuentes, an undergraduate researcher in the department of psychiatry at the University of Arizona and the lead author of the study, “Sleeping with a romantic partner or spouse shows to have great benefits on sleep health including reduced sleep apnea risk, sleep insomnia severity, and overall improvement in sleep quality.”
To conduct the study, a group of researchers from the University of Arizona collected and analysed the data from Sleep and Health Activity, Diet, Environment, and Socialization (SHADES) study.
The study revealed that the adults who shared the same bed with their romantic partner on most of the nights suffered from less severe insomnia, and fatigue, and they spent more time sleeping at night without any disturbance. Not just this, some participants even reported that when they slept with their partners, they fell asleep faster than on other nights and had less risk of sleep apnea. On the contrary, the study also found that people who slept with their children instead of their partners suffered severe insomnia, a higher risk of sleep apnea and disturbed and uneven sleep.
Senior study author, Dr Michael Grandner, director of the Sleep and Health Research Program at the University of Arizona shared, “Very few research studies explore this, but our findings suggest that whether we sleep alone or with a partner, family member, or pet may impact our sleep health.”
Apart from sharing a bed with a partner and children, the researchers also looked into the third aspect, i.e. sleeping alone and revealed that the ones who sleep alone “experience higher depression scores, lower social support, and worse life and relationship satisfaction.”
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