The adversity of childhood related to sleep problems decades later

(Reuters Health) – An American study suggests that child victims of adverse experiences such as abuse and neglect may have sleep problems as adults.

Adverse childhood experiences, commonly referred to as ACE, may include seeing parents fight or divorce, having a parent with a mental illness or a problem with a child. addiction or suffering from badual, physical or psychological violence. CEAs have been badociated with so-called toxic stress or wear and tear on the body that causes physical and mental health problems that often persist from one generation to the next.

For the present study, published in the journal Sleep, researchers interviewed 22,403 adults, 47 years old on average, about the difficulties they experienced during their childhood. Overall, 42% of participants did not report any CEAs, while 23% had one type of CEA and the rest were exposed to at least two CEAs.

About 61% of adults got an optimal amount of sleep – 7 to 9 hours a night – and about a third of them did not sleep well – less than 6 hours a night.

Each experienced ACE person was badociated with a probability of sleeping too little 22% higher. Individuals with three CEAs were twice as likely to not get enough sleep, and the risk was more than tripled for adults with five or more CEAs.

"Previous studies have shown that adults who have had adverse childhood experiences have an increased likelihood of sleep disturbances and poor sleep quality," said Kelly Sullivan, lead author of the study, Georgia Southern University in Statesboro.

This study is unique in that it shows that adverse experiences during childhood can also affect sleep duration, Sullivan said via e-mail. This is probably due to the lasting effects of toxic stress.

"It has been shown that excessive or prolonged stress biologically impairs the brain and affects health, learning, and behavior," Sullivan said. "These effects can last a lifetime."

People participating in the study were generally overweight, which can impact the risk of sleep problems. Nearly half of them were former smokers and about 21% were current smokers, which can also negatively affect the quality and quantity of sleep.

Only 10% of adults reported suffering from frequent mental distress.

Mental health problems or poor physical health did not seem to influence the badociation between CEAs and lack of sleep in adulthood.

Family violence, child abuse and rape have the greatest impact on the length of sleep in adulthood.

When people have experienced it, they have most often reported emotional abuse, living with an alcoholic or a parental divorce.

The study was not a controlled experiment designed to prove whether or how ACEs could directly cause sleep disturbances.

One of the limitations of the study is that researchers lacked data on the duration of the ACE or the age of exposure, which could affect how whose exposures contribute to later sleep problems.

Nevertheless, the results offer new evidence of the long-term impact of children's exposure to toxic stress, said Dr. Nicole Racine of the University of Calgary and the Alberta Children's Research Institute. s Hospital in Canada, who did not participate in the study.

Children exposed to abuse and adversity face high levels of toxic stress, Racine said via e-mail. She added: "Toxic stress has normal body wear and also has an impact on the development of the child's brain, including areas of the brain that regulate sleep."

SOURCE: bit.ly/2ENJlea Sleep, online 21 May 2019.