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. ACEs have been linked to what is called toxic stress, or body wear 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 percent of adults got an optimal amount of sleep – 7 to 9 hours a night – and about a third of them had too little sleep – less than 6 hours a night.

Each experienced ACE person was badociated with a higher probability of sleeping 22%. 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 experienced adverse experiences in their childhood have an increased likelihood of poor sleep patterns and poor quality of sleep," said Kelly Sullivan, lead author of the study, the 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, however.

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 demonstrate if, 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.

Even in this case, the findings offer new evidence of the long-term impact of children's exposure to toxic stress, said Nicole Racine, Ph.D., of the University of Calgary and the Research Institute of Alberta Children's Hospital, Canada, which 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 a wear and tear effect on the body and also has an impact on the development of the child's brain, including on areas of the brain that regulate sleep."

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