Sleeping more than seven hours a night can help solve a couple’s marriage problems, experts say.
Researchers analyzed couples response to stressful situations and compared it to the number of hours of sleep they got the night before.
Couples who had less than seven hours of sleep were more likely to start a fight with their significant other and would have higher levels of an inflammatory response in their blood.
These inflammatory responses have also been linked to heart disease, arthritis and other chronic illnesses.
Experts recommend for couples to get more sleep if they are having marriage or health problems to improve their well-being.
People that are getting less than seven hours of sleep are more likely to have an increased inflammatory response in their blood, a study revealed. This response can cause problems in a marriage when a couple is talking about issues that cause controversy (file photo)
Researchers at Ohio State University Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research studied the correlation between sleep deprivation and a married couple’s relationship.
‘We know sleep problems are also linked with inflammation and many of the same chronic illnesses,’ said Stephanie Wilson, lead researcher on the study.
‘So we were interested to see how sleep related to inflammation among married couples, and whether one partner’s sleep affected the other’s inflammation.’
This type of inflammation is associated with higher risk of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, arthritis and other diseases.
There were 43 couples who came in and talked about a topic that sparked controversy in their marriage.
Before they would talk about the topic, researchers would ask them how many hours of sleep they had and take a sample of their blood.
Another sample of blood would be taken after the couple discussed the issue.
‘We found that people who slept less in the past few nights didn’t wake up with higher inflammation, but they had a greater inflammatory response to the conflict,’ Wilson said.
‘So that tells us less sleep increased vulnerability to a stressor.’
The couple was more likely to be hostile or argue with each other if they got less than seven hours of sleep the previous two nights.
For every hour of sleep lost, the researchers noted that levels of two known inflammatory markers rose 6 percent.
Couples who used unhealthy tactics in their disagreement had an even greater inflammatory response—about a ten percent increase with each hour of less sleep.
‘Any increase isn’t good, but a protracted increase that isn’t being addressed is where it can become a problem,’ Wilson said.
‘What’s concerning is both a lack of sleep and marital conflict are common in daily life. About half of our study couples had slept less than the recommended seven hours in recent nights.’
That’s higher than the current national average.
The CDC reports 35 percent of Americans get less than seven hours of sleep per night.
‘Part of the issue in a marriage is that sleep patterns often track together,’ said Janice Kiecolt-Glaser, senior author and director of the Institute for Behavioral Medicine Research.
‘If one person is restless, or has chronic problems, that can impact the other’s sleep. If these problems persist over time, you can get this nasty reverberation within the couple.’
Researchers were encouraged to see that there was a protective effect if one of the partners was well-rested, or discussed conflict in a healthy way.
They tended to neutralize the disagreement that might be stirred by the sleep-deprived partner.
‘We would tell people that it’s important to find good ways to process the relationship and resolve conflict,’ Kiecolt-Glaser said.