summary: A new study reveals that mindfulness can help improve sleep quality and reduce stress by focusing on the present and minimizing negative thoughts. The study followed 144 nurses over a two-week period to uncover how mindfulness affects emotion regulation and overall health.
These findings provide valuable insight for employers looking to reduce work-related stress, and future research will further explore effective stress reduction strategies across a range of occupations.
Key Facts:
- Improved sleepMindfulness improves sleep quality by reducing negative emotions and rumination.
- Emotional regulation: Staying in the present helps nurses cope better with stress.
- Workplace interventions: Findings support the use of mindfulness-based stress reduction programs.
sauce: University of South Florida
Mindfulness, or focusing on the present moment, can improve your sleep, reduce stress, and improve your overall health, and a new study led by the University of South Florida explains why.
Researchers studied 144 nurses over a two-week period to gauge how well they were able to focus on the present and how often they dwelled on negative thoughts. The nurses completed questionnaires three times a day and reported on the quality of their sleep the next morning.
The findings shed light on how mindfulness is related to regulating emotions and how we deal with stressful situations, such as setbacks at work.
The study also offers a clearer picture of how employees and employers can reduce work-related stress, said Claire Smith, lead author of the study and assistant professor of psychology in the USF College of Letters and Science.
“Mindfulness is often thought of as some kind of magical cure for stress in employees,” Smith says. “The way mindfulness is often talked about seems to be that by calming and accepting the present moment, you no longer feel stressed. For me, it’s important to add more nuance.”
Therefore, this study provides insight into how the relationship between mindfulness and emotion regulation may affect sleep quality.
“We know that good quality sleep is physically and mentally restorative and makes people happier, safer and more ethical at work,” says Smith, “so we wanted to explore which aspects of sleep are affected by mindfulness and why.”
Smith’s team included three USF colleagues and two researchers from Penn State, and the study was recently published in the journal Nature. Health Psychology.
The researchers looked at nurses’ long, irregular working hours and stressful work environments, which often lead to sleep disorders and may affect nurses’ health as well as patient safety.
Studies have found that mindfulness reduced negative emotions and rumination (repeated negative thoughts) in nurses.
“For example, if you receive a bad performance review at work, you might choose to shift your focus from negative thoughts about how you failed and incompetent to positive thoughts about what you did well and how you can improve,” Smith says.
Smith and his co-authors believe the findings of this study can help employers make better decisions about implementing wellness promotion strategies for their employees. Common interventions implemented by employers include yoga, meditation, tai chi, therapy, and mindfulness-based stress reduction programs, which have been shown to help employees manage stress and improve their overall health.
“Mindfulness is a hot topic, but we need to understand why it works,” Smith said. “Our research is going back to basics to understand the reasons behind the benefits of mindfulness in the workplace.”
The authors acknowledge that further research is needed to explore the best ways to reduce work-related stress and how this applies to a variety of professions, including more traditional office settings outside of healthcare.
“We hope that future research on mindfulness will look not only at overall outcomes like improved sleep quality and productivity, but also at its effects on things like emotion regulation,” Smith said.
“When an intervention doesn’t work, it helps us understand where the problem is coming from. When an intervention works, it tells us why.”
Mindfulness, sleep, and stress research news
author: John Dudley
sauce: University of South Florida
contact: John Dudley – University of South Florida
image: Image courtesy of Neuroscience News
Original Research: The access is closed.
“Stay focused now, sleep better later: Mindfulness promotes sleep health through emotional controlClaire Smith et al. Health Psychology
Abstract
Stay focused now, sleep better later: Mindfulness promotes sleep health through emotional control
objective: Despite the popularity of mindfulness in research and interventions, there is a lack of information on how and why mindfulness benefits employees’ sleep health. Based on emotion regulation theory, we evaluate emotional rumination, negative affect, and positive affect as potential mechanisms.
We also explore the differential effects of trait and state mindfulness on both subjective aspects of sleep health (e.g., quality and adequacy) and actigraphy-measured aspects (e.g., duration after sleep onset and wake time).
Method: Ecological momentary assessment and sleep actigraphy data were collected from two independent samples of healthcare professionals (N1 = 60, N2 = 84). Ecological momentary assessment was also used to collect daily information on state mindfulness, emotions, and rumination.
result: Our findings support that rumination and, less consistently, negative affect, but not positive affect, are mediators of the association between mindfulness and sleep health. Trait and state mindfulness confer comparable benefits on employees’ sleep health, but these benefits are primarily manifested in subjective aspects of sleep rather than those measured by actigraphy.
Conclusion: These findings support emotion regulation as a sound theoretical framework in sleep and mindfulness research and may support more informed workplace mindfulness interventions.