Had a ruff night’s sleep?
A recent study published in the journal Human-Animal Interactions has shown that individuals with dogs usually tend to suffer from a sleep problem. Cat ownership was also related to sleep issues, but to not the extent that dog owners experience.
Researchers acknowledged that while pets could have a soothing effect on their owners in the course of the daytime, they were ultimately detrimental to overall sleep quality.
“On the one hand, dogs and cats could also be useful for an owner’s quality of sleep on account of the social support that pets provide,” said Dr. Lauren Wisnieski, who led the study, in a press release. “Pets offer a way of security and companionship, which can lead to improvements in levels of hysteria, stress and depression. Yet, then again, pets may disrupt their owners’ sleep.”
Scientists from Lincoln Memorial University accounted for study participants’ sleep hygiene history, noting aspects equivalent to snoring, abrupt awakening, the necessity for sleeping pills, feeling unrested or sleepy, taking longer than quarter-hour to go to sleep and getting lower than a median of six hours of sleep.
Scientists from Lincoln Memorial University focused on pet ownership in the US, data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) from 2005 to 2006.
Around 5,500 people were examined — 51.7% female and 48.3% male.
In comparison with those without pets, dog owners were revealed to have more issues with sleeping, including sleep disorders, sleep apnea, feeling unrested or sleepy, needing pills to go to sleep, getting too little (lower than six hours) sleep at night and leg twitching.
Meanwhile, cat ownership was more prone to bring on snoring, trouble falling and staying asleep and leg jerks.
The differences in sleep quality were more extreme between dog owners and non-dog owners in comparison with cat owners and non-cat owners, possibly on account of cats being more energetic at night, researchers hypothesized.
Wisniesky added that the link between sleep and keeping pets needs further research, which could inform how clinicians treat patients with low sleep quality and help experts develop educational resources on such health risks of pet ownership.
She said potential solutions include crating your pet or limiting its access to the bedroom at night.
“In the long run, studies would profit from measuring the human-animal bond, in order that we are able to understand how the strength of [their relationship] affects quality of sleep,” Wisniesky said.
