Sleep deprivation ages new moms

Sci­en­tists from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cal­i­for­nia in Los Ange­les have cal­cu­lat­ed how many years young moth­ers age, whose babies do not let them sleep at night.

The study involved 33 women who were under the super­vi­sion of sci­en­tists dur­ing preg­nan­cy and in the first year of life of their babies. Through­out this time, researchers have reg­u­lar­ly tak­en blood sam­ples and ana­lyzed their DNA to deter­mine their bio­log­i­cal age, which may dif­fer sig­nif­i­cant­ly from chrono­log­i­cal.

Par­tic­i­pants slept between 5 and 9 hours at night. But more than half of them slept less than 7 hours a day, both six months and a year after giv­ing birth.

It turned out that a year after the birth of a child, the bio­log­i­cal age of young moth­ers who slept less than 7 hours a day was 3–7 years old­er than that of moth­ers who slept 7 hours or more.

Stud­ies have shown that women who slept less than 7 hours had short­er telom­eres in their white blood cells. These are the ter­mi­nal sec­tions of DNA that play a pro­tec­tive role. The short­er they are, the high­er the risks of devel­op­ing car­dio­vas­cu­lar dis­eases and ear­ly death of a per­son.

Every hour of extra sleep reduces a wom­an’s bio­log­i­cal age, sci­en­tists empha­size. Accord­ing to them, the first months of sleep depri­va­tion after child­birth can have a long-term neg­a­tive impact on health.