A Bad Mix: Sleep Disturbances and Work

Investigators have recently determined that people who suffer from sleep disturbances have an elevated risk of experiencing work disabilities, and also tend to take longer to recover enough to resume the work process.

The team behind the new research say that the correlation is more valid in the case of people whose mental disorders or musculoskeletal diseases created their work disability in the first place.

For the new study, sleep disturbances was classified as a group of afflictions that include difficulties initiating sleep, intermittent and non-restorative sleep, and waking up too early after going to bed tired.

The research was conducted by scientists at the Finnish Institute of Occupational Health (FIOH), who worked closely together with colleagues from the University of Turku and the University of London.

About 56,732 people were surveyed during this massive research project, all of which were employees of the public sector in Finland. Experts looked over the participants' medical record, so as to discover the incidence of sleeping disorders in this subpopulation.

The investigation is a part of the Academy of both the Finland Research Program on The Future of Work and Well-being (WORK) and the Responding to Public Health Challenges Research Program (SALVE), AlphaGalileo reports.

An estimated 7 percent of the study group became incapacitated for work during the three-year-long, follow-up examinations. National registers were used to gain more data on when the people took time off from work due to disabilities or sickness.

Records of disability pensions and deaths were also taken into account. The team then looked at the correlations that developed between sleep disturbances and returning to work in people who had been sick for more than 90 days, or who were retired due to disabilities.

The group learned that 22 percent of all employees in the research were suffering from sleep disturbances at least five nights each single week. Some 26 percent reported experiencing the same issues between 2 and 4 nights per week.

Once the results of the analysis were in, the scientists discovered that the risk of work disability was higher in the subgroups that experienced sleep problems several times per week, when compared to those who exhibited sleep disturbances just 1 night per week or less.