Sleep-Deprivation may Affect Your Walk

Chronic sleep deprivation may affect one’s walk. However, making up for lost sleep even during those weekends may help reduce fatigue-induced clumsiness in the walk as per a study at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), published in the journal Scientific Reports. It is well established that sleep greatly influences one’s performance on various cognitive tasks from solving a math problem, to holding a conversation or even reading this article.

However, the present study explores how sleep can affect the way one may walk especially the way our stride is controlled (gait) or other activities that are assumed to be less mentally taxing.

The Sleep Study

The study was conducted among student volunteers. It was found that overall, lesser sleep among the students was associated with lesser control when they were walking during a treadmill test. The gait control was even worse among those who pulled an all-nighter before the test.

On the contrary, better performance was seen among those who did not stay up all night before the test, those who generally had less-than-ideal sleep during the week, but slept on weekends.

“Scientifically, it wasn’t clear that almost automatic activities like walking would be influenced by lack of sleep. We also find that compensating for sleep could be an important strategy. For instance, for those who are chronically sleep-deprived, like shift workers, clinicians, and some military personnel, if they build in regular sleep compensation, they might have better control over their gait,” says Hermano Krebs, a principal research scientist in MIT’s Department of Mechanical Engineering.

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“The results show that gait is not an automatic process, and that it can be affected by sleep deprivation. They also suggest strategies for mitigating effects of sleep deprivation. Ideally, everyone should sleep eight hours a night. But if we can’t, then we should compensate as much and as regularly as possible,” says Krebs.

Source-Medindia