Relationship between Cortisol Changes during the Night and Subjective and Objective Sleep Quality in Healthy Older People

Abstract

The aim of this study was to investigate whether the nighttime cortisol release was associated with subjective and objective sleep quality and the discrepancy between them. Forty-five healthy older adults (age range from 56 to 75 years) collected salivary samples immediately before sleep and immediately after awakening on two consecutive nights. Actigraphy was used to assess objective sleep quality and quantity. A sleep diary was used to assess subjective sleep quality. Linear mixed models were performed using subjective and objective sleep quality data from 76 nights to investigate between-subject associations. We observed that larger changes in cortisol levels between sleep onset and awakening, reflecting a healthier circadian rhythm of the Hypothalamic-Pituitary-Adrenal (HPA) axis, were associated with better subjective sleep quality, but not with objective sleep quality. Moreover, smaller changes in nighttime cortisol were associated with lower subjective sleep quality relative to objective sleep quality. All these results were observed even after controlling for important confounders such as sleep quantity, age, sex, subjective socioeconomic status, stress perception, depression, physical activity, and adherence to the salivary sampling protocol. This study demonstrates that subjective sleep quality in older people may be explained, to some extent, by the activity of the HPA axis.

Habilitation of sleep problems among mothers and their children with autism spectrum disorder: Insights from multi-level exploratory dyadic analyses

“…Taken together, it appears that further research is needed to verify the directionality and effect sizes of the relationship between sleep and cortisol. Nonetheless, the present findings add to the current literature that poor sleep can contribute to physiological changes within the individual ( 34 – 37 ), although caution should be taken that the current findings are correlational in nature.…”

“…In qualitative studies, sleep problems have also commonly surfaced as one of the most challenging issues in caring for children with ASD ( 23 , 32 , 33 ). These sleep problems have then been found to be predictive of increased health risks ( 34 – 37 ), which may have contributed to the reports of physical maladies and physiological changes in caregivers. Cortisol is one such hormone that can be used to study physiological changes associated with sleep problems.…”

Sleep disturbances and physical health problems in caregivers of children with ASD

“…Indeed, caregivers of children with DD tend to be more vulnerable to commonly occurring ailments like coughs, colds, aches and pains, and visit their general practitioner (GP) more regularly, compared with their non-caregiving counterparts (Bella et al, 2011;Gallagher & Whiteley, 2012;Lovell et al, 2012a;Ruiz-Robledillo et al, 2013a;Smith et al, 2011). Alterations in health sensitive physiological processes such as endocrine and immune parameters, widely observed in caregivers of children with ASD, have been implicated as likely mediators of caregivers' poorer physical health Lovell et al, 2012a;Ruiz-Robledillo et al, 2013b;Seltzer et al, 2010;Whittaker & Gallagher, 2019) Sleep disturbances, known to be influential for endocrine and immune functioning, and associated in cross sectional and longitudinal studies with increased risk for physical health problems, might provide another mediating pathway by which caring for a child with ASD is associated increased reports of physical ill health (Afolalu et al, 2018;Paiva et al, 2015;Pawl et al, 2013;Pulopulos et al, 2020;Shattuck et al, 2018). To date however, studies exploring sleep disturbances in caregivers of children with ASD have been scarce, and tended to rely almost exclusively on subjective measures (e.g., sleep diaries, questionnaires).…”

Prevalence and risk factors of sub-health and circadian rhythm disorder of cortisol, melatonin, and temperature among Chinese midwives

“…Cortisol is a steroid hormone released from the adrenal cortex into the circulation following activation of the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal (HPA) axis by stress and SCN ( 26 ). Cortisol can impact the body, mood, arousal, energy, metabolic processes, and immune and inflammatory system functioning ( 27 ). Meanwhile, melatonin is a hormone synthesized mainly in the pineal gland and secreted into the general circulation ( 28 ).…”