Research

Hormonal

Psychosocial stress, particularly the anticipation of high demands or effort, causes impaired sleep characterized by shortened duration, fragmentation, and reduced slow-wave sleep (SWS).

If you are stressed, your sleep will likely suffer, especially if you are anticipating difficult tasks. This is driven by physiological arousal (cortisol, heart rate) and cognitive worry. To mitigate this, try to reduce the cognitive load of anticipating work demands before bed, as this anticipation is a primary driver of sleep fragmentation and reduced deep sleep.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
This review demonstrates that stress is closely related to impaired sleep in cross-sectional studies. In particular, the anticipation of high demands or effort the next day seems important. Sleep recordings show that stress is associated with shortened sleep, fragmentation, and possibly a reduction in sleep stages 3 and 4.
Torbjörn Åkerstedt · Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment & Health · 2006

Why this rating

The paper is a review citing numerous cross-sectional, prospective, and polysomnographic studies, though it notes a lack of longitudinal causal data.

Source

Psychosocial stress and impaired sleep

Torbjörn Åkerstedt · Scandinavian Journal of Work Environment & Health · 2006

DOI 10.5271/sjweh.1054

narrative_reviewCited 572×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

This is one finding among thousands. Every one is graded and traced to its source, so you can see what the evidence actually supports. Browse the research →