Partial or total sleep deprivation reduces gait control

Sleep-deprived people can improve the way they walk by increasing their sleep hours appropriately for their daily life.

Spontaneous activities such as walking are affected by lack of sleep

A new study shows that people who get less than the recommended amount of sleep have difficulty walking, which ultimately affects a person's steps or gait.

The study, published in Scientific Reports, was led by scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of Sao Paulo in Brazil, who confirmed that sleep-deprived people can actually improve the way they walk by increasing their hours of sleep appropriately for their daily lives.

Using student volunteers over a 14-day period, the researchers found that the less sleep a student got (an average of six hours per night) the less he could control the treadmill.

And for the students who didn't sleep at all, they had lower gait control. However, the students who got less than ideal sleep during the week, but were able to sleep on the weekends, performed better than those who got the extra sleep.

Hermano Krebs (one of the study's authors) said, "Scientifically, it was not clear that almost spontaneous activities such as walking would be affected by lack of sleep," noting that "compensating for the missed sleep could be an important strategy; For example, for those who suffer from chronic sleep deprivation - such as shift workers, doctors and some military - if they catch up on their sleep on a regular basis, they may develop better control of their gait.

Walking, according to Krebs, requires a little more brain involvement than previously thought, as researchers have identified people's gait and walking mechanics in an effort to help create robots for stroke patients or others who have suffered from debilitating problems.

"Our results suggest that partial or total sleep deprivation leads to reduced sensorimotor control of gait," the researchers wrote in the study.

The superior performance of the chronic sleep group when compared to the acute group indicates a compensatory mechanism that helps improve motor performance.

Krebs noted that healthy people change their gait slightly without realizing that they are doing so. This indicates a certain level of conscious influence.

Krebs explained that this also indicates that the concept of gait is just an automatic process and not a whole story, and that there is a lot of influence coming from the brain.

The researchers also suggest strategies to mitigate the effects of sleep deprivation. Ideally, each person should sleep eight hours a night. But if he is unable to do so, he must compensate as much and as regularly as possible.