Work Burnout Linked to Poor Sleep

Worker burnout is triggered by a drastic resetting of sleep patterns. Burnout is not recognized in the classic manuals of mental health disorders. But the main symptoms are taken to be long-term, excessive fatigue and cognitive impairment.

It usually affects people who are very committed to work. One day they wake up and they just can’t get out of bed. Then they take a few weeks sick leave, but they don’t improve. Researchers took regular sleep EEG readings of 35 patients who had been off work for a minimum of three months. The tests consistently showed extreme sleep fragmentation and disruption. These patients were living on as little as four or five hours of sleep each night, with a 40% reduction in slow-wave sleep compared with healthy people. If you experience stress for a long period of time, you establish a new high baseline of physiological activation - and this interferes with sleep.

The strongest predictor of burnout is personality. People who score high on emotionality scales experience more distress as a result of workplace pressures and stress.

Chinese medicine has been shown to improve or eliminate the symptoms of burnout and insomnia.

Meridian Harmonics