Dr Dayna Johnson: Mindfulness Can Help Facilitate Better Sleep and Health Outcomes

Dayna Johnson, PhD, MPH, MSW, MS, assistant professor of epidemiology at the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, presented “A Mindfulness Intervention to Improve Sleep in a Diverse Sample: Results From a Pilot Feasibility Study” at this year’s SLEEP 2023 conference. Also, a member of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) Program Committee, Johnson was recognized with this year’s APSS Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Leadership Award.

Here she discusses principal findings from the analysis of a 35-day sleep intervention study that utilized a mobile mindfulness app to manage stress and anxiety combined with healthy sleep practices. The quantitative and qualitative analyses were conducted among a cohort of Asian, Hispanic, Black, and White participants.

Transcript

Can you share some of the data you presented about the mindfulness intervention?

It was a 35-day intervention study. We started measuring sleep and then assess stress and blood pressure and weight at the start, and then our participants went through a 30-day intervention. Every night we asked them to do 10 minutes of mindfulness. There are specific sessions through the app [Headspace] called Letting Go of Stress and Managing Anxiety. They did 10 minutes every day before bedtime. And then at the start of the intervention, we did healthy sleep practices, which I delivered to the participants.

We saw across those 35 days that in the end, the participants were able to initiate sleep faster, so they had a shorter sleep latency. We also saw that they had a poor sleep quality score. And then also for some of our participants, there was a lower prevalence of obesity and then also an improvement and blood pressure.

We did both quantitative and qualitative assessments, so asking them questions in addition to the questionnaires [the Perceived Stress Scale and the Pittsburgh Sleep Quality Index]. Across our groups, we found that they all reported having better sleep, and then also, most importantly, reducing their stress. They talked about having lower stress and being more relaxed, and then through our quantitative assessments, we actually saw that their stress levels were lower.

How does practicing mindfulness contribute to better sleep health, and what underlying mechanisms or processes are involved in this relationship?

The study was conducted among a diverse sample. These individuals who are historically minoritized encounter several stressors. What we have found in our work, it's when they attempt to go to sleep that rumination occurs—so they're thinking about different stressors that happen during the day. The act of mindfulness helps to calm the body, reduce stressors, and really set the stage for having a good night's sleep, and so the underlying mechanism is really tackling that stress piece to relax a person, turn off that fight-or-flight response, and really settle into the sleep cycle.

Are there any myths about mindfulness that you would like to dispel?

What we do know from research is that this practice of breathing—so doing breath work to relax—is actually effective. There are research studies, clinical trials, that have shown this positive effect on the body. We do have some people that may have been a little hesitant, but once they started engaging, kind of changed their mindset about it. And so I think, perhaps the thought is that doing these exercises are maybe a waste of time. But if you are somebody who's really busy, you have a lot on your mind, and you just take that moment to sit still and focus on your breath and relaxing, you'll know that it's no miss, that it truly can relax you.