'Love hormone' can fix mood changes in women with disturbed sleep

'Love hormone’ Oxytocin may play a protective role in mood disturbances triggered by sleep loss and hormonal shifts during key reproductive transitions like postpartum and menopause, say researchers.

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Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and Harvard Medical School studied the combined impact of sleep interruption and estrogen suppression on mood and oxytocin levels in healthy pre-menopausal women.

Their findings suggest that oxytocin may help reduce the negative mood effects brought on by fragmented sleep, which is an often-overlooked consequence of reproductive transitions.

“We found that oxytocin levels rise in response to stress-related sleep disruption, and that women with higher oxytocin levels before disrupted sleep experienced less mood disturbance the next day,” said Irene Gonsalvez, associate psychiatrist at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and instructor at Harvard Medical School in Boston.