Health psychology : official journal of the Division of Health Psychology, American Psychological Association
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Sleep deprivation potentiates HPA axis stress reactivity in healthy adults.
This article describes an experiment that was designed to investigate the effects of sleep deprivation on physiological stress responses in healthy adults. ⋯ Sleep deprivation is associated with both elevated resting cortisol release and with an exaggerated cortisol response to a stressor indicative of elevated HPA axis responses in healthy adults. Individual differences in the magnitude of this response may represent a risk factor for psychological and physical health consequences associated with heightened cortisol exposure.