India, July 14 -- A new study suggests that oxytocin, often called the 'love hormone,' may help protect women from mood problems caused by sleep disruptions and hormone changes during postpartum and menopause.
To reach this conclusion, researchers from Brigham and Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School looked at how sleep interruptions and lower estrogen levels affect mood and oxytocin in healthy women before menopause.
They studied 38 women, who went through two 5-night stays in a sleep lab-once in their natural hormonal state and once after their estrogen was temporarily lowered. After two nights of good sleep, their sleep was interrupted for three nights to mimic the kind of sleep problems many women face during postpartum and men...