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Aging News for Seniors Citizens
People Sleep Even Less Than They Think
Study finds people seem to be sleeping less and
less
July 4, 2006 - A study of the sleep characteristics
of 669 middle-aged adults found that people sleep much less than they
should, and even less than they think. Published in the July issue in
the American Journal of Epidemiology, the study also found that blacks
sleep less than whites, men sleep less than women, and the poor sleep
less than the wealthy.
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Although participants spent an average of 7.5 hour
a night in bed, they spent only 6.1 hours asleep. White women slept the
most, 6.7 hours a night, followed by white men at 6.1 hours, black women
at 5.9 hours and black men at 5.1 hours. Higher income also was
associated with more sleep.
"People don't think they get enough sleep and they
get less sleep than they think," said study author Diane Lauderdale,
Ph.D., associate professor of health studies at the University of
Chicago. "As we learn more and more about the importance of sleep for
health, we find evidence that people seem to be sleeping less and less."
Studies suggest that average sleep times have
declined since 1900, when people reported sleeping nine hours a night.
Studies from the 1970s reported average sleep times closer to seven
hours a night.
"Our study tells that we can't entirely trust those
earlier surveys," Lauderdale said, "because people do not know how much
they sleep."
This was one of the first large studies to combine
sleep diaries with a technique called wrist actigraphy that uses a
motion sensor -- worn like a watch -- to measure not just when people go
to bed but when they fall asleep. Participants wore the device in the
home for three days and nights. They also kept a log of their hours in
bed.
Using the Actiwatch and nightly logs, Lauderdale
and colleagues recorded how long people spent in bed (on average, 7.5
hours), how long it took them to fall asleep (22 minutes), how long they
slept (6.1 hours), and their total sleep "efficiency" -- time asleep
divided by time in bed (81 percent).
|
Sleep |
All |
White
women |
White
men |
Black
women |
Black
men |
|
Time in bed |
7.51 |
7.84 |
7.34 |
7.55 |
7.10 |
|
Sleep
latency |
22.33 |
13.30 |
18.52 |
28.36 |
35.93 |
|
Sleep
duration |
6.13 |
6.71 |
6.09 |
5.90 |
5.10 |
|
Sleep
efficiency |
80.8% |
85.7% |
82.4% |
78.2% |
73.2% |
They found that sleep duration and sleep efficiency
were "remarkably lower" than values reported in most previous studies,
noted Stuart F. Quan of the University of Arizona in a commentary.
The researchers were particularly surprised by the
short span and poor quality of sleep among African-American men -- 5.1
hours a night and 73 percent sleep efficiency.
"Although sleep scientists have generally accepted
that the average sleep duration of Americans has been declining in
parallel with our transformation to a frenetic 24-hour society," Quan
wrote, "most sleep clinicians would consider those values indicative of
sleep deprivation even by current standards."
Lack of sleep has long been connected with reduced
ability to concentrate, trouble learning, decreased attention to detail
and increased risk of motor vehicle accidents. More recent studies have
tied chronic partial sleep deprivation to medical problems, including
obesity, diabetes and hypertension.
This study may someday connect sleep loss to
coronary artery disease. The 669 volunteers, aged 38 to 50, were
recruited from the Chicago site (based at Northwestern University) of
the CARDIA study, an ongoing project, begun in 1985, designed to assess
long-term cardiovascular risk factors.
Although the study found significant variation
based on race, sex and income it was not designed to get at the causes
of those differences.
"People who make more money may have fewer
worries," Lauderdale suggested, "or they may have more control over
their sleep environment."
The findings, however, are "consistent with sleep
being on the causal pathway between socioeconomic status (or race) and
disease risk," the authors conclude.
"There are many temptations to sleep less," said
Lauderdale, "but there is a growing body of evidence that this would be
unwise."
"I try to get at least seven hours a night," she
said. "I can't function the next day without it."
Editor's Note: Additional authors of the paper
include Kristen Knutson and Paul Rathouz from the University of Chicago,
Lijing Yang and Kiang Liu from Northwestern University, Stephen Hulley
from the University of California at San Francisco, and Steve Sidney
Kaiser Permanente Northern California. The study was supported by grants
from the National Institutes of Health.
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