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 The trend toward increasing numbers of people getting too little
shuteye started in 2013, the study team reports in the journal
Sleep. Most of this recent shift from adequate to inadequate sleep
duration was among Hispanic and non-Hispanic black adults, widening
racial and ethnic disparities in sleep, and potentially disparities
in health.
"Sleep is important for everything we do, including work, our
relationships and health," said lead study author Connor Sheehan of
Arizona State University in Tempe, in a phone interview. "People
can't always accurately report exactly how long they sleep, but they
have a decent idea of if they're sleeping well or not."
He and his colleagues examined data from an annual,
nationally-representative health interview survey collected between
2004 and 2017. A total of 398,382 participants were asked how much
they slept in a 24-hour period. The researchers defined short sleep
as six hours or less, adequate sleep as seven to eight hours and
long sleep as nine or more hours.
The proportion of people with short-sleep duration was relatively
stable from 2004 to 2012 at about 28-29 percent. The majority, 63
percent, got seven to eight hours of sleep during this period, and
8.5 percent slept nine hours or more.
In 2013, the proportion reporting short sleep rose to 29 percent,
and kept increasing to 33 percent in 2017. By 2017, the proportion
of people reporting adequate sleep had fallen to 60 percent, and
long-sleepers were down to 7 percent.
The 15 percent increase from 2013 to 2017 in people across the U.S.
getting too little sleep "might not sound like a lot . . . but at 9
million people, that's the population of New York City reporting
short sleep," Sheehan said. "It's a nontrivial number and a canary
in the coal mine for our future health outcomes."
Hispanics and non-Hispanic blacks were more likely to report short
sleep. By 2017, about 31 percent of white survey participants, 42
percent of black participants and 33 percent of Hispanic
participants were sleeping six or fewer hours.
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And the black and Hispanic groups made up the larger share of the
increase in short sleeping over time. For white participants, the
likelihood of reporting short sleep rose 2 percentage points between
2004 and 2017, while for both Hispanic and black participants it
rose by 7 percentage points.
These racial and ethnic differences were not explained by markers of
social advantage, such as income or education, or differences in
physical or mental health, the authors write.
"It is likely that there are structural factors that interfere with
adequate sleep. Black and Latino Americans have and continue to live
in very different neighborhoods compared to white Americans," said
Margaret Hicken of the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, who
wasn't involved in the study.
"Furthermore, Black and Latino Americans experience greater social
stressors that do not center necessarily on poverty or crime but
include the more common need to be continually vigilant about
navigating everyday life in a racially-hierarchical society," she
told Reuters Health by email.
Although this study reports a drop in sleep in recent years, sleep
researchers believe Americans are more aware of the importance of
sleep, which is a positive step.
"People are slowly getting it. We're getting more interested in
sleep," said Dr. Mathias Basner of the University of Pennsylvania
Perelman School of Medicine in Philadelphia, who wasn't involved in
the study.
"People are less frequently watching TV or looking at their phones
right before bed," Basner said in a phone interview. "We're starting
to see a change in behavior."
SOURCE: https://bit.ly/2Q8nAZl Sleep, online November 27, 2018.
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