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More Americans Struggle to Fall Asleep, Stay Asleep

posted by Fnord666 on Wednesday November 13 2019, @11:35AM   
from the one-sheep-two-sheep-red-sheep-blue-sheep dept.

upstart writes:

Submitted via IRC for Bytram

More Americans struggle to fall asleep, stay asleep

Getting the recommended seven to eight hours of sleep every night is a struggle for most people, but even those who do may not have the best sleep.

New research from Iowa State University finds more Americans have trouble falling asleep and staying asleep. The changes were independent of sleep duration, and difficulties were most prevalent in people with healthy sleep length, the findings show. The study, published in the journal Sleep Health, is one of the first to look at how multiple dimensions of sleep health change over time.

Zlatan Krizan, professor of psychology, and his research team analyzed data collected from nearly 165,000 individuals from 2013 to 2017, as part of the National Health Interview Survey. Over the course of five years, adults who reported at least one day a week with difficulty falling asleep increased by 1.43% and those reporting at least one day with trouble staying asleep increased by 2.70%. While the percentages may seem small, Krizan says based on 2018 population estimates this means as many as five million more Americans are experiencing some sleep difficulties.

"Indeed, how long we sleep is important, but how well we sleep and how we feel about our sleep is important in its own right," Krizan said. "Sleep health is a multidimensional phenomenon, so examining all the aspects of sleep is crucial for future research."

Garrett C. Hisler, Diana Muranovic, Zlatan Krizan. Changes in sleep difficulties among the U.S. population from 2013 to 2017: results from the National Health Interview Survey. Sleep Health, 2019; DOI: 10.1016/j.sleh.2019.08.008

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Original Submission

• The myth of the eight-hour sleep The myth of the eight-hour sleep (Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @02:22PM (3 children)

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @02:22PM (#919842)

  At least a total of 8 hours is best[1] but it doesn't have to be consecutive:
  https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-16964783 [bbc.com]

  In the early 1990s, psychiatrist Thomas Wehr conducted an experiment in which a group of people were plunged into darkness for 14 hours every day for a month.

  It took some time for their sleep to regulate but by the fourth week the subjects had settled into a very distinct sleeping pattern. They slept first for four hours, then woke for one or two hours before falling into a second four-hour sleep.

  https://www.sciencealert.com/humans-used-to-sleep-in-two-shifts-maybe-we-should-again [sciencealert.com]

  [1] https://www.popsci.com/how-many-hours-sleep-do-you-actually-need/ [popsci.com]

  While the group that received eight hours of sleep saw virtually no change to their cognitive performance throughout the two-week study, after just 10 days the participants that slept six hours each night were as cognitively impaired as those suffering from a night of total sleep deprivation. And the group that got four hours? It only took them three days before they reached that same level of impairment. By 10 days in, they were as cognitively impaired as if they had gone two days with no sleep. As the days went by, these detriments didn't slow down. "If you looked at the data graphs, there's no end in sight. That was the frightening thing," says Walker.

  participants in the six-hour-a-night group how well they thought they did on the day's cognitive tests. They replied that they did well—great, even. However, when the study researchers actually compared the two performances, the tests completed after six hours of sleep were significantly worse than the ones done after eight hours of sleep.

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• Re:The myth of the eight-hour sleep Re:The myth of the eight-hour sleep (Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:44PM (1 child)

  by fustakrakich (6150) on Wednesday November 13 2019, @03:44PM (#919868) Journal

  Your sleep should be eight hours

  Your shift should be six hours

  --
  La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..

  Parent

  • Re:The myth of the eight-hour sleep (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @04:18PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @04:18PM (#919890)

    How about just sleep whenever you feel like it? Just like every other animal?

    Parent

• Re:The myth of the eight-hour sleep (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @07:52PM

  by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday November 13 2019, @07:52PM (#919980)

  It's probably adaptable. Sleep is regulated by the circadian rhythms which are in turn related to environmental cues. The sleep/wake cycle has been tied to melatonin release, the process is photosensitive, thus depending on the ratio of night day and the actual exposure to sunlight would alter the release of melatonin. To suggest so swiftly from a singular study that the optimal pattern is a 4x2 - especially when the results are derived from an aberrant experiment - is foolhardy. You can say surely, that on average the neurotypical person with a nominal endocrine profile is most likely to exhibit a 4x2 sleeping pattern when placed in a vacuum.

  I'd postulate the increasing demand from work and social pressures (positive and negative) as well as personal development all leave a pretty small void left for any sort of slack. More or less the temporal choke chain is wrapping increasingly tight as the majority attempts to live life to its fullest. Naturally it doesn't help that we can constantly consume the novel at the touch of our fingers. FOMO constantly consumes people, even if you find it mediocre you'd surely want to watch GoT to make sure you could participate in the conversation. Gotta watch your favorite influencer's new video so you can tell your buddies all about the virtues of heat treated lumber and the new brushless Makita. Oh and now you just remembered you forgot to plug in your wireless earbuds, which you need for the hour and a half commute, and the eight hours of work. And you've gotta put in that OT so you can fly to Boca this summer so you can take pictures and flex for those sweeties back home. Oh and you're still a hopeless single male in a 1-bedroom apartment with a degree that you're paying on that isn't paying you. The tone that Ted used today when he was addressing you at the meeting sounded sour, I hope it was an accident, not one of those microtics that give away what he was thinking, I need this job. What would I do if I lost my job right now? I'd lose my car, I can barely afford insurance. I wish I could go to the doctor this insomnia is killing me. I need to get to sleep, I need to sleep or I'm going to perform like shit at work. I'm so stressed out that I can't sleep right now. I'm angry I can't sleep. Fuck I wish I could sleep.

  Oh and that's without the pressure to smash gallons of caffeinated beverages of any variety into your frail little body. Mind you the /half/-life of that shit is like 8 hours. Some people go real overboard with it, too.

  Parent