Studies show sleep times influenced by race, ethnicity and country of origin
Two studies scheduled for presentation today at SLEEP 2012 are reporting sleep disparities among Americans based on racial and ethnic background.
The first study, out of the State University of New York (SUNY), looked at 400,000 respondents from the National Health Interview Surveys between 2004 and 2010. Results show that Americans born in the United States were more likely to report sleeping longer than the recommended seven to nine hours each night. African-born Americans were more likely to report sleeping six hours or less, and Indian-born Americans reported six to eight hours a night.
“We think social desirability might be playing a role in the self-reported data,” said Abhishek Pandey, MD, the study’s lead author. “We think that insufficient sleep might be more prevalent in the population than the actual self report data, but under- or over-reported to project a better image of one’s perceived sleep health.”
On a smaller scale, sleep researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago analyzed the sleep measurements of 439 randomly selected Chicago men and women, including surveys about sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. They found that white participants slept significantly longer than the other groups, and blacks reported the worst sleep quality. Asians had the highest reports of daytime sleepiness.
“These racial/ethnic differences in sleep persisted even following statistical adjustment for cardiovascular disease risk factors that we already know to be associated with poor sleep, such as body mass index, high blood pressure and diabetes,” said Mercedes Carnethon, PhD, principal investigator and lead author of the Northwestern study. “And we excluded participants who had evidence of mild to moderate sleep apnea. Consequently, these differences in sleep are not attributable to underlying sleep disorders but represent the sleep experience of a ‘healthy’ subset of the population.”
Pandey’s investigation also indicated that foreign-born Americans were less likely to report short or long sleep than U.S.-born Americans after adjusting for effects of age, sex, education, income, smoking, alcohol use, body mass index (BMI) and emotional distress.
How Much Sleep Do You Need?
When you’re scrambling to meet the demands of modern life, cutting back on sleep can seem like the only answer. Who can afford to spend so much time sleeping? The truth is you can’t afford not to. Learn about restorative sleep, how to determine your nightly sleep needs, and what you can do to bounce back from chronic sleep loss and get on a healthy sleep schedule.
The sleep-wake cycle
Your internal 24-hour sleep-wake cycle, otherwise known as biological clock or circadian rhythm, is regulated by processes in the brain that respond to how long you’ve been awake and the changes between light and dark. At night, your body responds to the loss of daylight by producing melatonin, a hormone that makes you sleepy. During the day, sunlight triggers the brain to inhibit melatonin production so you feel awake and alert.
This sleep-wake cycle can be disrupted by factors such as nightshift work, traveling across time zones, or irregular sleeping patterns, leaving you feeling groggy, disoriented, and sleepy at inconvenient times. The production of melatonin can also be thrown off when you’re deprived of sunlight during the day or exposed to too much artificial light at night, disrupting the sleep-wake cycle and preventing you from getting the sleep you need.
Research shows that habitually sleeping shorter or longer than the recommended seven to nine hours for adults can be linked to certain higher health risks, such as cardiovascular disease, stroke and accidents, as well as instances of mental or emotional disorders like depression.
Think six hours of sleep is enough?
Think again. Researchers at the University of California, San Francisco discovered that some people have a gene that enables them to do well on 6 hours of sleep a night. But the gene is very rare, appearing in less than 3% of the population. For the other 97% of us, six hours doesn’t come close to cutting it.
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Why Aren’t Teens Getting Enough Sleep?
Until recently, teens were often given a bad rap for staying up late, oversleeping for school, and falling asleep in class. But recent studies show that adolescent sleep patterns actually differ from those of adults or kids.
These studies show that during the teen years, the body’s circadian rhythm (sort of like an internal biological clock) is temporarily reset, telling a person to fall asleep later and wake up later. This change in the circadian rhythm seems to be due to the fact that the brain hormone melatonin is produced later at night for teens than it is for kids and adults. This can make it harder for teens to fall asleep early.
These changes in the body’s circadian rhythm coincide with a time when we’re busier than ever. For most teens, the pressure to do well in school is more intense than when they were kids, and it’s harder to get by without studying hard. And teens also have other time demands — everything from sports and other extracurricular activities to fitting in a part-time job to save money for college.
Early start times in some schools may also play a role in this sleep deficit. Teens who fall asleep after midnight may still have to get up early for school, meaning that they may only squeeze in 6 or 7 hours of sleep a night. A couple hours of missed sleep a night may not seem like a big deal, but can create a noticeable sleep deficit over time.
Pandey said the SUNY study’s goals were aligned with the National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI) Workshop on Reducing Health Disparities: The Role of Sleep Deficiency and Sleep Disorders. The purpose is to better understand insufficient sleep, especially across population subgroups, and to shed light on acculturation and miscegenation. Carnethon was a participant in that 2011 workshop and NHLBI sponsored her research.
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The abstracts “Linking Country of Origin to Reported Sleep Durations: Analysis of the National Health Interview Survey” and “Racial/Ethnic Differences in Sleep Duration and Quality in a Population Sample” are being presented today at SLEEP 2012, the 26th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies (APSS) in Boston. To be placed on the mailing list for SLEEP 2012 press releases or to register for SLEEP 2012 press credentials, contact AASM PR Coordinator Doug Dusik at 630-737-9700 ext. 9364, or at .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address).
A joint venture of the AASM and the Sleep Research Society, the annual SLEEP meeting brings together an international body of more than 5,500 leading clinicians and scientists in the fields of sleep medicine and sleep research. At SLEEP 2012, more than 1,300 research abstract presentations will showcase new findings that contribute to the understanding of sleep and the effective diagnosis and treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia, narcolepsy and sleep apnea.
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Doug Dusik
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
630-737-9700
American Academy of Sleep Medicine