Americans - Too Busy Doing Anything Else Rather than Sleeping
By Anna Boyd
10:49, February 29th 2008
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Americans - Too Busy Doing Anything Else Rather than Sleeping

A new study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention revealed that adults in U.S. are not getting enough sleep each night.

The CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report analyzed data from CDC’s Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System survey in four states – Delaware, Hawaii, New York and Rhode Island including 19,589 adults and found only one out of three adults said they got enough rest or sleep every day in the past month.

Ten percent of the people answering the survey reported they did not get enough sleep or rest every single day of the prior month, and 38 percent said they did not get enough in seven or more days in the prior month. The survey also revealed that younger adults are more likely than older adults to report getting too little sleep.

According to the National Sleep Foundation, adults should get seven to nine hours of sleep a night, while children ages 5 to 12 should get nine to 11 hours and those 11 to 17 need 8-1/2 to 9-1/2 hours.

The CDC experts blamed late-night TV watching, Internet surfing and other distractions for the Americans’ unhealthy sleep.

“At night we’re doing everything except for sleeping – we’re on the Internet, we may be watching TV. With these new lifestyles we have kind of taken sleep for granted as something that we can do when we have time or we can catch up on it on the weekends,” CDC behavioral scientist Lela McKnight-Eily, who led the study, said in a telephone interview with Reuters.

 

An estimated 50 to 70 million people suffer from constant sleep loss or sleep disorders, according to CDC. Health experts say chronic sleep loss is often associated with obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, cardiovascular disease, depression, cigarette smoking, and excessive drinking.

“We don’t realize that sleep is a vital part of overall health and that chronic sleep loss is related to both physical and mental health issues. It’s getting worse,” McKnight-Eily said.

She also made some recommendations for those people who are short on sleep, which include sticking to a regular sleep schedule, sleeping in a dark, well-ventilated space at a comfortable temperature, avoiding stimulating activities within two hours of bedtime, avoiding caffeine, nicotine, and alcohol in the evening, avoiding going to bed on a full or empty stomach. If any of these recommendations do not work, the CDC experts recommend seeing a doctor.



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