Ironic as it sounds, considering sleep is one of the most important parts of self-care, there just aren’t enough hours in the day to do it all and meet these requirements - or are there? If you’re juggling work, classes, a social life, all while trying to save at least an hour for yourself, I’m sure you can probably relate. Personally, I’m lucky if I clock in seven hours of sleep for me, nine hours of uninterrupted sleep on a weeknight sounds like a literal dream. Did you just actually LOL at that statement? Because I sure did. But can naps make up for lost sleep? In theory, putting the day on pause to snooze and recoup sounds like an excellent solution to exhaustion, but are you better off pushing through the day on a mere six hours of sleep? Science may or may not have the answer.Īccording to the National Sleep Foundation’s guidelines, it’s suggested that adults between the ages of 18 and 64 years old clock in anywhere from seven to nine hours of sleep every night. I’ll let you in on a little secret, though: There’s this beautiful thing called a nap - maybe you’ve heard of it - where you take a snooze in the middle of the day to catch some quick Zs. It’s unfortunate, but #adultlife just doesn’t always allot six to eight hours of shut-eye - or so it seems. 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.Īlthough the study found significant variation based on race, sex and income it was not designed to get at the causes of those differences.When your weekdays are packed to the brim with to-dos, you don't have the luxury of turning off your alarm and sleeping as late as you want on a random Tuesday morning. ![]() This study may someday connect sleep loss to coronary artery disease. More recent studies have tied chronic partial sleep deprivation to medical problems, including obesity, diabetes and hypertension. 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. "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." 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. Quan of the University of Arizona in a commentary. They found that sleep duration and sleep efficiency were "remarkably lower" than values reported in most previous studies, noted Stuart F. 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). They also kept a log of their hours in bed. Participants wore the device in the home for three days and nights. 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. "Our study tells that we can't entirely trust those earlier surveys," Lauderdale said, "because people do not know how much they sleep." Studies from the 1970s reported average sleep times closer to seven hours a night. Studies suggest that average sleep times have declined since 1900, when people reported sleeping nine hours a night. ![]() "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." ![]() "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. Higher income also was associated with more sleep. 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. Although participants spent an average of 7.5 hour a night in bed, they spent only 6.1 hours asleep.
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