A research recently published in the Journal of Community Health has pointed out that more than a third of Americans who work get insufficient sleep. This implies that they get seven or less than seven hours of sleep, when ideally, adults should get about 7 hours of sleep daily.
A sample of 150,000 workers was taken and their sleep patterns were studied from 2010 to 2018. It was found that there was a 5 per cent increase in Americans not getting enough sleep, from 30.9 per cent in 2010, to 35.6 per cent in 2018.
The study’s author, Jagdish Khubchandani, a health science professor at Ball State University, said, “Inadequate sleep is associated with mild to severe physical and mental health problems, injury, loss of productivity, and premature mortality. This is a significant finding because the US is currently witnessing high rates of chronic diseases across all ages, and many of these diseases are related to sleep problems.” He added that poor sleep patterns had more to do with the people’s profession, rather than their sex. Some professions in particular were associated with insufficient sleep.
Work industry affects sleep patterns
It was established that those who worked in the police or military fields had the highest levels of insufficient sleep. They were followed by people working in health care support, transportation, and production sectors in 2018, as reported by The Ladders.
“There is no definitive cause found for these trends in sleep duration in working American population,” Khubchandani said. “We see the workplace is changing as Americans work longer hours, and there is greater access and use of technology and electronic devices, which tend to keep people up at night. Add to this the progressive escalation in workplace stress in the US, and the rising prevalence of multiple chronic conditions could be related to short sleep duration in working American adults.”
