More Than A Third Of Americans Don't Get Enough Sleep

We spend about one-third of our life doing it, but more than one in three Americans still aren’t getting enough sleep, according to a new government report.  In their first study of self-reported sleep length, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that 34.8 percent of American adults are getting less than seven hours of sleep -- the minimum length of time adults should sleep in order to reduce risk of obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, stroke, mental distress, coronary heart disease and early death. In total, an estimated 83.6 million adults in the U.S. are sleep deprived, the CDC report estimates, based on surveys with 444,306 nationally representative participants across 50 states and Washington D.C. That’s 83.6 million sleepy people driving on roads, walking on streets and generally yawning through their lives. An estimated 83.6 million adults in the U.S. are sleep deprived. Getting good sleep depends on who you are A lack of sleep, like so many other health factors, disproportionately affects the poor and underprivileged. Those who are most likely to get the recommended amount of sleep include people over age 65, those who are married, employed, have a college education or higher, and are white, Asian or Hispanic.  For instance, 73.7 percent of senior citizen got at least seven hours of sleep a night, while 71.5 percent of people with a college degree or higher got at least seven hours. More than two-thirds of mar...
Source: Science - The Huffington Post - Category: Science Source Type: news