About 10 percent of adults report not getting enough rest or sleep every day in the past month, according to a new four-state study released by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.
The data from the four states—Delaware, Hawaii, New York, and Rhode Island—may not reflect national trends. But an additional study conducted by CDC utilizing data from the National Health Interview Study indicated that across all age groups the percentage of adults who, on average, report sleeping six hours or less has increased from 1985 to 2006.
Nationwide, an estimated 50 to 70 million people suffer from chronic sleep loss and sleep disorders. Sleep loss is associated with health problems, including obesity, depression, and certain risk behaviors, including cigarette smoking, physical inactivity, and heavy drinking. [continue reading…]
Sleep
Less sleep can increase a child’s risk of being overweight or obese, according to a study by researchers at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. Their analysis of epidemiological studies found that with each additional hour of sleep, the risk of a child being overweight or obese dropped by 9 percent. The results are published in the February 2008 edition Obesity, the journal of The Obesity Society.
“Our analysis of the data shows a clear association between sleep duration and the risk for overweight or obesity in children. The risk declined with more sleep,” said Youfa Wang, MD, PhD, senior author of the study and associate professor with the Bloomberg School’s Center for Human Nutrition. “Desirable sleep behavior may be an important low cost means for preventing childhood obesity and should be considered in future intervention studies. Our findings may also have important implications in societies where children do not have adequate sleep due to the pressure for academic excellence and where the prevalence of obesity is rising, such as in many East Asian countries.” [continue reading…]
In one of the largest epidemiologic studies of insomnia among adolescents ever conducted in the United States, a study published in the February 1 issue of the journal SLEEP allows for an estimation of the impact of chronic insomnia on future functioning of adolescents. Youths with insomnia, particularly chronic insomnia, are at greater risk of future somatic and especially psychological problems, the study found.Robert E. Roberts, PhD, professor of behavioral sciences at the University of Texas School of Public Health in Houston, and lead author of the study, collected data from 4,175 youths between 11-17 years of age, who completed diagnostic interviews and questionnaires that inquired about symptoms of disturbed sleep, focusing primarily on symptoms of insomnia, their frequency and duration. Dr. Roberts and his colleagues then examined selected risk and protective factors and their ability to prospectively predict incidence of insomnia over one year, specifically age, sex, family income, ethnicity, and physical and mental problems.
The follow-up one year later consisted of 3,134 of these youths. [continue reading…]
Poor sleep among the elderly, it turns out, is not because of aging itself, but mostly because of illnesses or the medications used to treat them.
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New York Times
By GINA KOLATA
Published: October 23, 2007
