Longer sleep mainly due to retiring earlier; decrease in watching TV or reading before bed
THURSDAY, Jan. 25, 2018 (HealthDay News) — From 2003 to 2016 there was a significant increase in sleep duration on weekdays and weekends, according to a study published online Jan. 8 in SLEEP.
Mathias Basner, M.D., Ph.D., and David F. Dinges, Ph.D., from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues examined trends in sleep duration using data from the American Time Use Survey for 2003 to 2016 for 181,335 respondents (age ≥15 years).
The researchers observed an increase in sleep duration on weekdays (+1.40 min/year) and weekends (+0.83 min/year) across survey years (both P < 0.0001 in adjusted models). Students, employed respondents, and retirees exhibited this trend, but it was not seen in unemployed respondents or in the labor force. On workdays there were changes of −0.44 percent/year, −0.03 percent/year, and +0.48 percent/year in the prevalence of short (≤7 hours), average (>7 to 9 hours), and long (>9 hours) sleep (P < 0.0001, P = 0.5515, and P < 0.0001, respectively). The change in sleep duration was mainly due to respondents retiring earlier in the evening. Over the same time period, there was a decrease in the percentage of respondents who watched television or read before bed.
“The findings indicate first successes in the fight against sleep deficiency,” the authors write. “Public health consequences of the observed increase in the prevalence of long sleep remain unclear and warrant further investigation.”
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