14 DAY TRIAL // The US National Sleep Foundation (NSF) released the results of its latest poll on sleeping habits in America today, March 7, and the results are worse than experts anticipated. A vast portion of the general population gets less sleep than needed, and nearly all use technology before bed.
For years, sleep experts have been recommending people to avoid using cell phones, laptops, computers, and TV in the hour before going to bed. But the reality is that no one is listening.
Rather than allowing their brains time to settle down from daily activities, people become even more aroused right before going to bed. This in turn decreases the quality of their sleep. Staying up late decreases the quality of their sleep.
Overall, the effects of this are devastating. Despite measures employers make to boost productivity, a tired population cannot be nearly as effective as a rested one. The new conclusions indicate that the United States may be losing a lot of money due to these habits.
The results of the 2011 Sleep in America® poll also revealed that most Americans are looking for ways to cope with the effects of not getting enough sleep. Overall, most people who were dissatisfied with their sleep patterns complained about not getting enough rest during weeknights.
Some 43 percent of respondents – aged 13 to 64 – said that they rarely or never get enough rest during the week. Sixty percent of participants reported having sleep problems on a daily basis.
These issues include waking during the night, feeling tired when they get up, waking up too early, or snoring. About 15 percent of the adults in the study say they sleep less than six hours per night.
On average, respondents told experts that they needed to sleep about seven and a half hours per night to feel refreshed in the morning. On weeknights, they only get 6 hours and 55 minutes of sleep, Science Blog reports.
“This poll explores the association between Americans’ use of communication technologies and sleep habits,” explains the chief executive officer at the National Sleep Foundation, David Cloud.
“While these technologies are commonplace, it is clear that we have a lot more to learn about the appropriate use and design of this technology to complement good sleep habits,” he says.
Around 95 percent of people in the poll reported using some form of technology before going to bed. It's safe to say that the practice is common place, and that the public needs a lot more education in this regard.
“Artificial light exposure between dusk and the time we go to bed at night suppresses release of the sleep-promoting hormone melatonin, enhances alertness and shifts circadian rhythms to a later hour – making it more difficult to fall asleep,” explains expert Charles Czeisler, PhD, MD.
“This study reveals that light-emitting screens are in heavy use within the pivotal hour before sleep,” adds the expert, who is based at the Harvard Medical School and he Brigham and Women’s Hospital.
“Invasion of such alerting technologies into the bedroom may contribute to the high proportion of respondents who reported that they routinely get less sleep than they need,” he adds.
“Over the last 50 years, we’ve seen how television viewing has grown to be a near constant before bed, and now we are seeing new information technologies such as laptops, cell phones, video games and music devices rapidly gaining the same status,” concludes SBU expert Lauren Hale, PhD.