Americans Continue to Lead the World in Sleep Deprivation

Posted on June 8, 2010

A new report says that one in five Americans is sleepy during the day. Like, really sleepy. Like falling asleep in meetings sleepy. That's not good. The study was presented at the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC in San Antonio, Texas.

Eleven percent of the U.S. participants said they experienced severe sleepiness, with more women than men being that sleepy during the day. The researchers say that Americans are chronically sleep deprived, which leads to mistakes and even car accidents. Other studies have tied insufficient sleep to weight gain. Apparently the body tries to make up for lost sleep by ingesting more calories during the day.

NBC News reports that one in five people fall asleep during meetings in the U.S.

The researchers found that 19.5 percent of U.S. adults reported having moderate to excessive sleepiness, and the results were comparable between men and women. In a previous study, researchers reported that the prevalence of excessive daytime sleepiness in five European countries was 15 percent.

Excessive sleepiness is bad for your health so catching a few minutes of sleep might not be the end of the world as long as the boss doesn't catch you.

If you don't believe a lack of sleep is bad just checkout the highlights from the conference, SLEEP 2010: Associated Professional Sleep Societies 24th Annual Meeting. They include conference news stories like these:

There's many more similar stories just from this one meeting. The bottom line is try and get as much sleep as you can. That can be easier said than done in today's stressful world.



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