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Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 725
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Thursday, June 29, 2006 - 08:33 pm: | 
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Thu Jun 29, 2006 2:18 PM ET
http://digbig.com/4kqxk
By Anne Harding
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - In a study of sleep characteristics in 669 adults in Chicago who were compared by sex and race, investigators found that blacks got less sleep than whites, while men got less sleep than women.
Furthermore, the wealthier you are, the more sleep you're likely to get, Dr. Diane S. Lauderdale of the University of Chicago and her colleagues found.
"There was an expectation that people with very demanding jobs in terms of high status, high income, would be getting less sleep, and that was not true," Lauderdale told Reuters Health in an interview. The findings could help explain why blacks suffer from more health problems than whites, she added.
She and her colleagues monitored sleep in a group of men and women, most in their 40s, who were participating in a large study of heart disease risk. Fifty-eight percent were female and 44 percent were black.
Participants told the researchers how much sleep they thought they were getting, and then kept track of the time spent in bed and asleep using sleep logs. Researchers also fitted them with wristwatch-like devices known as actigraphs that recorded their activity for three days, including two weeknights and one weekend night.
While people thought they were getting about seven hours of sleep nightly, they were really getting only about six hours, the researchers report in the American Journal of Epidemiology. On average, white women slept 6.7 hours a night, white men slept 6.1 hours, black women slept 5.9 hours, and black men slept 5.1 hours nightly. The racial and sex differences remained even after the researchers factored in the effects of socioeconomic factors such as employment and lifestyle.
The amount of sleep people got increased with their income, and this effect was stronger for the black participants than the whites.
There are a number of potential explanations for the findings, Lauderdale noted. People who make less money may have more worries that prevent them from sleeping well. They could be living in noisier, less comfortable environments, and they may have more health problems.
The racial and economic sleep differences detected in this study could help explain the well-known disparities in health that exist between blacks and whites, she added.
"There are so many inequalities in health -- sleep can be involved in that," Lauderdale explained. "Sleep seems to be related to social differences in a way that we never realized."
SOURCE: American Journal of Epidemiology, July 1, 2006.
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Urban_scribe
Newbie Poster
Username: Urban_scribe
Post Number: 12
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 08:10 am: |
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The wealthy can afford to hire staff to run errands, clean the house, cook, pick up the kids, take them to their ballet, piano and tennis lessons, drive them around, do laundry, etc. The impoverished and middle classes lack the financial resources to have these things done for them, therefore must be self-sufficient and self-reliant. This translates into less leisure time. |
Mzuri
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Mzuri
Post Number: 733
Registered: 01-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 10:24 am: |
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I've been thinking about this and I think it has a lot to do with time management. People don't give their sleep time the importance that it deserves. And people need to get the chaos out of their lives too. The main reason I live alone is so that I can get regular undisturbed sleep. I am a very light sleeper and I can't have any noise happening when I'm trying to sleep. I shut off the phones, TV, etc. Don't need to worry about the doorbell because I'm out in the boondocks. I can't stand to ask someone else if it's alright if I turn off the phones and could you please be quite while I take my nap. And having a tossing turning snoring person in my bed is OUT! I get sick if I don't get enough quality sleep so it's critical for me. |
Femrenoir
Veteran Poster
Username: Femrenoir
Post Number: 69
Registered: 05-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 06:52 pm: |
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Stress! My guess is the figures correlate to the amount of stress each group is under.
Per the recent figures, only 30% of brothers succeed. It's no wonder they're having trouble sleeping! |
Misty
"Cyniquian" Level Poster
Username: Misty
Post Number: 141
Registered: 02-2006
Rating: N/A
Votes: 0 (Vote!) | | Posted on Friday, June 30, 2006 - 08:40 pm: |
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if this has to do wiht economics then how come white men get less sleep than white women |
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