The centers for control and disease prevention recommends that most adults get about seven hours of sleep per night. In the framework of the national representative study in 2014, the CDC found 33 percent of white Americans reported getting less than that. For black Americans, that figure jumped to 46 percent said that a bad dream. To put it more simply: nearly half of black America don’t get enough sleep.
Survey the CDC just people report how much sleep they were getting. But scientists also have conducted studies where participants have their sleep monitored movement-like device called actigraphy bands.
Some of these studies that track a large number of participants in the course of a week or more to find as much as an hour difference in average time spent sleeping between black and white Americans.
Poor sleep contributes to the vicious cycle of ill health and inequality
Not only black Americans sleep fewer hours, there is evidence that sleep they are the worst quality: to Wake up more often and spending less time in the most restful stages of sleep. Black Americans are also more likely to develop sleep apnea, a breathing disorder that can have a serious impact on sleep and health.
When studies control for various socio-economic factors (e.g. education level), the gap of sleep narrows but does not disappear completely.
Poor sleep reflects inequality in America, and probably contributes to their. Living in a poorer, noisier area with a high crime rate is associated with poorer sleep. As forced to work multiple jobs or night shifts (other load predominate in poor communities).
In turn, he suspected that poor sleep can contribute to heart disease, diabetes, and obesity, which also disproportionately affect black Americans.
In the scientific literature, short sleep was associated with increased blood pressure, body Mass Index, and increase calcification of the coronary arteries. In laboratory experiments, people who slept only five hours a day for one week became less sensitive to insulin, making it harder to maintain the level of blood sugar. In a study of night sleep 1,024 individuals, poor sleep was associated with misregulation of the hunger hormones leptin and ghrelin, which would explain another finding: that when people are sleep deprived, they have an increased appetite.
Poor sleep may play a role in a vicious circle. The improvement in the health then have a negative impact on the economic prospects of black Americans.
It will be hard
The answers are simple. It is still not definitively known if it helps people sleep better to reduce the prevalence of diseases such as obesity, diabetes and heart disease. Poor sleep contributes and is a risk factor for these conditions, but this does not necessarily mean good sleep will weaken them.
And even if better sleep is the ticket, it’s a huge challenge to get millions to sleep better.
You may have heard experts tout the advantages of good sleep hygiene. For example, we need to put our phones an hour before bed because their bright light (especially blue light) can keep us awake. This is good, but postpone the phone away, does not compensate for noisy area or building with poor temperature control. He does not raise the voltage discrimination, which the researchers find also plays a role in keeping people up at night. It does not ease the jet lag induced by the random-hour shifts, which can also lead to averse health.
Education also helps. In 2015, I (Brian) was followed by a group of researchers at new York University, which were published in black communities in new York city for residents to screen for sleep apnea and encouraging them to get treatment sleep. They will teach members of the community that even minor fixes, how to relieve snoring, can much more to help people sleep at night.
But now it is important to understand that sleep is an indicator of society’s health, welfare and General well-being. And if sleep is disturbed on such a wide scale, it shows about big breaks elsewhere.
Sourse: vox.com
