AsianScientist (Jun. 15, 2012) – White, American-born adults sleep longer than African-Americans, Asian-Americans and Hispanics, according to two new studies that shed light on the differences between the quality and duration of sleep among ethnic groups in the United States.
Adequate and good quality sleep is integral to our health and well-being, medical experts say. Habitually sleeping shorter or longer than the recommended seven to nine hours for adults has been linked to an increased risk of cardiovascular disease, stroke, accidents, and psychological disorders such as depression.
The first study from the State University of New York (SUNY) examined 400,000 respondents from the National Health Interview Surveys between 2004 and 2010.
The researchers found that Americans born in the United States were more likely to report sleeping longer than the recommended seven to nine hours each night while African-born Americans were more likely to report sleeping six hours or less, and Indian-born Americans reported six to eight hours a night.
“We think social desirability might be playing a role in the self-reported data,” said lead author Dr. Abhishek Pandey. “We think that insufficient sleep might be more prevalent in the population than the actual self report data, but under- or over-reported to project a better image of one’s perceived sleep health.”
In the second study of 439 randomly selected Chicago men and women, sleep researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago found that white participants slept significantly longer than the other groups. Asians had the highest reports of daytime somnolence.
Racial/ethnic differences in sleep persisted even following statistical adjustment for cardiovascular disease risk factors associated with poor sleep, such as body mass index, high blood pressure and diabetes, said Dr. Mercedes Carnethon, principal investigator and lead author of the Northwestern study.
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Source: American Academy of Sleep Medicine.
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