Are Indians Sleep Deprived?

Bangalore: Indians sleep lesser in comparison to Americans says a study by an Indian origin researcher, Abhishek Pandey (lead author of the study). SLEEP 2012, the premier event for sleep research has reported the two relative studies on sleep disparities among Americans based on racial and ethnic background. The first survey by the State University of New York (SUNY) looked at 400,000 respondents from the National Health Interview Surveys between 2004 and 2010.

According to the survey results Americans born in the United States were more likely to sleep longer than the recommended time (7 to 9 hours each night). While African-born Americans were more likely to sleep 6 to 8 hours and Indian-born Americans reported to sleep six to eight hours at night.

"We think social desirability might be playing a role in the self-reported data," said Abhishek Pandey, MD, the study's lead author. "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."

The second survey by sleep researchers at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine in Chicago analyzed the sleep on a smaller scale. They measured 439 randomly selected Chicago citizens (men and women), about sleep quality and daytime sleepiness. The research shows that the white participants slept notably longer than other groups, while blacks reported to have worst sleep quality and the Asians had the highest reports of daytime sleepiness.