I knew it, rich white women get the most sleep!
Health & fitness Researchers say the wealthier you are, the more sleep you're likely to get. Men and blacks 'sleep less than women and the rich' Monday July 3, 2006
NEW YORK - 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 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 said. The findings could help explain why black people 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. 58 per cent were female and 44 per cent 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.
Researchers also fitted them with wristwatch-like devices known as actigraphs that recorded their activity for three days, including two week nights 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.
People who make less money may have more worries that prevent them from sleeping well, she said.
"Sleep seems to be related to social differences in a way that we never realised." - REUTERS
© 2006 VANESSA BYERS, Vanessa: Unplugged
