[Photo by Svein Halvor Halvorsen]
Summary:
What is already known about this topic?
Short sleep duration (<7 hours per night) is associated with greater likelihoods of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, frequent mental distress, and death.
What is added by this report?
The first state-specific estimates of the prevalence of a ≥7 hour sleep duration in a 24-hour period show geographic clustering of lower prevalence estimates for this duration of sleep in the southeastern United States and in states along the Appalachian Mountains, which are regions with the highest burdens of obesity and other chronic conditions. Non-Hispanic black, American Indian/Alaska Native, and Native Hawaiian/Pacific Islander, and multiracial populations report a lower prevalence of ≥7 hours sleep compared with the rest of the U.S. adult population.
What are the implications for public health practice?
The determination that more than a third of U.S. adults report sleeping <7 hours and findings of geographic and sociodemographic variations in low prevalence of healthy sleep duration suggest opportunities for promoting sleep health. These opportunities include sleep health education, reducing racial/ethnic and economic disparities, changes in work shift policies, and routine medical assessment of patients’ sleep concerns in health care systems.
[For more go to http://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volume...htm?s_cid=mm6506a1_e]
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