A new study finds that sleep habits vary widely depending on where you live.
You’d think the most sleep-deprived state in the nation would be somewhere in the sleepless northeast, right? But you’d be wrong.
A new study has found that the state with the worst sleep habits in the country is Hawaii. So while Hawaii may make a popular vacation destination for those looking for relax, the people who live there are depriving themselves of sleep, according to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study.
The study examined how many Americans were getting less than the recommended 7 hours of sleep per night, and found alarmingly that a third of Americans aren’t getting that amount of rest, based on a poll of 400,000 adults in all 50 states.
Hawaii scored the worst at 56.1 percent. The best? South Dakota at 71.6 percent.
Geographically, the Great Plains states tended to score the best, as well as states along the Appalachian Mountains. However, southern states also performed poorly along with Hawaii, such as Alabama and Georgia.
And don’t think that the people who work hard every day are the ones deprived of sleep. It’s actually people who are unable to work or who are unemployed who get the least amount of sleep.
Married people not surprisingly tend to have better sleep habits than single, with 67 percent of married people getting the 7 hours of rest compared to 62 percent of people who are not married. Those who are divorced or widowed fare worse than single people, reporting at 56 percent.
And your education matters. About 72 percent of people with a college degree got the requisite 7 hours of sleep.
“As a nation we are not getting enough sleep,” Wayne Giles, M.D., director of CDC’s Division of Population Health, said in a statement. “Lifestyle changes such as going to bed at the same time each night; rising at the same time each morning; and turning off or removing televisions, computers, mobile devices from the bedroom, can help people get the healthy sleep they need.”
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