 Middle-aged people living in Britain's deprived areas have poorer sleep quality than those in affluent places, regardless of their personal wealth, research suggests. In the first large-scale UK study looking into the effects of sleep across the population, psychologists also found that black people reported the worst sleep overall. In their findings, published in the journal Clocks and Sleep, the researchers said both social deprivation and ethnicity affect sleep quality, irrespective of age, sex, personal wealth, employment and education. 'It's not so much about how much people earn but the area in which they live,' Professor John Groeger, lead researcher and head of Sleep Well Science at Nottingham Trent University told the PA news agency. 'The implications of these findings have relevance to better health, educational outcomes and wealth creation and productivity, as poor sleep causes all of these to be worse,' 'Socially disadvantaged groups sleep worse, and this may be something we can 'level up',' he added. Regular poor sleep can increase the risk of serious medical conditions, including obesity, heart disease and diabetes, and shorten life expectancy. The best sleepers were male, young and affluent homeowners (Picture: Unsplash) For the study, which also included psychologists from the University of Roehampton, the team analysed data from about 500,000 people aged 40 to 69 from the UK Biobank, an online database of medical and lifestyle records of Britons. They investigated reports of sleep problems such as sleeping for too long or too little for their age, waking in the night, waking too early, snoring, daytime sleepiness, and difficulty getting up in the morning. Results showed almost a third of people in the study reported sleeping shorter (24.7%) or longer (7.7%) than the re){kind=link}
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Middle-aged people living in Britain’s deprived areas have poorer sleep quality than those in affluent places, regardless of their personal wealth, research suggests.
In the first large-scale UK study looking into the effects of sleep across the population, psychologists also found that black people reported the worst sleep overall.
In their findings, published in the journal Clocks and Sleep, the researchers said both social deprivation and ethnicity affect sleep quality, irrespective of age, sex, personal wealth, employment and education.
‘It’s not so much about how much people earn but the area in which they live,’ Professor John Groeger, lead researcher and head of Sleep Well Science at Nottingham Trent University told the PA news agency.