Annie
Washington, December 31
Researchers from UCL, the University of East Anglia, and the University of Lyon have found in a new study that people sleep less in mid-adulthood than in early and late adulthood.
According to research published in Nature Communications, sleep duration declines in early adulthood until age 33, and then picks up again at age 53.
The study, which involved 730,187 participants spread across 63 countries, revealed how sleep patterns changed over a lifetime and how they varied from country to country.
Study participants played the Sea Hero Quest mobile game, a citizen science venture designed for neuroscience research, created by Deutsche Telekom in partnership with Alzheimer’s Research UK, UCL, UEA, and game developer Glitchers. was Designed to aid research in Alzheimer’s disease by shedding light on differences in spatial navigation abilities, more than 4 million people have played his Sea Hero Quest, contributing to numerous studies throughout the project. I’m here.
In addition to completing tasks that test navigational abilities, anyone who plays the game is asked to answer questions about demographic characteristics and other questions useful in neuroscience research, such as sleep patterns. .
Researchers, led by Professor Hugo Spiers (UCL Psychology & Language Sciences) and Dr Antoine Coutrot (CNRS, University of Lyon), found that across the study sample, people slept an average of 7.01 hours per night, and women 7.5 minutes longer. discovered. men on average.
They found that the youngest participants in the sample (minimum age 19) slept the longest, with sleep duration decreasing through their 20s and early 30s, then leveling off until their early 50s, and then increasing again. This pattern, including sleep stagnation at a newly identified key time point of age 33 and re-emergence at age 53, was the same for men and women across countries and levels of education. was.
Researchers say the decline in sleep in middle age may be due to the demands of childcare and work.
Professor Spiers said: Average sleep duration varies by region and country. “
People who reported sleeping the most were in Eastern European countries such as Albania, Slovakia, Romania and the Czech Republic, reporting an extra 20-40 minutes of sleep per night, and Southeast Asian countries such as the Philippines, Malaysia and Indonesia. It is reported to be the lowest among countries. People in the UK reported sleeping slightly less than average. Countries closer to the equator tend to sleep less.
The researchers found that navigation ability was not affected by sleep duration in most samples, except for the elderly (ages 54-70), who had an optimal sleep duration of 7 hours. state of health.
