Living in Poor Neighborhood Linked to Unhealthy Sleeping Habits

Living in poor neighborhoods could lead to unhealthy sleeping patterns, study on twins shows.

A new study based on adult twins has shown that living in a poor neighborhood is linked to unhealthy sleeping habits. Researchers found that people in these socially deprived regions slept either too much or too little.

Previous research has shown that too little or too much shuteye can lead to heart problems. Sleeping for few hours each night not only results in drowsiness, but also accelerates brain ageing.

The present study is conducted by researchers at the University of Washington in Seattle.

"These results are a starting point for discussing the impact that neighborhood-level factors have on sleep duration," said Dr. Nathaniel Watson at the University of Washington in Seattle, principal investigator of the study. "If we improve upon social deprivation, we may have an opportunity to improve upon habits that influence how long people sleep."

The study was based on data from 2,202 twin pairs, of which 1,268 monozygotic (identical) pairs and 934 were dizygotic pairs (fraternal). All the participants were part of the University of Washington Twin Registry. The mean age of the subjects was 37 years and the mean self-reported sleep duration was 7.4 hours. A majority (62.1 percent) of the participants were female.

Researchers then looked at the neighborhood that these participants lived in. The team used the Singh Index to measure the social and economical deprivation of the community.

Researchers found that the more socioeconomically deprived the neighborhood was, the more erratic sleep pattern the participants reported. The link between poor neighborhood and sleep remained even after researchers accounted for other factors such as genes and shared family background.

The study was presented in Minneapolis, Minnesota, at SLEEP 2014, the 28th annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies LLC and is published in the journal Sleep.