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The majority of Americans don't get enough quality sleep every night, according to a news study.
Researchers at Brigham Women's Hospital and Harvard Medical School - both in Boston, Massachusetts - found that 70 percent of Americans reported feeling unrefreshed after a night's sleep.
They found that it wasn't just sleep duration that affected how a person felt the next day, but also overall sleep quality.
The study points to a potential crisis in America as so many struggle to get basic rest each night. Sleep disorders are also linked to a variety of health problems later in life, such as high blood pressure and even brain damage.
The researchers found that fewer than 30% of participants in the study had “high-quality” sleep (green), which was the threshold that had to be met for it to be considered restful
Poor sleep has been linked to high blood pressure, heart disease, brain damage and even the acceleration of cognitive decline linked to Alzheimer's disease (file photo)
Researchers who published their results on Thursday in Limits in sleep collected data from 1,055 Americans for the study.
First, they assembled a team of seven sleep experts to develop survey criteria that best reflected how to measure a person's sleep quality.
The group of experts identified nine key signs that could indicate whether a person slept well the night before.
Participants were asked if they felt: grumpy; in a good mood; tired,; sleepy; rested; refreshed; energetic; energetic; awake and ready for the day. They were asked to rate their feelings on a scale of one to five.
Each participant's scores were scaled from zero to 100 to assess their overall sleep quality.
A score of 49.9 or less was considered “low” sleep. A score of 50 to 74.99 was considered “somewhat” good sleep, while any higher score was considered “high” sleep.
Participants who were given a “high” score were considered to have a restful sleep. Only 28 percent of participants reached this mark.
The research also found that there was no direct relationship between sleep duration and overall quality, going against the usual narrative about sleep health.
"Qualitative assessment is an important feature of sleep health, yet the vast majority of high-quality, nationally representative data collected among U.S. adults have assessed quantitative aspects such as sleep duration, which preclude a holistic understanding of sleep in the population," researchers wrote in the study.
They are aware of some shortcomings of this type of study. Self-reported data always opens up the potential for false positives.
There are also other reasons why a person may feel grumpy or less alert when waking up in the morning, aside from poor sleep.
Still, researchers hope a study like this can help give the world a new understanding of how sleep works and how to assess it.
“Our study addresses conceptual ambiguities that remain in the sleep domain regarding restful sleep,” they explained.
“For example, our literature search returned more than 350 articles from a keyword search for “restorative sleep,” but only 48 measured nonrestorative or restorative sleep. Upon further investigation, we found that “restful” was often used in studies as a synonym for adequate sleep duration or satisfaction with sleep, such as: B. high ratings of sleep quality.'
Poor sleep is linked to a variety of health conditions. Some relatively minor ones, such as B. poor alertness and tiredness during the day.
Poor sleep habits can develop into more serious medical problems over time, including high blood pressure, heart disease and diabetes.
Previous studies have shown that it can even cause brain damage and accelerate cognitive decline associated with Alzheimer's.