Work Time Predicts Sleep Time( Commuting to job also determines slum...),Health

Commuting to job also determines slumber hours, study says

MONDAY, Sept. 3 (HealthDay News) --The more hours adults work and the more hours they spend commuting to the job, the less time they spend sleeping.

That's the finding of new research that shows the impact of work on slumber.

Adults who sleep four-and-a-half hours or fewer worked an average of 93 minutes more on weekdays and 118 minutes more on weekends than the average sleeper, a University of Pennsylvania research team found. People sleeping 11-and-a-half hours or more worked an average of 143 minutes less on weekdays and 71 minutes less on weekends, they said.

Experts recommend that adults sleep between seven and eight hours a night.

"These cross-sectional results in a nationally representative sample suggest that compensated work time is the most potent determinant of sleep time, in which case work time should be considered an important factor when evaluating the relationship between sleep time and morbidity and mortality," lead researcher Dr. Mathias Basner said in a prepared statement.

In their study, published in the September issue of Sleep, the researchers gathered data from 47,731 respondents to the American Time Use Survey conducted in 2003, 2004 and 2005. The 15-minute telephone survey asks people how they spent their time between 4 a.m. the previous day and 4 a.m. on the day of the interview, including where they were and who they were with.

Results showed that the more daytime activities a person reported, the less he or she would spend sleeping. Time at work had the strongest effect on hours of sleep, the team reported.

The researchers said that the impact of travel time on sleep was unexpected and required further research to understand how people manage commute and sleep time, as well as other kinds of travel time for errands, socializing, worship and leisure activities.

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