2018 Volume 33 Issue 4 Pages 595-601
Objective: Japanese have the 2nd shortest sleep time in the world, around 30% sleep for less than 6 hours and sleep time is particularly short for women. Female health check-up examinees in their 40s and 50s have been found to sleep for the shortest time. In this group, we identified factors affecting sleep time for use in health guidance.
Methods: During medical interviews, we asked examinees questions using a questionnaire sheet we created ourselves. We also collected information from medical interview forms.
Results: All of the 27 subjects were in employment; consisting of 20 teaching staff, 5 people working for local governments, 1 telephone company employee, and 1 illustrator. The mean working time was 11 hours 7 minutes and the mean sleep time 6 hours 15 minutes. Regarding sleep satisfaction, 55.6% were not satisfied, 14.8% couldn’t say and 29.6% were satisfied. Subjects waking up during the night accounted for 51.9%, those feeling insufficiently rested by sleep 59.3% and those feeling their sleep was insufficient for 66.7%. The time for going home from work was 6 pm or later for all subjects. Regarding activities from the time of arriving home to going to bed, 96.3% spent 84 minutes on housework, 51.9% spent 38 minutes on work and 55.6% spent 49 minutes on leisure activities. Among reasons for not making efforts to get enough sleep were “I’m used to sleeping not very much” and “I don’t place importance on sleep”.
Conclusion: In order to provide specific, individual guidance on sleep in the same was as for diet and exercise, an overall assessment of lifestyles is required. Also, we should inform people about the importance of sleep and have them understand the mental and physical effects of lack of sleep. In the future, we will make leaflets and other materials that enable us to provide specific health guidance on sleep.
