CDC: One- third fail to sleep seven hours

A report by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides a new map for some old news — more than a third of Americans don’t get at least seven hours of sleep a night.

Reporting survey results from the 50 states and the District of Columbia, the CDC mapped healthy sleepers across the nation. South Dakota had the most people who get at least seven hours, 71.6 percent, and Hawaii had the lowest, 56.1 percent.

Arkansas placed in the low middle, with 62.6 percent ( plus or minus 2.3 percent) of adults sleeping seven hours or more a night.

The report used data from 444,306 adults collected by the 2014 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System. The survey is conducted jointly by state health departments and the CDC by calling telephone numbers ( cell and landline) at random and talking to non-institutionalized U. S. residents age 18 and older.

The sample in Arkansas included 5,067 adults.

The CDC considers seven hours or more of sleep per night “healthy.” According to the report, “short sleep duration ( less than seven hours per night) is associated with greater likelihoods of obesity, high blood pressure, diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, frequent mental distress, and death.”

Overall, 65.2 percent of respondents reported a healthy sleep duration. More people slept less in the southeastern United States and in states along the Appalachian Mountains, which are regions with the nation’s highest burdens of obesity and other chronic conditions.

Respondents who reported they were unable to work or unemployed were more likely not to be getting seven hours a night than did employed respondents. The prevalence of healthy sleep duration was highest among respondents with a college degree or higher ( 71.5 percent). The prevalence was also higher among married respondents ( 67.4 percent) and people who had never married ( 62.3 percent) compared with those who were divorced, widowed or separated ( 55.7 percent).