Impact of COVID-19 Pandemic on Sleep Duration

Sleep is driven by environmental and societal factors so COVID-19 pandemic spread across the world can disrupt daily sleep schedule and cause changes in sleep-related symptoms.

Even a new study of data from more than 163,000 Fitbit users in Sleep journal shows sleep duration increased slightly in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with a similar timeframe in 2019.

‘Sleep duration is increased during COVID-19 pandemic period.’

The findings of the study show mean sleep duration increased in nearly all groups with shifted sleeping time by 5 to 11 minutes but the sleep variability decreased largely due to fewer differences between weekday and weekend sleep.

The degree of change in sleep correlates with the degree of improvement in resting heart rate. This study is another interesting finding from the data extracted from six major U.S. cities hard-hit by the pandemic.

"The results provide perhaps the largest study of objective sleep recordings from a geographically diverse general population sample during the height of the pandemic", said Grandner, who has a doctorate in clinical psychology and is the director of the sleep and health research program at the University of Arizona College of Medicine.

This study is also important to document current population trends such as delayed bedtime and extended sleep due to stay-at-home orders during the pandemic.



Source: Medindia