People in industrial societies get more sleep than hunter-gatherers

Many have written about how modern lifestyles mean that we no longer get enough SleepUnlike our ancestors who lived at less technology times. But the analysis of 54 sleeping studies all over the world found that people in small non -industrial societies get a lower sleep than those in industrial areas.

Everyone I talk to in Canada says the United States talks about the magnificence of their sleep. McCainon night At the University of Toronto Mississoga, Canada. “The numbers do not show it.”

It is often assumed to climb tools such as large screen TVs and Smartphones It means that people today sleep less than in the recent past-the so-called sleep loss epidemic.

But many studies that have reported a decrease in sleep in the past few decades depend on the question of people about the period in which they sleep, which is an unreliable procedure. Even using this method, The results are mixedWith many studies that do not find any change or even an increase in the duration of sleep.

Research based on more reliable measures, such as observing physical activity or using electrical electrodes to monitor brain waves, has not found a decrease over recent decades. For example, a 2016 review of 168 studies was found Unworthy During the period of sleep over the past fifty years.

But these studies were conducted in industrialized countries, leaving the issue of whether people had more sleep before manufacturing. With the availability of wrist -based activity, it has become easier to study sleep in non -industrial societies.

Such studies revealed Short surprise Sleep periods. For example, between the fisherman’s university, San Sleep for 6.7 hours on average, and Hadza for 6.2 hours and Bayaka for 5.9 hours. The shortest duration has been found so far is sleeping for 5.5 hours in the Himba community in Namibia, who are Bedouin livestock shepherds.

McKinnon and her colleague David SamsonAlso at the University of Toronto Mississoga, she participated in many of these studies. They have now compared sleep habits in industrial societies, including the United States, Australia and Sri Lanka, with those in smaller and non -designed societies, including the indigenous peoples in Amazon, Madagascar and the island of Tana in the Pacific Ocean.

In general, the analysis depends on 54 studies that included direct sleep measurements in people over the age of 18 and who are not serious. health conditions. While these studies include only 866 people in total, the data collection is the most comprehensive so far, says Samson. “It’s the best there is now.”

In general, these individuals sleep for 6.8 hours on average, but in non -industrial societies, the average was 6.4 hours, compared to 7.1 hours in industrial societies.

The husband also found that people in non -industrial societies were sleeping compared to 74 percent of the time they were in bed, compared to 88 percent in industrial societies, a measure known as sleep efficiency.

McKinnon and Shamsoun also evaluated the regularity of people’s daily rhythms using a scale called the daily function index, where the 1st degree is perfect. In non -industrial societies, the average was 0.7, compared to 0.63 in industrial societies.

Samson attributes the high duration of sleep and increased sleep efficiency in industrial societies to more favorable conditions. “We see that we have made some real gains in the safety and security of our sleep sites,” he says. “We do not have to defend competing human groups at night or predators.”

On the other hand, people in industrial areas are less exposed to signals that help maintain biological rhythms, such as low temperatures at night and exposure to bright light during the day. Although they did not evaluate this, both MCKINNON and Samson are suspected that the presence of less regular biological rhythms can have harmful effects that explain the reason for many people realizing that their sleep is poor.

What is clear from the paper is the extent of the representation of individuals in these 54 studies of their total population Nathaniel Marshall At the University of Makari, Sydney, Australia. “In order to make data about the spread of epidemics, you need to take representative samples,” he says.

Samson says he looked at whether he had larger sample sizes that could change the results, and concluded that it would not make a big difference.