Sleep Statistics

One in three US adults gets less than seven hours' sleep a night.
ABC World News (3/3, story 6, 1:05, Sawyer) reported, "As we know, we are simply not getting enough sleep in America. And today, there was more stark proof of what we're doing to ourselves." On NBC Nightly News (3/3, story 10, 2:20, Williams), Chief Science Correspondent Robert Bazell said, "The Centers for Disease Control today put new numbers on the problem."
The AP (3/3, Stobbe) reported, "More than a third of US adults sleep less than seven hours a night, and many of them report troubles concentrating, remembering and even driving," according to statistics from two studies in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report (MMWR). In one study, about "35 percent of people surveyed in 12 states said they slept less than seven hours a night, on average."
MedPage Today (3/3, Neale) noted that although the analysis "included only one year's worth of data, a previous study found that the proportion of adults getting fewer than seven hours of sleep per night increased from 1985 to 2004." The study authors "attributed the increase at least in part to greater technology use and shift work."
CNN (3/3, Gardner) in its "The Chart" blog reported that in the other MMWR sleep study, 38% of survey respondents "said they'd unintentionally dozed off during the day at least once in the previous month." Moreover, 5% of the respondents "said they'd nodded off or had actually fallen asleep while driving. 'If you don't get enough sleep, it definitely impacts your functioning, your memory, response time,'" said study author Lela McKnight-Eily, PhD, "an epidemiologist and clinical psychologist with the CDC's National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Heath Promotion."
HealthDay (3/3, Reinberg) added that the "48 percent reported snoring." According to the Wall Street Journal (3/3, Hobson, subscription required) "Health Blog," the findings were based on sleep surveys conducted in 2009 with 74,571 adults in 12 states. WebMD (3/3, Hendrick) also summarized the two sleep studies in this week's MMWR.
Meanwhile, noted the Los Angeles Times (3/3, Forgione), "Booster Shots" blog, the CDC reports were released to coincide with "National Sleep Awareness Week from March 7 to 13. And let's hope no one annoyingly asks: 'Got sleep?'"