Plenty of things cause people to lose sleep. Eating a poor diet, drinking alcohol regularly or excessively, drinking too much caffeine, working late night shifts and other aspects of a person’s lifestyle all influence the quality and quantity of one’s sleep. Other causes of sleep deprivation include medications or medical conditions such as depression and clinical sleep disorders such as insomnia. A new study has found that an environmental stressor, which exists purely at the social level, also has a hand in how likely a person will experience disturbed sleep. The problem, according to the study, is perceived racial discrimination.
In order to determine how perceived racial discrimination affects sleep, lead author Michael A. Grandner, a postdoctoral fellow at the Center for Sleep and Circadian Neurobiology at the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, analyzed responses from more than 7,000 people in Michigan and Wisconsin as well as data from the 2006 Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System.
Grandner and colleagues asked participants in the study, “Within the past 12 months when seeking healthcare, do you feel your experiences were worse than, the same as, or better than for people of other races?”
Grandner and colleagues then classified all respondents as having a sleep disturbance if they had difficulty sleeping at least six nights for a period of two weeks.
The study found that, “Perceived racial discrimination had a hand in how likely a person was to experience disturbed sleep,” Grandner said in a statement.
The most surprising finding in the study, according to Grandner, was not only that perceived racial discrimination caused more sleep difficulties, but that, “It did not matter if they were black or white, men or women, rich or poor, or even if they were otherwise depressed or not, since these were adjusted for in the statistical analysis.”
Grandner and colleagues presented these findings at Sleep, the meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies.
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