Almost 150 million in developing countries suffer from sleep-related problems, suggests a recent study, and which also reveals that the researchers did not expect the numbers to be as high as was found.
Dr. Saverio Stranges, from the Warwick Medical School, and one of the authors of the study, summed up the study’s findings, in saying, “This new study suggests sleep disturbances might also represent a significant and unrecognized public health issue among older people, especially women, in low-income settings. Also it seems that sleep problems are not linked to urbanisation as the people surveyed were mostly living in rural settings.”
The main reasons attributed to a lack of sleep as found in these older people and women that were a part of the study were anxiety and depression. Almost 24000 women and 20000 men from countries such as Ghana, India, Vietnam, Bangladesh, South Africa and Tanzania were a part of this study.
Researchers found this to be a cause for concern because due to the ‘double burden’ of disease that these countries faced and which included both chronic diseases such as cancer and cardiovascular diseases as well as the financial pressure caused by infectious diseases such as HIV and so on and so forth.
The countries that had the lowest levels of sleep-related problems were India and Indonesia and it must be noted that the data used to arrive at these findings were of people who lived in rural areas.
The researchers also believe that the number of people suffering from sleep-related problems in urban areas might be even worse.